France is another country. They do things differently there.
A “tale of two crises” has unfolded in the last few days on the southern and northern shores of the English Channel. Both crises flow, in part, from the high rates …
Why Truss’s gamble failed
Shortly before the Government’s ill-fated budget, I had coffee with a Conservative MP who was keen to stress that the Tory party was heading towards disaster. It isn’t going to work, the MP told me, likening Truss’s breakneck dash for …
How robots make us human
In 1770, the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa and her court were astonished by a true marvel of the modern age of engineering: a humanoid machine able to defeat a human opponent at chess.
The device consisted of a life-size figure, …
The post-woke era is here
In December 2013, a PR executive named Justine Sacco was about to fly to Cape Town when she had a flash of inspiration. Not long before take-off, she pulled out her smartphone and tapped out a tweet and clicked “send”. …
Andrew Tate and the West’s lost boys
In August 2022, English teacher Kirsty Pole took to Twitter to warn other teachers about a former kickboxer and Big Brother contestant who was “spouting dangerous, misogynistic and homophobic abuse” online.
The culprit was, of course, Andrew Tate. Pole was …
Scottish nationalism is fuelled by resentment
Forget the Hogwarts Express. Three times a year, I get on a train at London Kings Cross and make a physics-defying journey towards Montrose in Angus, the Scottish town where I lived for the first 17 years of my life. …
Will America end Zelenskyy’s dream?
Even as “kamikaze” drones rain down on Kyiv, the mood over Ukraine is shifting in the US. Between May and September, the share of Americans who are extremely or very concerned about a Ukrainian defeat fell from 55% to 38%. …
China’s broken promise of prosperity
At the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Congress this week, Xi Jinping will be nominated for a precedent-defying third term of office. But his grasp on power has not gone unchallenged. Days before the Congress began, a rare protest took place …
Jan Morris: prophet of our gender troubles
“Do you remember,” the late Jan Morris asked our late Queen, “when they climbed Everest for the first time, and the news came to you on the day before your coronation?”
It was 2001. The writer and the monarch were …
Kwasi Kwarteng was the wrong sort of clever
I had a horrendous cold over the weekend — so awful, in fact, that in an unprecedented development, my wife grudgingly conceded that “it might actually be flu”. And so it was that, tossing and turning with a raging temperature, …
‘Why did Canada help my brother die?’
“They’re going to say that all suicides are way down.” Gary Nichols is speaking to me from his home in Edmonton, Canada. In 2019, his younger brother Alan was hospitalised for threatening to kill himself. Within a month, he was …
Labour should sell the BBC
In David Lodge’s novel Changing Places, the American anti-hero Morris Zapp spends six months of exile in the city of “Rummidge” in the English Midlands. Seeking something that might remind him of California, he tunes in to a pop music …
Liz Truss can still survive
There’s a moment in politics when you have no moves left. No matter how clever you are, or how right your case is, the walls are closing in and they won’t stop until you are crushed. There is no experience …
The demonic power of oil
For nine days in January 1901, mesmerised spectators on a hill in south-east Texas watched a deluge of oil erupt high into the air and descend back to earth. Nobody before had discovered oil in the volume found at Spindletop. …
How Eminem became a role model
The other day, I was pulled up short by a poster on the tube. I didn’t clock what it was advertising, but I was struck by the text: “Guess who’s back? Back again. Guess who’s back? Tell your friends.” It’s …