Tony Blair used to say that the worst thing about being in opposition was that you would wake up every morning thinking about what you wanted to say, while government ministers were waking up thinking about what they were going …
Princess Diana didn’t change Britain
It was one of journalism’s greatest corrections. “We apologise for the Princess Diana page-one headline ‘Di goes sex mad’, which is still on the stands at some locations,” announced the National Enquirer. “It is currently being replaced with a special …
Liz Truss’s zombie politics
At the age of seven, Liz Truss played the role of Margaret Thatcher in her school’s mock general election. It did not end well. “I jumped at the chance and gave a heartfelt speech at the hustings, but ended up …
My ‘free speech’ college is silencing me
In 1993, I began my first teaching job at the University of Kyiv-Mohyla in newly independent Ukraine. I had been hired to teach Hobbes, Locke, and the Federalist to the sons and daughters of communist apparatchiks who had come to …
The surgeons exploiting trans misery
It’s never been easy to get gender reassignment surgery on the NHS. More than a decade ago, when I was living in Birmingham, I was referred by a psychiatrist to a Gender Identity Clinic in London. NHS England funded seven …
Germany’s cynical response to Munich
Palestinians deserve a better leader than Mahmoud Abbas. Last month, the president of the Palestinian Authority visited Germany, a country on whose donations his quasi-government depends. At a press conference two weeks ago with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a German journalist …
In conversation with Philip Roth
Perhaps too much of Philip Roth’s energies were devoted to explaining or defending himself. You could not be with Philip for any period of time before he would enlist you in the agenda of “defending” him — against a plethora …
JK Rowling sees through her enemies
Fifteen years ago, on the eve of the release of the final book in the Harry Potter series, an anonymous hacker calling himself Gabriel sent the following to an anonymised email list: “Dear my brothers, Voldemort killed Hermione.”
The sender, …
Do we need civil disobedience?
It was over ten years ago that Occupy protestors visited St Paul’s cathedral. Many of those involved have now graduated to Extinction Rebellion. And over the next few weeks they plan to take to the streets of London, Cardiff and …
The Shamima Begum delusion
Our national conversation on Shamima Begum, which ebbs and flows according to the imperatives of Begum’s legal team and a simultaneously cynical and naïve mass media, is saturated in bullshit. For her detractors, the 23-year-old East-London runaway is a danger …
Why the West should have more kids
Kristina Ozturk is about as far from the model of Soviet motherhood as can be imagined. A 25-year-old former stripper, she and her husband Galip have been farming out their foetuses to surrogates to allow them to have 22 children …
Why the Tories turned on Rishi
Less than a year ago Rishi Sunak looked inevitable. His training for Number 10 involved standing next to Boris Johnson, spraying money at people, and waiting. The lucky contrast with his feckless boss allowed Sunak to acquire a not entirely …
The Left has mummy issues
A little friend of my daughter’s has just had one of her parents walk out, to start a new life with a new partner. Given that they were a heterosexual couple, and based on your observations about the world, can …
The rise of Jihadi prison gangs
By the last count, there were more than 200 convicted terrorists — most Islamist, but some far-Right — currently housed at Her Majesty’s pleasure in British prisons, with a further 200 or so convicted of other offences but deemed similarly …
Britain’s pawnbrokers are booming
William Hogarth was no fan of pawnbroking. In his 1751 print Gin Lane, he portrayed a Mr Gripe seizing a saw from a carpenter and cooking pots from a housewife in exchange for cash they would fritter on cheap gin. …