Was it Theresa May who broke the taboo? In April 2016, in her only public speech during the Brexit referendum campaign, the then Home Secretary reluctantly concluded that the UK should remain in the EU, but leave the European Convention …
Meghan and Harry are making us stupid
Ever since the cancellation of the Sussexes’ Spotify deal, it’s been unclear what they’d pivot to next. A Kardashians-style reality show? A wellness empire, à la Gwyneth Paltrow? A high-profile divorce with all the sordid trimmings (and, for Harry, perhaps …
Football is a game for intellectuals
The studio has the classic beige look of the late Sixties arts programme. To the left, unctuous in a pink shirt and grey double-breasted suit, sits Eric Idle, playing Brian, the presenter, his tone pitched midway between Barry Davies and …
Why Ukraine’s offensive has stalled
Whenever Russian missiles strike a Ukrainian city, or Kyiv’s drones target a building in Moscow, the attacks are inevitably followed by the sort of media coverage worthy of a Blitz raid. Yet generating headlines is just about their only achievement: …
Can the Tories stop mass migration?
During a recent holiday in the East of England, I followed a sign through a farm gate offering raspberries for sale. It turned out to be a table in an empty farm outbuilding, with punnets of raspberries, a weighing scale, …
Stop comparing the West to Rome
On both sides of the Atlantic, hysterical comparisons between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the senile polities of the modern West have become the journalistic norm. Every major problem facing our society — from climate change to Covid …
Pakistani democracy is dead
Life has come full circle for Imran Khan. In 2018, he was elected to be prime minister of Pakistan after his predecessor, Nawaz Sharif, was disqualified over corruption charges resulting from the Panama Papers. Khan stated at the time that …
The West and China share the same fate
A simple and easy narrative is often provided to explain our present moment: a new Cold War, we’re told, is dawning between the United States and China, complete with a global ideological “battle between democracy and autocracy”. The future of …
LadBible has dumped the lads
“Thou shall covet thy neighbour’s breasts.” “Thou shall always drink more than you can handle.” “Thou shall specialise in creating and distributing exquisite banter.” “Thou shall share hot Milf with friend if opportunity arises.” “Thou shall always prefer Pippa to …
The cursed outposts of America’s empire
There is a distinct literary genre associated with imperial peripheries. In Britain, it is known as Greeneland, the world of Graham Greene — those dusty forgotten outposts where morality is suspended, the political illusions of the metropole are laid bare, …
Love among the Greek wildfires
The first time I saw my younger brother Phillip, he was lying in an incubator in St Thomas’s Hospital, London. He was slightly premature, and purple-faced and tiny. What struck me, though, was the blanket he was swaddled in: white …
Niger and the collapse of France’s empire
First, there was Mali; then came Burkina Faso. Today, in the epic saga that is the anti-Western revolt sweeping across the Sahel, it is the turn of Niger to play the protagonist — the third country to suffer a coup …
America is now a zombie state
“Every nation gets the government it deserves,” wrote the philosopher Joseph de Maistre, and some are getting it good and hard right now. De Maistre’s moral interpretation of politics admits of exceptions, but the United States in 2023 is not …
Why you should be a thick traveller
Anthropology is in some ways an odd and creepy thing to do. Anthropologists spend a lot of time watching people, often people who are very different from themselves, in the hope of understanding them. If done wrong, as it has …
The invisibility of autistic girls
“Let’s go to page seven,” says the psychologist.
I flick through the papers on my lap. There it is, at the bottom: “Autism, without accompanying intellectual impairment and without accompanying language impairment.” I read that I fulfil all seven diagnostic …