You can tell a bit about someone based on their preconceptions about Peter Thiel. Whether the reflexive response to the name is “malign far-Right plutocrat”, “philanthropic saviour of all that is good” or “who?” is a reasonably reliable guide to …
David Frost: Does Brexit still matter?
Boris Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost has put his support behind Liz Truss. He sat down with Freddie Sayers to explain that decision, and whether today’s Conservatives add up to a philosophy of government…
Was Rishi Sunak’s claim …
Is this the end of levelling up?
Remember levelling up? Before Patterson, Partygate, and Pinchergate, it was supposed to be the main focus of this government. Along with getting Brexit done and keeping Corbyn out of Number 10, it helped win the Tories their largest majority in …
Vladimir Putin’s fascist fetish
This weekend, 150 days will have passed since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and started an all-out war that his flunkies assured him would last no more than three days. News from the ground is mixed. On the one hand, Russia …
How Outlander resurrected Culross
If you stumbled across Culross on a summer’s day, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d wandered into a Dutch master’s painting. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The charismatic, curiously foreign-looking Fife village could be the lost cousin of …
The problem with being hot
The late Rush Limbaugh once said that feminism was created to “allow ugly women access to society” — a comment all the crueller because it was true. A central tenet of feminism is that a woman’s social value should be …
Why we need the apocalypse
The countryside is on fire, The Guardian has published another article about replacing meat with mould grown in vats, and the World Economic Forum wants to block out the sun with a Brazil-sized raft of space bubbles. This isn’t the …
The leadership contest the Tories deserve
Of the 15 British Prime Ministers since the end of the Second World War, only two — Attlee and Heath — both initially entered and finally exited Downing Street at a general election. The coronation of Sunak or Truss will …
Are feminist historians rewriting the past?
On a tile high in the roof of a temple in Pietrabbondante in Italy, there are two messages. One is in Latin and the other in the ancient language of Oscan, but in English they read:
Detfri slave of Herennius …
The narcissism of modern weddings
Most vicars much prefer funerals to weddings. At a funeral, the meaning-of-life question is front and centre. Here, religion is important, even to the uncommitted. But a great many weddings have long been an “experience”, often only homoeopathically religious in …
Kemi Badenoch has saved the Tories
With Kemi Badenoch’s elimination from the race, the Conservative party lost its chance to win a future. After all, the simplest, if least inspiring case to make for Kemi Badenoch was always that of urging the wavering Tory party to …
How the Moonies took over Japan
In his novel Confessions of a Mask, the Japanese author Yukio Mishima has a character describe his countrymen as living in a “reluctant masquerade”. It’s a good metaphor: Japanese life, while outwardly harmonious and benign, is still dictated by etiquette …
Has Thor destroyed Marvel?
There’s a 2005 episode of Doctor Who in which David Tennant’s Doctor turns against Prime Minister Harriet Jones and undermines her with six words: “Don’t you think she looks tired?” Veiled as concern, it’s barely a criticism at all but …
Weston-super-Mare made me a writer
On the morning of my 63rd birthday this month, I posted a quote by Kingsley Amis: “No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare.” Looking back at my long, …
Do the Tories care about women?
In Orwell’s 1984, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Last week came the discovery, surprising to many, that Tory leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt has always been at war with self-ID. This is the policy — first promoted by …