Labor’s pyrrhic victory
By winning the battle, Labor have managed to lose the war. With such a monumental strategic blunder, Bill Shorten and…
Australian notes
For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the…
Cameron’s great secret: he’s not a very good politician
Fortunately for the country, however, he's a lucky one
Portrait of the week
Home The country went to the polls. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, prepared by going around with his sleeves rolled…
Barometer
Plus: How many Charlottes to expect this year; and who’ll win the election if legwork decides it
Chemical weapons
From ‘War by Poison’, The Spectator, 8 May 1915: By the consent of all men who are not savages, the use…
Letters
Plus: coal mines vs fracking; whether vicars need bigger houses; and where Taki should have his 80th
A voting system that’s past it
One part of the result is crystal clear even before polling day: our electoral system no longer functions
Miliband’s tablet of stone may cost him my vote
It’s the most egregiously stupid thing I’ve ever seen in any general election
In praise of the pit bull
I grew up with a pit bull, and they aren’t devil dogs. They are the best of breeds
My part in a masterpiece of political correctness
There’s a new monument to conventional thinking on global warming – and it has my name on it
My nominee for politician of the year: the honourable member for Athens B
Plus: the hounding of the Hound of Hounslow; and one party leader’s Waterloo
The disunited kingdom
Nicola Sturgeon dominated in a way Alex Salmond could not have. But where now for the Union?
‘Mili-what? Who’s he?’
We in this call centre don’t know or care about politics. But if you hang straight up, we will call back
Children of Gomorrah
We must face the horrors we inflicted on Germany’s cities in the later years of the war. But they were not futile crimes
Victim status
The student Ione Wells’s account of being attacked on the street summoned painful memories
Blown to blazes
Brian Dillon in The Great Explosion finds a cure for his depression researching a devastating explosion in a Kent munitions factory that killed 109 men and boys
The devil’s devoted disciple
According to Peter Longerich’s biography, the Nazi party’s propaganda minister and evil genius only once fell out with his Führer — over a woman
