Is it all over for affirmative action? Edward Blum, a 71-year-old conservative legal strategist, has spent decades campaigning against “race-conscious” university admissions policies (also known as positive discrimination) in the United States, which, he has argued, disadvantage high-achieving Asian Americans. …
Kylie Minogue’s glorious artifice
George Orwell once said that, by 50, everyone has the face he deserves. These days, most 50-something female celebrities seem to have exactly the same face, which they paid for. Cheeks are stuffed like upholstery. Foreheads are stretched taut as …
The end of dollar supremacy
In January 1999, in a Washington of bustling bars and soaring stock markets, Bill Clinton rose to deliver his State of the Union address. America was so untroubled by threat or misfortune that it had spent the previous year debating …
Succession is a Christian psychodrama
The story of Abraham and Isaac has always been one of the more confounding parts of the Hebrew Bible. Even millennia later, one can scarcely imagine the doom of Isaac’s revelation, as Abraham brought the knife to his throat: “The …
The political dynasty America needs
In an era when social media dictates political decision-making and open contests are vulnerable to capture by fervent ideologues, the call for “boring politics” might seem like a non-starter. Yet to write it off is to write off history. Some …
Keir Starmer the Conservative
Labour Party leaders don’t usually win elections. Since 1945, only three have done so: Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair. In contrast, eight Conservative leaders have won majorities and a ninth — Theresa May — did just about well …
The false logic of slavery reparations
Has a route to reparations finally been revealed? Last week, Cori Bush, the Democratic Congressman from Missouri, along with a group of other progressive lawmakers, unveiled the “Reparations NOW” resolution, which hopes to pay out $14 trillion to black Americans. …
Will we end up eating insects?
The thrum of thousands of black soldier flies reverberates around the laboratory. Stacked in rows nearby are boxes containing larvae at various stages of development. Some, just hatched, are so small as to be almost invisible. Others, kept a couple …
Modi’s dirty war on ‘love jihad’
Liberals are livid. Ban the film, they say. It’s Islamophobic dross. India’s current ruler Narendra Modi, meanwhile, has waxed lyrical about The Kerala Story, a film about a Hindu woman hoodwinked into joining Isis. His praise has only intensified liberal …
Why the nation state failed
I spent the run-up to Brexit waddling around my small town with a large baby bump, delivering Vote Leave campaign leaflets. As I explained to friends who wondered why I was campaigning for something so obviously daft, I did so …
Kissinger’s final warning
How one chooses to celebrate Kissinger’s Century depends on where you sit in the “Kissinger wars”. To his detractors, Henry Kissinger was an imperialist who pursued US global supremacy with unmatched ruthlessness and cynicism. To his supporters, he was a …
Is Ron DeSantis the next Ted Cruz?
Just a few months ago, Ron DeSantis held the Republican presidential nomination in his hands. The governor won re-election in Florida by a landslide in November and polling showed a nation-wide double-digit lead over Donald Trump. Since then, a jury …
Germany’s car industry has a libido problem
Growing up as a German kid in Britain in the Seventies and Eighties, one of the things that left a lasting impression on me during our annual visit to my German grandparents was sitting in the back of their Mercedes …
Boomer Europe is dying
Born in 1945, from the wreckage of its decades-long civil war, our mother continent Europe is a boomer, prone as many boomers are to comforting and self-aggrandising myths as it slouches towards death. Unlike the generation which led Europe through …
The liberal complacency of Martin Amis
English culture has produced a number of cliques and coteries in its day, from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Bloomsbury Group to Macspaunday (otherwise known as the Thirties poets Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender, W. H. Auden and Cecil Day Lewis). …