Politics
Is bet365 punishing me for being a peer?
On my way to the QPR game against Hull last Saturday, I was astonished to discover that Ladbrokes had made…
It’s not Starmer’s fault that everyone loathes him
Finding someone who ‘likes’ Sir Keir Starmer is a terribly enervating quest, and I have given up on it without…
The persecution of our local politicians
Have a thought for Darren Grimes, the 32-year-old Reform councillor. Since becoming deputy leader of Durham County Council in May,…
The lost art of the insult
Imagine I were to begin this column by remarking that a woman preaching is like a dog walking on its…
Was I the victim of a sex crime?
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I went up to her and got straight to the point: ‘What are you using for bait?’…
Weimar Britain: lessons from history in radical times
The Ancient Greeks believed the past was in front of us and the future behind. Man could look history in…
Art and radicalism in 1930s Britain
Andy Friend describes the first decade of the AIA, a vital movement that blended art and politics in the fight against international fascism
The risks of Reform
In 1979, XTC sang: ‘We’re only making plans for Nigel/ We only want what’s best for him.’ The song is…
How Italy’s ‘new young’ party
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The Feast of the Assumption began for me just after midnight with a WhatsApp message from my…
Dinner party talk won’t help Gaza
I’m one of the Silent People who sit on the sidelines of the great political events and debates of the…
Britain shouldn’t put up with Donald Trump
History is the march of folly and far too many of my countrymen are hearkening to a drumbeat which would…
The National have bungled their Rishi Sunak satire
The Estate begins with a typical NHS story. An elderly Sikh arrives in A&E after a six-hour wait for an…
Could Japan soon be governed by chatbots?
Tokyo Could Japan be the world’s first -algocracy – government by algorithm? The concept has been flirted with elsewhere: in…
‘Let Keir be Keir’: inside the cabinet’s away day
Labour ministers face a range of terrible political choices, but when the cabinet met for an away day at Chequers…
How governments gaslight
The posters now plastered around German public swimming pools are so hilarious that you may have seen them already. Keeping…
The vicious genius of Adam Curtis
In an interview back in 2021, Adam Curtis explained that most political journalists couldn’t understand his films because they aren’t…
Being stalked by a murderer was just one of life’s problems – Sarah Vine
At times one cannot believe what the Gove family endured during frontline government service, and politics gets much of the blame as Vine looks back over the wreckage
A small world: Shibboleth, by Thomas Peermohamed Lambert, reviewed
A satire on Oxford university life points up ideological tensions, the pettiness of college politics and the patronising ways of the young and privileged
Rachel Reeves, the Iron Chancer
Gordon Brown may not be every teenager’s political pin-up. But as an Oxford student, Rachel Reeves proudly kept a framed…
Britain needs reform
This week’s spending review confirms that where there should be conviction, there is only confusion; where there should be vision,…
Delightful nostalgia for political wonks: The Gang of Three, at the King’s Head Theatre, reviewed
The Gang of Three gets into the nitty-gritty of Labour politics in the 1970s. It opens with the resignation of…
My apology to Reform
I have read countless commentaries explaining why we shouldn’t take Reform’s victories last Thursday too seriously. They are all wrong.…
A football regulator would be an own goal
It’s that time of the year again in football when the Championship sweeps all before it: it’s full of joy…
The benign republic of Julian Barnes
The novelist presents his utopia – of unilateral disarmament and the public ownership of transport – in the tone of a thoughtful vicar giving an anodyne sermon somewhere in the Home Counties
My brush with a rabid money
India A crowded bus station. A lady monkey with a baby clinging to its neck sidled past me, eyeing the banana…
