Life in Canada has become a nightmare — if you believe the British Right. The recent debate in Britain’s Parliament on the legalisation of assisted dying prompted MPs and journalists to warn that “state suicide” in Canada has led to …
Spotify Wrapped will expose you
My favourite part of Spotify Wrapped day is psychoanalysing my peers. Oh, your top artist was Alice in Chains, was it? When was the last time you spoke to your father? Lana Del Rey is pretty high on your list, …
Why we worship the NHS
Across the pond, dire warnings are often intoned about something called Christian Nationalism. This is (we are told) a rising, virulent strain of theocratic fascism that fuses Christian dogma with sexism, ethnocentrism, and state power. Others, again, warn that this …
Say Nothing’s empty empathy
Ever since Nicéphore Niépce took a snapshot from a window, overlooking the rooftops of Saône-et-Loire, in the 1820s, we’ve been living, and lost, in the kingdom of the image. With the development of photography, cinema, television, and the internet, the …
Russia’s plan for Tulsi Gabbard
With Syrian rebels storming Aleppo, reigniting a civil war widely presumed to be over, Donald Trump’s appointment of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence is more controversial than ever. Rumours are swirling that the outspoken Gabbard is incapable of …
American politics will be born again
Whenever I return to Britain from the United States, I am always struck by the compactness of the landscape. The tidy square fields, the orderly rows of homes with little gardens, the narrow ribbons of road curving between hedgerows, small …
Why Syria is back at war
The Syrian jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) surprised the world and probably itself with its almost unimpeded conquest of Aleppo at the weekend, conquering in hours territory that had been bloodily fought over for many years. And like an …
Gregg Wallace is a working-class hypocrite
“I’ll munch the living daylights out of your little tart.” It’s the sort of thing a woman might expect from the local park-bench drunk, not a BBC star paid £400,000 a year. Yet that’s exactly the remark Katy Brand received …
Europe’s techno-populist nightmare
As Ursula von der Leyen begins her second term as President of the European Commission, she does so as a colossus, enjoying sweeping authority over the European Union and its 450 million inhabitants. The Empress rules a bloc that’s undemocratic …
How Boomers blocked the open road
For Americans born in the Eighties and early Nineties, moving was a normal, expected, and alternatively exciting and devastating part of childhood. If your family didn’t move, your friends did, or you made friends with the new kids who enrolled …
How Trump can make education great again
Linda McMahon’s nomination to head the Department of Education was a characteristic move from Donald Trump, host of The Apprentice, who ended every episode with the words “You’re fired!”. McMahon, who co-founded the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) is no stranger …
Trump could make education great again
Linda McMahon’s nomination to head the Department of Education was a characteristic move from Donald Trump, host of The Apprentice, who ended every episode with the words “You’re fired!”. McMahon, who co-founded the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) is no stranger …
Britain’s new Class War
Imagine a Conservative Party intent on moving to the political centre but anxious about alienating its Right-wing by doing so. One way of resolving this problem would be to appoint as its deputy leader a wine merchant who owned a …
The truth about the fertility crisis
The question of whether or not to have children has never seemed so political. Sensing a fertility crisis on the horizon, the populist Right are embracing pro-natalism. Elon Musk, father of 11, warns of the mass extinction of entire nations, …
Hamas is not invincible
It has become conventional wisdom in Washington that Hamas will survive no matter how hard it is pummelled by Israel. Leaders will fall; new leaders will rise. Hamas’s ties to the Palestinian people will sustain it regardless of the horrors …