Among Silicon Valley’s moguls, the spotlight has been hogged by Elon Musk. His ever more enthusiastic appearances at Donald Trump rallies and his vocal support for Right-wing causes on his platform X come as the Valley trades in its Democrat-aligned …
Why Georgia is the new Ukraine
Before the war in Ukraine, before the annexation of Crimea, there was Georgia. Back in 2008, Russia’s invasion of the country was, to Western eyes, an anomaly — on nearly every other metric, Putin’s Russia was on comparatively friendly terms …
Rachel Reeves has no vision
In the Seventies, a Middle Eastern war precipitated a global energy shock and stagflation, and a US president invoked populist pleas to the silent majority against the counterculture. As the gold standard and the post-war Bretton Woods system teetered on …
Why centrist dads love fancy cheese
Forget Donald Trump, the Southport killer, or Tommy Robinson. The lead storyline this week was Centrist Dads’ cheese dream, or perhaps a lost Wallace and Gromit plotline: 950 wheels of artisan cheddar were stolen from Neal’s Yard Dairy in London.…
Will Sin City decide America’s fate?
Just days before the election, America’s destiny rests on that Valhalla of oddsmakers, Las Vegas. “If we win Nevada, we’re going to win the whole thing,” vowed Trump, and for once he was not exaggerating. Nevada not only holds the …
The squashed birds of progress
Early in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, a magician performs a trick with a small bird which disappears in a cage flattened on the table. A small boy in the audience starts to cry, distraught that the bird was killed. The …
America’s future isn’t fascist
“Weird” does not begin to describe the American atmosphere at this moment. The media and internet seethe with talk of civil war; but everyone is going about their daily business. The weather is uncanny: temperatures in the Northeast, where I …
Obesity will starve the NHS
There’s one thing I’d happily see Rachel Reeves raise taxes on: junk food. Spend a day in my A&E department if you don’t believe me. I’m constantly treating people suffering from chronic conditions — type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, …
Will anyone miss Rishi Sunak?
Rishi Sunak is creeping out of the Tory leadership like a mouse walking past a sleeping cat. This is a shame because his departure is significant, marking the end of a political era that began in the Eighties. Sunak’s hero …
Bruce Springsteen is the last American liberal
Memories of 11 September, and the dark days that followed, are universal among geriatric American millennials. As a member of the generation that came of age in the Nineties and early 2000s, I can easily return to those early hours …
The dangerous martyrdom of Tommy Robinson
Tommy Robinson is a paradox: he is a brave and enormously successful activist-journalist with a mean right hook. At the same time, he’s prone to sentimentality, sensitive to criticism and sees himself as a victim, tethering his own private troubles …
Why women love Ryan Murphy’s Monsters
Crass, titillating and (at best) casual with the truth, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story takes an instance of real-life cruelty and violence and twists it into oversexed entertainment. It implies an incestuous connection between the two brothers whose …
How the Mob went mainstream
As far back as he can remember, Michael Franzese always wanted to be a gangster. Just head online if you don’t believe me. There, across dozens of videos and thousands of views, the former caporegime in the Colombo crime family …
It’s time to re-enchant the world
The meaning of the leaf is the leaf, as I once heard Roger Scruton say. Perhaps it was an original coinage from the Sage of Sundey Hill Farm, but it has the slight feel of a Zen koan: a …
Donald Trump’s strange sincerity
The faster American culture spreads, the less foreigners seem to understand it. In October, the Irish novelist Anne Enright shared a few thoughts about the US elections. “[T]hese politics are playing out in some secret part of the American psyche,” …