democracy

The new alliances dedicated to destroying democracy

27 July 2024 9:00 am

Despite their diverse ideologies, autocracies in China, Iran, Russia and Latin America are increasingly collaborating to sabotage a rules-based international order

A Hindu Cromwell courteously decapitates hundreds of maharajas

28 October 2023 9:00 am

Through a mix of charm, diplomacy and coercion, Sardar Patel, Nehru’s uncompromising deputy, ensured that 565 princely states vanished from the map of India in 1947

A doomed democracy

26 August 2023 9:00 am

Despite its democratic ideals and artistic creativity, 1920s Germany lacked both the flexibility and social cohesion necessary for functional politics, says Frank McDonough

Boris Johnson was a terrible strongman

6 September 2022 11:32 pm

The ejection of Boris Johnson from Downing Street today proves that the UK has not gone the way of Donald…

We let Hong Kong down: Chris Patten on the end of colonial rule

25 June 2022 9:00 am

After 13 years in parliament, rising star Chris Patten had the bad luck to be one of the few Tory…

The rise of the new autocracy

29 January 2022 9:00 am

Gstaad Dinner parties are no longer verboten here, so I posed a question to some youngsters my son had over:…

Glasnost merely confirmed Russia’s deep-seated suspicion of democracy

11 December 2021 9:00 am

Thirty years ago the Soviet Union was guttering to its close. Those of us who were there remember the exhilarating…

Ella Pamfilova and the dismantling of Russia’s democracy

29 July 2021 4:59 pm

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is hardly known for its free and fair elections. But a purge of the field ahead of…

Why voters should have to show photo ID

7 July 2021 6:00 pm

This week’s publication of the Elections Bill has given pressure groups and others a fresh opportunity to complain about what…

trust

The urgent case for voting reform

24 November 2020 1:30 am

By now, The Spectator knows better than to say that Donald Trump has been definitively beaten. The President’s final defeat…

A cautionary tale about how democracy can subvert itself: Bunga Bunga reviewed

24 October 2020 9:00 am

Italy has long captivated romantics from rainy, dreary, orderly northern Europe. Goethe, Stendhal, Keats and Shelley all flocked to Italy…

What on earth has happened to Simon Schama: The Romantics and Us reviewed

12 September 2020 9:00 am

‘You may think our modern world was born yesterday,’ said Simon Schama at the beginning of The Romantics and Us.…

vote

Why I won’t vote

28 August 2020 10:09 pm

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a piece titled ‘The battle cry of the politically homeless’ in which I…

How the Athenians would have handled the Lords

15 August 2020 9:00 am

Arguments about the purpose or indeed very existence of anything resembling the House of Lords would have struck classical democratic…

voter suppression

It’s voter suppression time, again — this time it’s pandemic!

17 April 2020 1:54 am

Is Trump a reckless idiot who didn’t take the coronavirus seriously and thus endangered hundreds of thousands of lives? Or…

Covid-19 shows us that virtue trumps freedom

4 April 2020 9:00 am

Look at it this way: we’re all doing Desert Island Discs nowadays, and unless you’ve got the bug, it’s a…

The director of Persepolis talks about her biopic of Marie Curie: Marjane Satrapi interviewed

21 March 2020 9:00 am

The director of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi, talks to Sarah Ditum about her new biopic of Marie Curie, exile from Iran and her fears for the future of democracy

Let’s choose our politicians by random selection

20 July 2019 9:00 am

Athens Standing right below the Acropolis, where pure democracy began because public officials were elected by lot, I try to…

Credit: andersen_oystein

Why 1919 wasn’t the year it’s cracked up to be

12 January 2019 9:00 am

Gstaad The funny thing is that I was at school with a man called Ted Widmer, and I recently read…

Corbyn’s false democracy

6 October 2018 9:00 am

At the Labour party conference, Jeremy Corbyn said that he would do whatever his party members told him to. This,…

Put your trust in Hungarian wine (yes, really)

28 April 2018 9:00 am

The wines of Tokaji run like a golden thread through Hungarian history. There are references to their nectar-like quality in…

East vs West: the new battle for Europe

27 January 2018 9:00 am

The occasion was a central European conference on the subversive disinformation campaigns of Putin’s Russia (which, incidentally, are real, subtle,…

Animal or vegetable?

2 September 2017 9:00 am

Against by Christopher Shinn sets out to unlock the secrets of America’s spiritual malaise. Two main settings represent the wealthy…

High life

5 August 2017 9:00 am

I’ve stayed far away from the new barbarians with their choppers, tank-like cars, home theatres on board, and fridge-shaped super…

A democratic future for the 75 per cent

29 June 2016 12:29 am

You needed only to look at the headlines to realise things had not gone to plan. They were damning; Time…