World
How president Erdogan defied the odds – again
The results of yesterday’s election have come as a sobering shock for many in Turkey. Although president Erdogan fell just…
Macron has no idea how to pay for ‘reindustrialisation’
Emmanuel Macron is playing the emperor again. Last week he proudly announced a grand new strategy, but without any indication…
The problem with prison
The former prime minister Sir John Major has suggested the UK need not be banging up quite so many people.…
Ministers block release of draft coronation playlist
It was Yes Minister which joked that open government is ‘a contradiction in terms: you can be open or you…
Writers are doomed to fail in their war against AI
It’s a cliché of publishing that men over the age of 40 only read military history. In my case it’s not…
A Lib-Lab coalition would be hilarious
Talk of a new Labour-Lib Dem coalition is in the air. This is piquantly nostalgic to those of us whose…
Academic publishing is lazy and unethical
Last week witnessed the first tremors of what could be a welcome revolution: the resignation en masse of the 40-strong editorial board of NeuroImage magazine – regarded…
Let’s stop pretending the culture wars aren’t real
Are the culture wars real? Some assume that they’re an imaginary affair, or, at best, a distraction from the real,…
Is Macron finally taking on the cult of Net Zero?
Hell hath no fury like an environmentalist scorned and Emmanuel Macron has felt a wave of green wrath since his…
Brit-bashing Eurovision entry finishes second bottom
It’s fair to say there was some controversy about the selection of Mae Muller as Britain’s entry to this year’s…
Varadkar red-faced after his boyfriend’s coronation messages leak
Oh dear. It was all meant to be going so well for British-Irish relations. Earlier this month both the Irish…
Erdogan faces runoff vote in the Turkish elections
Turkey is a strange kind of democracy. But nonetheless it is a democracy where an apparently invincible strongman can –…
Forget electric cars: America should invest in electric roads
As President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy begin to square off on a compromise debt ceiling bill, the…
Erdogan is unlikely to go quietly
The Turkish election is just hours away, and an opposition victory seems more likely than ever under president Erdogan’s rule.…
How Russia lost Kazakhstan
Prior to Russia’s invasion in February 2022, few westerners knew much about Ukraine, and even less about Kazakhstan. We all…
Britain is stuck in a fertility trap
Pope Francis wants you to have sex. Or at least he wants Italians to have more sex. The country, he says,…
The Black Sea is Nato’s new front line against Russia
Earlier this month, an unarmed Polish aircraft monitoring potential human smuggling and illegal fishing on the Black Sea almost ditched…
How a small Welsh village became embroiled in a slave trade controversy
You’ve probably never heard of Abergynolwyn, which sits in the Dysynni valley in Merioneth in Wales. The village, established in…
The UN is wrong about Britain’s treatment of trans people
Is Britain a hostile environment for trans people? The United Nations’ independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity has delivered…
British universities are beyond redemption
There’s no doubt that the government has the best of intentions when it comes to clearing up the Augean stables…
Putin’s acolytes can smell blood
Yevgeny Prigozhin, standing in the darkness next to a row of bloodied dead bodies, was shouting obscenities. With his yellowish,…
Trudeau’s ‘coronation gift’ is just lip service to the monarchy
Cynically dressed up as a coronation-related gift to the Canadian nation, just days after the coronation, the country’s leader Justin Trudeau has…
Why trophy hunting could be key to saving Africa’s wildlife
The lion or elephant in the photo should be stone-cold dead. The hunter posing with it should be ugly, fat…
How Elon Musk turned Twitter into the post-TV Fox News
Elon Musk has decided it’s too much work for him to be the chief executive of Twitter, a fraying social…
How prisons teach inmates that crime pays
John Major is wrong when he suggests only violent offenders should be automatically locked up – and as a non-violent…
