Ever since they rode out of the Book of Revelation circa 90AD, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have wreaked existential havoc. They may now finally be about to achieve the End Times. We are either going to starve to …
What’s wrong with being straight?
As a gay man — I know that awful phrase is usually followed by irrelevant twaddle, but please bear with me. As a gay man, I have always found heterosexuality quite fascinating. I have made something of an unconscious study …
The white privilege of BLM
For every major metropolis that painted BLACK LIVES MATTER on its streets two years ago, there were huge swathes of America where the whole movement felt like a distant diversion, similar to the current war in Ukraine. You knew it …
Why pit villages turned to rave
Certain dance tunes never fail to take me back to the area I grew up in. Stirlingshire, in Central Scotland, is a county whose gloomy beauty and dramatic ruins have made it enduringly popular with tourists and retirees alike. In …
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s war on philosophy
My Cambridge tutor would refuse to shake hands with colleagues out of term because of some medieval university statute which nobody else had ever heard of. I wrote about it for UnHerd and an outraged reader from South Carolina writes …
Neoliberalism died before Ukraine
The neoliberal order that triumphed on a global scale in the Nineties and 2000s aspired to the free movement of goods, capital, people, and information throughout the world. Unfettered capitalism would release the global economy from arbitrary constraints, and if …
It’s time to abolish GCSEs
And they’re off. A thunder of feet outside the sports hall, a shuffling to desks, then breathing, sniffing and the squeak of the invigilator’s trainers; after a two year break, GCSE season has re-opened. England’s 16-year-olds may turn over and …
The mystery of Wagatha Christie
Like most sane, sensible people, I’ve been following the great news story of the age — the Wagatha Christie trial, in which Rebekah Vardy is suing fellow footballer’s wife Coleen Rooney for libel — with immense interest and attention to …
How the Church attacks its own
When Anthony Trollope submitted the manuscript of Barchester Towers, the publishers rejected it as over-the-top. They thought the Church of England couldn’t possibly behave in this kind of way. Bless. They did and they still do.
Now I have to …
The Church has weaponised safeguarding
When Anthony Trollope submitted the manuscript of Barchester Towers, the publishers rejected it as over-the-top. They thought the Church of England couldn’t possibly behave in this kind of way. Bless. They did and they still do.
Now I have to …
The age of attention politics
A couple of decades ago, I spent a week trying to commute on the London Underground without looking at the adverts in tunnels or on the carriages.
At the time a committed anti-capitalist, I experienced the ever more intrusive presence …
Will China save Australian Labor?
Australians, on the whole, are a conservative lot. Since the end of the Second World War, they have only voted for a change of government seven times — on average, once in every four elections. And throughout that entire period, …
The nuclear family has failed
When people talk about the structure of the family, they often find themselves arguing for or against the “nuclear family”, which consists, on most tellings, of a father and mother, with perhaps two or three children in their care for …
How the Democrats became the party of the rich
Ever since Joe Biden’s election, the media has displayed an almost obsessive interest in the Democratic Party’s dwindling popularity among the working class, and its booming support among affluent professionals. The trend has been so dramatic that some Republicans have …
Germany’s arrogant pacifism
In Germany, this was a Victory in Europe Day like no other. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Berlin’s entire postwar consensus has crumbled. Previously settled policies and cherished beliefs have dissolved in this new reality: the brutal return of war to …