Three or four years ago, I wrote a piece contemplating the end of cash. I wrote it as a mourner, lamenting how I would miss its heft, its solidity, its sheer physicality, in contrast to pinging and flicking invisible funds …
Project 2025 is the new normal
Last Wednesday night, I was regaled by a young black American Uber driver all the way from Dulles airport to the Capitol, with a note-perfect reel of Trumpian talking-points. He didn’t like Trump personally, he told me — but understood …
The painful truth about assisted suicide
There is a popular image of assisted suicide: a swift, straightforward procedure, backed by the awesome authority of modern science, sure to send you off in a comfortable doze. Dignity in Dying, for instance, claim that assisted suicide can “guarantee” …
Can RFK Jr rebuild the American body?
Donald Trump has long sought to portray himself as some sort of aristocrat, and now, a deeply divided American electorate has given him the chance for the greatest grift of all. King Trump’s Camelot is within his grasp, and the …
How humans became microplastic
This past summer, I spent a morning hunting for shrimp and prawns on a remote beach in Scotland. It was the kind of ritual interaction with nature that modern people have long prized: wading through tidal pools at the edge …
Welcome back to 1945
Were he magically granted the power of time travel, would it be a moral obligation for David Lammy to kill the baby Trump in his cradle? He did after all describe America’s President-elect as “a racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser” …
Barron Trump: America’s edgelord
One wonders what goes on at the house parties of New York University. Home to the edgelord arts schools Tisch and Steinhardt, NYU has become flypaper for undeodorised alternative types, scooting in from loft communes with chickpea-tastic packed lunches to …
Bring back Birmingham’s oligarchs
Birmingham has suffered low ebbs before. Finding themselves in hock to rail developers, 150 years ago, the town’s fathers carved up working-class areas, while rejecting gifts of land to be kept as parks: they would have been just too expensive …
Can Donald Trump’s tariffs fix America?
While Donald Trump told Americans they were right to feel angry about their economic woes, the Democrats told them they were wrong to feel that way. The election result shows which message voters appreciated most.
A road trip across the …
Why Justin Welby had to go
I can still smell the fog of his disgusting cigars. And the sickly sweet tonic with which he slicked back his hair. I was seven when it started. I am 60 this month. It is more than half a century …
Sex strikes are hot again
There are four simple principles to South Korea’s 4B movement. These are all refusals, since the “B” stands for “bi”, meaning “no” in Korean. No heterosexual marriage (bihon). No childbirth (bichulsan). No dating men (biyeonae). No sexual relationships with men …
The art of Trump’s Israel deal
It is tempting these days to think that all reality revolves around the State of Israel, but Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris was overwhelming enough to discredit explanations that stress any single factor. The psychic shocks of the post-October …
Italy’s past isn’t history
Many countries fall silent to honour their war dead at the start of November, but the rituals of remembrance are very different here in Italy. Nothing seems settled. There’s no single event or occasion, only rival dates, ceremonies and stories. …
Kamala Harris never stood a chance
Anyone who doubts the robustness of American democracy need only dip a toe in the rolling seas of commentary following Donald Trump’s mind-numbing recapture of the presidency. Freedom of speech has burst its seams. But then, far from being American …
Has Trump learnt from his mistakes?
Beyond his likely majority in both the Senate and the House, Trump’s real advantage over Trump’s last term is his last term. More experienced in the halls of power, and with a sharper sense of his own vision for America, …