“Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” remains one of Tony Blair’s most memorable slogans — still durable and pithy well after its coinage, 30 years ago. It is archetypal of the Third Way approach, and continues to …
Adderall is not an identity
It’s 2am here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I’ve just finished writing 7,500 words of corporate marketing copy. I then turn my attention to this piece. But my attention is glitching. So I do something I haven’t done since I took …
Keep child abusers off the rainbow flag
“Julie Bindel takes to right wing GB News to smear the trans community with the same trope that was used against gay men in the 1980s — that they are all paedophiles. Has she forgotten that made gays a target …
Welcome to Britain’s Hungry Twenties
Last spring, Elsie, a 77-year-old widow asked ITV’s Good Morning Britain to solicit any advice that Boris Johnson might have about coping with poverty. It was duly explained to the then-Prime Minister that Elsie only ate one meal a day …
America’s desperate dysfunction
In his short story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Ernest Hemingway describes a deaf old man who likes to sit in the terrace of his favourite cafe late into the evening drinking brandy, much to the frustration of a young waiter …
Elbridge Colby: China is more dangerous than Russia
Since writing Donald Trump’s National Defense Strategy in 2018, Elbridge Colby has become one of the most influential conservative defence thinkers in America. If a Republican wins the presidency in 2024 — whether Trump or DeSantis — he is likely …
Why is my chatbot hitting on me?
It’s always great when your wife calls off a sex strike. This week, Travis Butterworth, who owns an artisan leather shop in Denver, Colorado, was overjoyed to learn that AI company Replika had restored its commercial chatbots’ capacity for “erotic …
The myth of America’s imperial decline
With a New World Order lurking on the horizon, will America play nothing more than a supporting role? That is certainly the impression given by recent reports in the US and beyond. While the Ukraine crisis has helped to renew …
Great Expectations has violated Dickens
If you were choosing a Dickens novel to adapt for the screen, you’d need a really good reason to opt again for Great Expectations. David Lean’s 1946 film, with its spectacular cinematography, is already exquisite, and in 2011, Gillian Anderson …
German conscription doesn’t make sense
During his time as a conscript in a West German artillery unit, my father recalls having to clean the barracks toilet with a toothbrush. This was the early Sixties; he had just graduated from a Gymnasium, the equivalent of grammar …
Macron’s extreme centre will not fall
The French have taken to the streets, and some foreign commentators are having the vapours. Last week, Foreign Policy suggested that President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform “has sparked one of the most serious crises in French history”. Nicholas Vinocur wrote …
Stop trying to make ‘digital blackface’ happen
Sweet Brown is wearing a tie-dyed tank top, a scarf knotted around her short dark hair. She’s talking to the camera like it’s someone she knows intimately, telling the story of her brush with death: “I said, oh lord Jesus, …
Scottish nationalists can’t bear reality
For the past 13 years, I have lived on the banks of a wild river that forms part of the Anglo-Scottish border. Liddel Water was once the eastern boundary of the Debatable Land, a 50-square-mile enclave of wooded gorges, rough …
Everyone loses in Biden’s border war
Set across the Rio Grande from El Paso, the sprawling Mexican conurbation of Ciudad Juárez has become the busiest city for migrants and asylum seekers hoping to cross into the United States — and a flashpoint for the tensions and …
What Posie Parker learnt from Brexit
When I call Posie Parker the Nigel Farage of Terfs, I mean it as a compliment. I can’t think of another single-issue campaigner so effective at popular communication, so successful in reordering the political landscape — and so reviled for …