When it became clear two years ago that the NHS could be overwhelmed by a terrifying new virus, Britain leapt to its support: we clapped, we donated and we decided to paint rainbows. What we didn’t do, however, was question …
Will nudge theory survive the pandemic?
In 2015, during a public debate on behavioural science in Lucerne, I was accused of supporting tactics befitting an unsavoury authoritarian regime. At the time, knowing how well-intentioned my colleagues were, I thought this was, quite frankly, nuts.
I remain …
Kamala Harris was set up to fail
When I was a young girl in Somalia, I would listen to the grown-ups around me ask my brother: “What would you like to be when you grow up?” No one ever asked me this.
But I always interrupted. I …
What the West gets wrong about Putin
In 1999, Vladimir Putin suddenly sprang from bureaucratic obscurity to the office of Prime Minister. When, a few months later, Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned and Putin was voted in as President, governments around the world were taken by surprise yet again. …
Who will rise from the Boris chaos?
The inability to organise a piss-up in a brewery is the definition of uselessness; however, Boris Johnson’s government seems determined to break new ground.
Back in the spring of 2020, with the whole country under lockdown, it was vitally important …
Vaccine purity has infected the West
“Mocking anti-vaxxers’ deaths is ghoulish, yes — but may be necessary,” declared Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik earlier this week. Those who have “deliberately flouted sober medical advice” by refusing vaccination should, in Hiltzik’s view, “be viewed as receiving their …
Hong Kong’s lockdown hypocrisy
The most damaging political scandals are simple at heart. They involve basic human sins. We all understand stories about greed or sex or hypocrisy because they are such universal human failings. Which is why stories about lockdown parties in Downing …
Is the New Right a grift?
The American Right is turning against democracy, or so we are constantly told. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, the “coup attempt” of January 6 — the list goes on. Kamala Harris warns of the greatest national security threat facing the nation. Worst …
We have all lost the argument
The study of arguments is one of the thriving intellectual pursuits of a time — and is it any wonder? Social media’s business model depends on perpetual rancour and the amplification of extreme points of view. Twitter often reminds me …
It’s time to end mandatory isolation
Since they were first introduced, lateral flow tests have been controversial: some scientists have suggested that they miss a large number of cases. Others warned that they will pick up a large number of otherwise undetected infections, and so reduce …
Ernst Jünger: our prophet of anarchy
With its modern themes of detachment and alienation, the recent revival of Ernst Jünger’s early work by the internet dissident Right is an understandable urge. When I was a younger man, Jünger’s Storm of Steel, his hallucinatory account of …
The cynical wokeness of Cambridge colleges
“This House is ashamed to be British.” On 11 November, I spoke opposing this motion at the Cambridge Union, one of the country’s oldest debating societies. I didn’t think it was an invitation I could honourably shirk, especially on Armistice …
Britain needs a cigarette
I will be 84 next month — even though I have smoked since I was sixteen. I started with five Woodbines and now I smoke Davidoff magnums which I have to get from Germany.
I recently told my doctor I …
Tribalism has come to the West
About a decade ago, when I worked for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), I had to force myself to go to lunch with a friend. I dreaded the meeting because I knew that she was going to try to convince …
Why we cling on to Christmas
In the strangest of times, the strangest of festivals. Dulled by familiarity, piled over with good food, buried in torn wrapping paper, drowned in good drink: can we see Christmas again for what it is?
In days that seem unprecedented, …