Hungover with apathy, there was no champagne drunk in our household after last night’s theatre of the predictable. Starmer is in power, and the Tories are out. How did our politics become so dull?
Should there have been more dancing …
The true President of America’s Fifth Republic
The fireworks in America this Fourth of July will be fuelled by the country’s imminent election, in which a convicted felon faces off against a doddering old man who is too senile to know that he isn’t really the President. …
What Young Fogeys get wrong about housing
The Renaissance in Italy came from its cities, and not by accident. What we now call “agglomeration effects” were at work here. Within their curtain walls, all classes and factions were crammed together in lunatic proximity. Unable to grow out, …
Is Macron’s gamble actually working?
A 10-second clip from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi has been doing the rounds on French social media. In it, a hooded, decaying Emperor Palpatine arrives on the “fully operational” Second Death Star, cackling “Everything is proceeding as I …
China is stealing Silicon Valley’s homework
Up until the 16th century, China was the most technologically advanced region in the world. While aristocrats ruled Europe, China’s meritocratic literati made exquisite scientific discoveries: gunpowder, the compass, papermaking and printing, among others. Now, China hopes to return to …
The last bastion of Tory Britain
The flag outside the Spalding Conservative Club is at half-mast. This is not because of the wider Tory calamity — though it should be — but, the barmaid says, because a member has died. This is South Holland and the …
Will Labour finally save the left behind?
This election has been a missed opportunity to face a grim but manageable reality: beyond London and Edinburgh, the regional economies around Britain have accumulated deep structural problems. Household incomes are far lower than in south-east England because there are …
Democrats are hooked on Hillbilly Horror
When Hillary Clinton finally shuffles off this mortal coil, what words will she be remembered by? My money would be on her “basket of deplorables” comment delivered at a donor event in 2016. That was when she declared that half …
Arundhati Roy’s radical zeal
After bagging the Booker for The God of Small Things in 1997, Arundhati Roy made a life-altering decision: “to postpone reading Don DeLillo’s big book” about nuclear and bodily waste in order to make time for “reports on drainage”. This …
Tribal Britain won’t be governed
A few weeks ago, I attended a conference in London on the future of British conservatism, hosted by a thinktank funded by the Hungarian government. The future of British conservatism, it was swiftly revealed, was bleak — but not in …
Jordan Bardella is no radical
It’s been a long time coming, but after a triumphant showing at the European elections, and then such a strong result in the first round of the French parliamentary elections, it looks like National Rally, a Le Pen party, is …
The mean girls conquering pop
Sabrina’s got that boy wrapped round her finger. Olivia knows she might sound crazy but she doesn’t care. Chappell is having a sexually explicit kinda love affair with a closeted woman. Billie is going to eat that girl for lunch, …
Will Biden share Bannon’s fate?
All eyes are naturally fixed upon Joe Biden in the aftermath of last week’s “debate”. Will he stay in the race or bow out? Yet there is another, smaller political drama playing out inside the American political system at present, …
The death of the Conservative Club
In 1993, the then British Prime Minister, John Major, gave a speech to the Conservative Group for Europe: “Fifty years on from now,” he predicted, “Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county [cricket] grounds, warm beer, …
In Starmerland, the ladies are not for turning
Turn right out of the station, head down past the village green and the yoga studio and the osteopaths, and you will eventually arrive at the pebbledash semi that made Keir Starmer. Once upon a time, Hurst Green may have …