Roll up, roll up for the 2020 Nanny State Awards – bigger and brassier than ever
It’s never been difficult to find worthy contenders for the highly coveted Nanny State awards. But this year took nanny-stating…
Why Boris Johnson can’t solve the UK’s crisis
The Brexit and Covid crises have merged into one. As of today, 21 December, France has blocked trucks from crossing…
Elvis and Nixon, the odd couple
If you were called upon to invent the human antithesis of rock and roll, you couldn’t do better than our nation’s 37th president,…
No-deal Brexit planning has been a lifesaver
The port of Dover has been closed down. The Eurotunnel isn’t carrying any freight for a couple of days. The…
Boris now faces a terrible choice over Brexit
Ten thousand lorries usually travel through the port of Dover in the run-up to Christmas. Now, Dover is completely shut.…
What the new strain means for our fight against Covid
‘What’s going on in Swale?’, asked a health journalist who I often speak to. This was back in November. I responded…
Snopes versus Abraham Lincoln
One of the most dreadful developments of the Donald Trump era has been the rise of the fact-check mafia. Every…
Daniel Andrews: diminished, damned and disgraced
And so the 543-page final Report of the Coate Inquiry into Victoria’s deadly Covid-19 hotel quarantining has been tabled. …
Doug Anthony: the original All Star goes out
The death over the weekend of former Country/National Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Doug Anthony, breaks the last link but…
What won’t be in the Victorian hotel quarantine fiasco inquiry report today
Justice Coate’s much-awaited final report of her inquiry into Victoria’s Covid-19 hotel quarantine program is due for release today. If…
Donald Trump has made showers great again
President Donald Trump is the best. I already thought he was great, but I became even more convinced of his…
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock suggests Tier 4 could stay until vaccine ‘rolled out’
As 16.4 million people wake up to the first day of Tier 4 restrictions, many are asking for how long…
How sure can we be that Britain’s Tier 4 lockdown will work?
How certain should we be of the government’s claim that the new variant of SARS-CoV-2 is 70 per cent more transmissible…
John le Carré’s London of exiles is alive and well
‘I’m an Englishman born and bred, almost.’ So says Karim Amir, protagonist of Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of…
Unto them a child is born: the joylessness of secular faiths
While those committed to extreme forms of secularism argue religion, especially Christianity, must be abolished it’s ironic that at the same time they adopt many of the characteristics of the…
The Greens cult of no personality
Out today: yet another screed of delusion, distortion and deceit that the Greens pass off as their magazine. It’s only…
2020: The year in review with Alexandra Marshall
If we have learned anything from 2020, it’s ‘don’t eat bats’. From Ebola to Covid, these winged Petri dishes have proved…
The new strain of Sars-CoV-2: what we know
What do we know about the new Covid strain? Like all viruses, Sars-CoV-2 changes. Like a manuscript that is being endlessly…
The fight for liberalism
The world has many island nations, and sometimes the United States counts itself among them. We have water on either side of us,…
The case Brexiteers should make for Brexit
Why are Brexiteers rubbish at making the economic case for Brexit? On a whole range of things from three pin…
Normal normal
After one of the most gruelling and troubling years of the last few decades, the one thing most of us…
Brown study
Here is a rag bag collection of events and attitudes of the last twelve months. As we used to say…
Christmas diary
My Christmas present to myself is a new life. I’ve always wondered what I will do when I grow up,…
