Po-faced poIs it possible to write a satirical campus novel anymore? Satire requires exaggeration and the pointed introduction of absurdity, but it is hard to see how modern university life could be further embellished in these respects. As usual, there …
Is Nato heading for nuclear war?
On Monday, Europe crossed yet another red line in its ever-escalating, no-longer-so-proxy war against Russia. In a hastily arranged meeting of European leaders in Paris — a response to significant Russian breakthroughs on the Ukrainian frontline over the past few …
Rochdale has already lost this election
Rochdale is a terrible place to live. I spent time there in the late Nineties reporting on the grooming gangs and found a toxic mix of self-serving politicians, poor policing, grinding hardship and failing social services. The borough has one …
What’s the point of self-immolation?
Aaron Bushnell served with the US Air Force as part of the 531st Intelligence Support Squadron at a base in Texas. On Sunday, the 25-year-old travelled to the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC, doused himself with an accelerant of some …
Centrist McCarthyism is taking hold
Why are so many working-class voters rebelling against the centre-left? For those establishment politicians being spurned in favour of populist movements, there is a straightforward answer: the masses, in turning away, are ignorant, delusional and bigoted.
Nowhere is this more …
In defence of pick-up artistry
To say that The Game has aged badly would be to understate how outrageous it was even in its own time: 20 years ago, just as women had finally become empowered to pursue sex on its own merits, and on …
How Islamophobic is Lee Anderson?
Sometime during the late 20th century, the Irish Republican movement decided to align itself with the Palestinian cause in an attempt to build — as they saw it — a kind of global anti-colonial alliance. In response, the Loyalist movement …
Fifty years on, who governs?
After months of speculation, the beleaguered Conservative prime minister summoned the cameras to Downing Street to make a special announcement. The economy was stagnating and his attempts to bring down inflation had been hammered by an energy crisis. Public sector …
Russell Vought: America’s false Christian Nationalist King
Last week, Donald Trump accused the Left of wanting to “tear down crosses… and cover them up with social justice flags”. “But no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration,” he reassured a convention of …
Bad therapy is stunting our kids
The vast majority of therapists today are women. So, too, are the vast majority of their clients. But the earliest ones were almost all men. And, whatever we think of him now, Sigmund Freud’s ideas on infant development were more …
The realist case for Israel
Navigating the wars in Ukraine and Gaza has brought the political theory of realism to the fore, becoming a sudden mainstay of popular and journalistic analysis. More than anyone, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, the doyen of American realism, …
Britain doesn’t need a sick king
If we were living in the world of mythology, King Charles’s cancer might have some dire consequences. It’s possible that the entire economy would collapse, famine would kill off millions of citizens and those who survived might perish of plague. …
The men paying to be taller
When Ryan* arrived in Istanbul he was 5’7” — but when he returned to the UK he was 5’10”. By having his legs surgically broken and then extended at the glacial rate of 1mm per day, he had achieved his …
The Machiavelli of Meta
In six years, Nick Clegg has gone from political has-been to one of the most powerful executives at one of the world’s biggest tech firms: President of Global Affairs at Meta. As one of Mark Zuckerberg’s most trusted consiglieri, Clegg …
South Africa’s stagnant election
Shortly before Britain’s skelm (furtive) and short-lived annexation of the Transvaal Boer republic, the Victorian travel writer Anthony Trollope said this of the unfortunate country:
“These people in the Transvaal would not pay a stiver of tax, there was in …