Barometer
Culture clashes The pop star Adele was accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ for adopting a Jamaican hairstyle for the online Notting…
Little wonder
The British Museum’s aim is to use its collection ‘for the benefit and education of humanity’. If that manifests itself…
Remote workers of the world, unite!
A few nights ago on Twitter, I quipped that I was planning to launch a trade union for remote workers.…
The trouble with ‘taking back control’
I sympathised with Leave voters who yearned to ‘take back control’ of British borders. After all, if being a country…
Bearing all
Few things better capture the crazed cognitive dissonance of our age than this: that while we cower behind masks for…
Dear Mary
Q. Some friends persist on displaying our email addresses in large address lists when sending out round robins to all…
The best leader we never had
I spent Monday afternoon with The Wake Up Call, a new book by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge that lambasts…
Right up my alley
I suspect, though this may be romanticising, that if a French lorry driver with hitherto suppressed culinary tastes won France’s…
Are liberal conservatives now history?
It was a luminous late August sunset, and we were in France, dining outdoors with some friends who have a…
Scots
A teenager in North Carolina has been revealed as the creator of a fifth or even a half of the…
Who will pay for a mega-spending Biden administration?
Over the last month, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has proposed roughly $4 trillion in new tax hikes. That is…
The return of the Blob
For decades, Washington think tanks were vital to a virtuous revolving door. Young policy professionals, both Democrats and Republicans, would…
In defence of Tony Abbott
You sometimes wonder whether we live in an adult country anymore. For the last two days the broadcast media has…
The future of populist conservatism
Laramie, Wyoming William Kristol, a Grand Poobah of neoconservatism, is leaving the Republican party to join the donkeys of the…
Navalny’s poisoning has shown the emptiness of German diplomacy
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has confirmed that tests showed ‘unequivocally’ that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was poisoned by a military-grade…
The biggest obstacle to a Brexit deal
Downing Street now thinks that the chances of a Brexit deal are down to 30 or 40 per cent, I…
Europe’s ‘second wave’ has fizzled out
Has the Covid ‘second wave’ already run out of steam? On 9 July, just when Britain was reopening the hospitality…
The complaint from MPs that ought to worry Boris Johnson
When Boris Johnson addressed MPs on Wednesday, the hope in government was that the Prime Minister’s multiple appearances would rally the…
Keir Starmer’s hypocritical attack on Tony Abbott
One of the most impressive qualities of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership so far has been his ability to land blows…
France is fighting a lone battle for free speech in the West
One of the most craven moments in the recent history of the British media was an interview Sky News conducted…
