“Dementia steals people’s lives, turns their relationships upside down, destroys their hopes and dreams,” said David Cameron, as president of Alzheimer’s UK. This was back in 2017, and his ambitions were impressive: the Government had just published plans for £60 …
Modi has created a new theocracy
India’s entry into the ranks of the world’s surviving theocracies — Iran, Afghanistan, the Vatican City — arrived bathetically. When the history of the nation’s descent from secularism to Hindu nationalism is written, it might end in Ayodhya. Just after …
How Labour lost the Welsh Valleys
Last year, I found myself back in the Rhondda valley and the village where I spent most of my childhood. As I walked through its typically inclement grey terraced streets, I came upon the boarded-up premises of the Ton and …
The truth about KCL’s ‘indoctrination’ scandal
In the week following the killing of George Floyd in 2020, a group of Columbia University students, flushed with ideological fervency, sent a petition to the Dean of the university’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Signed by more …
Ron DeSantis and the failure of pseudo-Trumpism
Now that Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the Republican primary race and endorsed Donald Trump, the race for the party’s presidential nomination has become more than just a battle of personalities — finally, it is a battle of ideas. …
How realists sacrificed their morality
Last week, the Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps, warned that we are “moving from a post-war to a pre-war world” where, “in five years’ time, we could be looking at multiple theatres [of conflict] involving Russia, China, Iran, North Korea”. This …
Labour was never a revolutionary movement
All anyone could think about was clothes. As the members of the first Labour Cabinet prepared to collect their seals of office — having formed a government 100 years ago today — the gravity of the occasion was almost lost …
David Mamet on Hollywood, Hamas and Donald Trump
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and director David Mamet has, in his own words, gone from a Hollywood veteran to “the hermit of Santa Monica”. Celebrated for his plays American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Speed-the-Plow, Mamet has dedicated his formidable energy …
The American Crack-Up
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”. His formula is justifiably famous, but it’s …
Why women love lesbian romance
If you’re the fastidious sort who cares about historical accuracy, then you probably aren’t the right audience for Don’t Want You Like A Best Friend. Billed as “a swoon-worthy debut queer Victorian romance”, US author Emma Alban brings us the …
Lenin’s lesson for Western liberals
Before launching his invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin placed the blame for the war on a surprising figure: Vladimir Lenin. Allegedly, the founding father of the Soviet Union gave away the western territories of Russia as part of the establishment …
The media can’t live without Trump
Here we go again. About 30 minutes into counting the first votes of the Iowa caucus, the Associated Press, CNN, NBC and various other news networks called it for Donald Trump.
There was little doubt that the former president wasn’t …
How Edinburgh University stifled my investigation
Almost 150 years ago, a young medical student at Edinburgh University was inspired by one of his lecturers to devise a detective with remarkable powers of deduction based on solid scientific principles. Arthur Conan Doyle wanted a hero for the …
How New Labour created the Rwanda stranglehold
Amid the tension surrounding the Government’s Rwanda policy, one striking cause has been largely ignored. Read through yesterday’s coverage and you could almost miss it — the recognition, in a joint resignation letter fired off by former Conservative Deputy Chairmen …
Aliens are among us
In 1950, Enrico Fermi, the man who built the first nuclear reactor, was having lunch with some other scientists when the discussion turned to aliens – and he first articulated what’s become known as “the Fermi paradox” by asking: “Where …