In the world of sport, there are few things more exciting than an underdog story. The scrappy boxer who punches above his weight; the last-minute victory; the team of ragtag misfits who win the day through sheer grit and determination. …
Gen Z has an Israel problem
It’s almost like a religious ritual. Every Saturday since 7 October, central London has swollen with protestors waving the Palestinian flag and chanting “From the River to the Sea”. For the impartial and curious observer, two facts are immediately striking. …
Why are there so many botched executions?
How can a country as sophisticated as the United States botch executions with such monotonous regularity? On 17 November 2022, the State of Alabama tried and failed to kill Kenneth Eugene Smith, who had spent 34 years on death row …
Gaza, Ukraine and our quest for catharsis
The moment Hamas carried out its heinous terror attacks against Israel, the war in Gaza was instantly globalised, reverberating in the hearts and minds of people oceans away who were neither Israeli nor Gazan. Millions on social media picked a …
Dominic Cummings is no Reservoir Dog
It was Halloween on Tuesday, and over at the Covid Inquiry the party theme for witnesses seemed to be “Nineties crime movie”. Though the presumed intention of Dominic Cummings was to appear suitably funereal, in his white shirt and skinny …
The defiance of Israel’s border towns
Southern Israel is a region at war. Driving down from Tel Aviv to the border towns on the frontlines of the war with Hamas, I pass a truck with an open back carrying a load of heavily armed soldiers cradling …
Can liberals save themselves from extinction?
The heroine of William Gibson’s 2003 near-future novel Pattern Recognition is a professional discerner of emerging trends, so hyper-attuned to semiotic nuance that she experiences physical discomfort if made to wear any item of clothing with recognisable branding. Cayce Pollard …
How to rewild Christianity
There is much talk these days of Christianity being doomed: of churches closing, values fading, and community feeling ebbing. But was there ever a time when Christian Britain was one big, cuddly Richard Curtis film?
The New Atheism of the …
Labour still has an Israel problem
Keir Starmer, like Israel, must brace for a long war he might not be able to win. The Labour leader has staked out a position that is far more exposed than it might first appear, for this is a crisis …
The collapse of New York’s immigration dream
New York has always been powered by immigration. Over the 20th century, it was the Irish who built the subways and the Greeks who ran the supermarkets; now, Colombians watch over our children and Bangladeshis drive the cabs. Yet in …
Are all terrorists monsters?
Like many a supposedly timeless phenomenon, terrorism is a modern invention. As a political idea, it first emerges with the French Revolution, so that terrorism and the modern democratic state are twinned at birth. In the era of Danton and …
George Michael’s longing for oblivion
A rumour was born the last time my group Decius were out on the road.
If you linger long enough in Berghain’s Panorama bar, if you remain until Monday morning when the sun is back up, occasionally they’ll open the …
Will Israel-Hamas cause a world war?
As Israel continues to mourn and Gaza continues to be turned into rubble, many in the Middle East are coming to a grim realisation: that things could soon become much, much worse. Huge tectonic shifts now threaten to rupture the …
The tragic death of Labour Zionism
Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson once boasted that it was impossible “for a political party to be more committed to a national home for the Jews in Palestine than was Labour”. Keir Starmer only wishes he could be so confident …
How Putin exploits Russian antisemitism
Sunday’s ugly scenes at Makhachkala Airport in Russia’s Dagestan region, where a mob ran riot through the terminal and onto the runway in search of Jews disembarking from a plane from Israel, might suggest that Vladimir Putin is beginning to …
