After President Biden’s farewell debate I had a problem. It was evident that Donald Trump would win. I fantasised that he would offer me the post of Poet Laureate, and I wondered if I would accept. Washington DC is hot …
Compromise killed off the Habsburgs
Keir Starmer has spoken a lot about how he hopes to bring Britain and the European Union closer together. His wish has been realised quicker than he could have imagined. Recently, he met with the Right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia …
Starmer can’t keep Britain afloat
It’s hard to know what is more emblematic of Britain’s economic predicament today: the Government pleading for investment from the owners of a ferry company that sacked all its workers; Robert Jenrick cutting a Union Jack cake to celebrate Margaret …
How Trump is tearing Erie apart
Joy Division is the depressingly appropriate house band for America’s 2024 election, and “Love Will Tear Us Apart” its soundtrack.
A generation ago, party affiliation played almost no role in American relationships. Today, only half of Republicans and one-third of …
Reverse racism ruined South Africa
Jan van Riebeeck, commander of the Dutch post at the Cape, ranted in a diary entry of 28 January 1654 that the indigenous people’s misdeeds were hardly bearable any longer: “Perhaps it would be a better proposition to pay out …
Has Israel’s strategy changed?
Largely unremarked amid the drama, risk and controversy of its reaction to the October 7 attack is that, over the past year, Israel has experimented with a new type of warfare: targeting its enemies’ entire command structures. The occasional tactical …
Von der Leyen’s authoritarian plot
The European Union is about to enter what could prove to be the most ominous phase in its troubled history. In a few weeks, Ursula von der Leyen’s new European Commission will officially take office, at which point she will …
Jilly Cooper knows what women want
How do you solve a problem like Rupert Campbell-Black? Since 1986, Jilly Cooper’s fictional show jumper has been mounting his way across the wives and daughters of her invented (but awfully familiar) county of Rutshire. Through 11 novels, the most …
Alex Salmond’s failed populism
In the end, Alex Salmond’s was a career of failure — not in the cliched use of Enoch Powell’s aphorism but in the absolute terms of failing to achieve his specific and declared political ambition. Alex — he was a …
The allure of American mysticism
American politics has given the wilder forms of American religion bad press lately. Senator J.D. Vance’s critics often identify his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 2019 as contributing to his lurch to pro-natalism and nativism. The journalist Kathryn Joyce recently …
There’s no dignity in assisted dying
It was the childishness that pushed me over the edge. As news broke of the forthcoming parliamentary vote on assisted dying, a slew of statements from politicians emerged, each one more simplistically emotive and Manichean than the last.
Labour MP …
San Francisco’s progressive racism
The ugly xenophobia that has cropped up in certain corners of the GOP has an unusual cousin in an unexpected place.
The progressive Mission District in San Francisco has become ground zero for a form of Lefty nativism that scorns …
The end of the Boris cult
Boris Johnson presented his memoir, Unleashed, at Cheltenham racecourse last week, amid the ghosts of bookies. They, at least, would appreciate him for who he is: a risk-taker who won, then lost, and hopes to win again. But the venue …
Donald Trump: new media king
It’s a tender, almost touching moment — not at all something you’d expect to see at the height of a presidential campaign and far out-of-keeping with the general perception of Donald Trump’s character. At the start of an interview, a …
Why Kamala’s gun is a powerful weapon
In America, the gun is freedom’s prosthetic (followed by cars and credit cards). Yet Kamala Harris’s admission, first during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, then in one with 60 Minutes, that she owns a gun sent liberal heads spinning. Went …