World
Who do the police protect?
The function of the police, one might have thought, was to protect the weak against the overbearing and the bullying.…
The weather isn’t to blame for Britons shopping less
It was the weather wot did it, wot stopped us spending in the shops. Yet again, the favourite old excuse…
Pressure is mounting for Jeremy Hunt to find tax cuts
Timing is a funny thing. The Chancellor received some good news about the public finances this morning, just when everyone…
Can Sunak convince Tory MPs to hold their nerve?
Why have the Tories lost both Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth, seats they could normally rely on the laws of physics…
Tory voters are no longer scared of Labour
Amid all the discussion in Tory circles about whether the next election will have more in common with the narrow…
Losing Tamworth and Mid-Bedfordshire is a disaster for Sunak
What an epically horrible night for the Conservative part, one of the worst in the party’s long and storied history.…
Iran and Hamas didn’t always get on
In the days after Hamas’s attack on Israel last week, everyone wondered how much Iran knew beforehand. But a focus…
Tories suffer double by-election defeat
Keir Starmer has reason to celebrate this morning after his party triumphed overnight in both the Mid-Bedfordshire and Tamworth by-elections.…
Biden’s Oval Office address was a sales pitch
A primetime address in the Oval Office is the pinnace of presidential speechifying. Ronald Reagan used the room in 1986…
The Queen’s sole mistake
It’s often been said that the late Queen Elizabeth II rarely if ever put a foot wrong during her 70-year…
The Treasury should stop paying attention to the OBR
A year ago Liz Truss’ brief government collapsed when markets lost confidence in Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget. A large part of the…
Sunak tells Israel: ‘We want you to win’
Rishi Sunak is in Israel today for talks with the country’s leaders amid the ongoing conflict. The Prime Minister has…
Protests and confusion follow the Gaza hospital blast
On President Biden’s last-minute trip to Israel Wednesday, the commander-in-chief pledged America’s support to the Jewish state alongside Prime Minister…
‘WFH Whitehall’ still afflicting Foreign Office
The Foreign Office is often called the grandest of all Whitehall’s ministries – so it’s just a shame then that…
Biden struggles to speak aboard Air Force One
Is it ageist to suggest that an obviously frail 80-year-old might not be well suited to the task of resolving…
A culinary tour of southern France and northern Spain
If I’d known what a whole monkfish looks like, I would never have ordered it. It was only weeks later…
The sorry state of Supreme
It would have happened on a Thursday, as it does every Thursday. Crowds of young men and teen boys would…
The pride of pouring perfect concrete
In the summer of 2020 I was awarded a degree in history from Bristol University — the culmination of three…
Being denied a job for supporting Hamas isn’t ‘cancel culture’
Karol Markowicz has a piece today about cancel culture and the college students who signed on to reprehensible anti-Israel or even…
Meet Maria Corina Machado: could she become Venezuela’s Margaret Thatcher?
In 2006, there was Manuel Rosales. In 2012, there was Henrique Capriles. In 2018, there was Juan Guaidó. All managed…
Which crimes no longer deserve prison?
More people are being jailed than the justice system can manage. There are only 557 places left across 120 prisons…
Joe Biden’s Middle East diplomacy is a wreck
Joe Biden prides himself on his decades of foreign-policy experience, his ability to talk tough yet be kind, and his…
Sunak unites the Commons behind Israel’s right to defence
Most of the questions to Rishi Sunak today at Prime Minister’s Questions can be usefully summarised by the point put…
Why has there still not been a housing crash?
Not for the first time, a widely-predicted – and for many frustrated buyers, hoped-for – house price crash has failed…
The Gaza hospital strike changes everything
The explosion that killed hundreds in the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza has created a critical moment that may change the…
