“We are living in an expensive and increasingly poor country,” thundered The Guardian‘s political editor, furious at the crumbling state of the nation unable to pay its workers properly. “It is not much use lecturing people about paying themselves more …
How will Ukraine rebuild?
One lonely road cuts through the Azerbaijani town of Fuzuli. On one side, a cluster of decaying, vacant houses sit in a dip in the landscape, the remains of the original settlement. Three decades ago, it was home to around …
The Prigozhin roadshow isn’t over
Waking up on Saturday morning, Putin must have wished he’d kept catering in-house. Only the day before, the Ukraine war seemed to be proceeding relatively well for Russia, at least by the lowered expectations of this stage in the conflict. …
Welcome to Fahrenheit 2023
Avid readers are a small and dwindling minority of the population. But even they can’t be expected to understand what it means to have one’s book locked away by literary wardens, or manhandled by fat-fingered editors who rifle through typescript …
The perversion of lesbian envy
Of all the footnotes to Kathleen Stock’s recent trip to Oxford, perhaps the most unedifying was the sight of me and my friends — ranging in age from 30 to 70 — exclaiming “Phwoar!” in private chat groups. But as …
Should Pakistan surrender?
Pakistan is in a mess. Controlled by an increasingly unpopular military, the nation is teetering on the brink of default. By July, the country’s foreign exchange reserves are set to fall below $3 billion, barely sufficient to cover a month’s …
How Putin enabled the Wagner revolt
Why do Russia’s wars always start with disaster? The answer is straightforward: because the autocrats who rule Russia — be they Tsars (with the exception of Napoleon’s nemesis Alexander I), Joseph Stalin or Vladimir Putin — appoint obedient toadies sadly …
Putin declares war on Prigozhin
Here in Odesa, the mood is a mix of incredulity, fascination and schadenfreude. Or, as my friend Hanna tells me with glee: “It’s popcorn time — it’s just a shame there’s no popcorn in Ukraine these days.” The word “Prigozhin” …
The power of the Kennedy Myth
“Every epoch, under names more or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry
Having asserted a claim to literacy, I will now tell you what I’ve been reading, and why. I read for …
How Putin and Xi resurrected America
Future historians will struggle to explain the recent dramatic rise of America’s global power. Faced with a long list of irreconcilable differences at home, and two consecutive presidents whose distinguishing characteristic is the intensity of the opposition they provoke, this …
The perils of reproductive extremism
Across the world, lawmakers and activists are moving towards increasingly absolutist ethical and legal stances on pregnancy. In particular, social conservatives seem locked into draconian purity spirals. Roe v. Wade fell a year ago this week, and since then 14 …
Narendra Modi’s useful idiot
India’s reputation as the world’s largest secular democracy has suffered grievously since Narendra Modi’s victory in the general elections of 2014. The first Hindu supremacist to govern with an absolute majority in parliament, he has presided over the subversion of …
Can we escape globalisation?
If there is a place that embodies our most romantic notions of living in harmony with nature, it is surely a small farming community in the rugged north of Portugal, Covas do Barroso. This village still maintains a tradition of …
Brexit has stumped our zombie elites
Sometime very early in the morning of 24 June 2016, I woke up, as middle-aged men tend to do. I looked at my phone to see the result. My only thought was: “Fuck, that’s a lot of work.” Then I …
Should we let the kids be cats?
“Creative” activities for little children tend to fall into two categories: unconstrained mess-making, and strict conformity to a pre-prepared template. The former encompasses the kind of smear and splatter “art” adoring parents pin to the fridge, while the latter looks …