In the classic John Huston film Beat the Devil, the diminutive character actor Peter Lorre delivers a concise disquisition on the nature of time: “What is time? Swiss manufacture it. French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is …
How Israel mobilised to stop Netanyahu
When the newly appointed Justice Minister of the Netanyahu government, Yariv Levin, presented his strategy for “legal reform” six days after taking office, he looked unstoppable. The plan had been well-prepared, even years in the making.
Its first tranche alone …
Will King Charles save East Germany?
The Germans might not be setting their capital on fire, but when King Charles touches down in Berlin this morning, he will do so knowing that he is visiting a country no less divided than its western neighbour. While France …
The Guardian’s links to the slave trade
This piece was originally published in February 2023.
The Guardian prides itself on being one of the most Left-leaning and anti-racist news outlets in the English-speaking world. So imagine its embarrassment when, last month, a number of black podcast producers …
The Great Food Reset has begun
France is in flames. Israel is erupting. America is facing a second January 6. In the Netherlands, however, the political establishment is reeling from an entirely different type of protest — one that, perhaps more than any other raging today, …
The problem with Othering
Poor Stacia Datskovska. The student at New York University recently wrote a piece about why she hated studying in Florence for her semester abroad. Before arriving, Datskovska imagined “summer flings with people who called me ‘bella’”. What she experienced was …
Rural Scotland is dying of cold
Lindsay lives in a council house in Kirkwall, the largest town in Orkney, a starkly beautiful archipelago off the north coast of Scotland. Now in her mid-fifties, Lindsay has lived in her one-bedroom house for 17 years. She’s tended the …
Is Rojava a socialist utopia?
If you want to start an argument among Western Leftists, you need only mention the word “Rojava”. Ever since its formation a decade ago, the Kurdish-led polity has split the Left into two camps. On one side, its defenders hail …
In defence of Little England
In November 1953, Queen Elizabeth set off on her first international tour after her coronation. The voyage would last six months, travel 40,000 miles and visit 13 different realms. Throughout it all, the monarch would have to deal with prime …
Macron needs to be more like Thatcher
Five years ago, the only roundabout in my nearest town in Normandy was seized by people in yellow hi-viz jackets who had never joined a demonstration before and, in some cases, had never bothered to vote. Last Thursday, several French …
We must become barbarians
Call me a cynic or an anarchist, but these days I find it impossible to trust anything which comes to me with a seal of authority stamped upon it. I’m not defending this as a healthy response. But it is …
The Harvard professor who thinks aliens exist
A year of spy balloons and UFOs in North America has sparked renewed interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life — and not just among conspiracy theorists. Some of the world’s leading cosmologists are convinced that alien technology has already …
Capitalist radicals will shatter the world
“We are back to the enigmatic pulse-beat of the messianic,” wrote the literary critic George Steiner a few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. “No economist-pundit, no geopolitical strategist, no ‘Kremlinologist’ or socio-economic analyst foresaw what we are …
The BBC’s phoney war on disinformation
Ever felt your ears burning? I get as much flak online as the next believer in the existence of human biology, but recently I’ve noticed it ramping up somewhat. For the purposes of researching this column, I gingerly dipped my …
Mosul and the Law of the Cigarette
“Remember the Law of the Cigarette,” says my fixer Mohammed as we approach a checkpoint on the outskirts of Mosul. We’ve spent the morning driving through a landscape scarred by the war against Isis. Villages are filled with ruined buildings …