Was England ever merry? We’re stagnant, divided, increasingly heavily taxed, and even our Prime Minister promises it’s going to get worse. Barely two months into a premiership in which he promised to “tread more lightly” upon the lives of Britons, …
Will Trump make me Poet Laureate?
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. After all, Washington D.C. …
Kneecap are the future of Northern Ireland
If you were to judge a country by the grim piety of its journalistic depictions, you’d swear Northern Ireland were one big funeral, begetting nothing but more funerals and all of us professional keeners. It’s not that the region isn’t …
Britain needs its luxury class
It’s an idyllic Friday in Spring and I am standing on the factory floor of a silk factory in the heart of Suffolk. Guiding me through this labyrinth of looms is Julius Walters, the 11th-generation Managing Director of Sudbury Silk …
How the AfD revolution ends
Have the worst fears of the Berliner establishment finally come to pass? As soon as the curtain fell on Sunday’s elections in Thuringia and Saxony, the predictable reactions took centre stage. The Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) strong showing in the …
Kamala’s seductive amnesia
Human beings are conflicted animals. We are capable of great devotion to the people and things we cherish, and will strive tirelessly on their behalf. Yet we long to be done with worry and struggle, to close the open wounds …
The tragedy of body entrepreneurs
Katie Price is, ostensibly, in the news because of her finances. But Price has rarely been out of the news since the Nineties, when she became famous as a Page 3 girl. Determinedly, assiduously, she crafted herself into the perfect …
The worst novelist in the world
Budding novelists are always instructed to start their books in an arresting fashion. L.P. Hartley knew exactly what he was doing in The Go-Between (1953): “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” As did Anthony Burgess …
How the Democrats can win the Rust Belt
Almost every week, Herman heads over to the local gun club, where he can reliably find some of his buddies — old union friends from the steel mills and others. They hang out in the bar room of the clubhouse, …
The Houthis now rule the Red Sea
If you’ve been following the news recently, you could be excused for thinking that the blockade in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Ansar Allah — commonly known as “the Houthis” — has been defeated. In recent months, we’ve heard barely …
Where is Kamala’s plan for women?
While Joe Biden found it hard to even say the A-word, Kamala Harris has always known that reproductive rights could be a winning issue for the Left come November — hence her reproductive freedom tour earlier this year. At the …
The dark heart of Joseph Conrad
Only once, in four decades before the mast of journalism, has an editor ever asked me to go anywhere in the world that I chose and damn (or at least file) the expense. A newspaper’s weekend magazine planned a special …
Who’s afraid of Sahra Wagenknecht?
Few would have predicted that Germany, long known for having the continent’s most boring politics, would become the epicentre of Europe’s new populist revolt — let alone one coming from both the Right and the Left. And yet, that is …
How BlackRock ditched the Democrats
A year into the Biden Administration, the asset management group BlackRock appeared to recognise what other financial institutions had missed: the shift to a “new investment order”. Covid-era fiscal stimulus, wrote a panel of the firm’s executives, was here to …
Trump’s Red Scare will backfire
And so we enter the beginning of the end. After months of insecurity, Democrats have united behind Kamala Harris as their nominee, while Republicans seem to have adjusted their messaging in response to their new opponent. The election finale is …