We should all hate MasterChef. It should be just as difficult to stomach Gregg Wallace’s endless cliches as it is listening to him talking through a mouthful of banoffee pie. But, to quote the man, when it comes to watching …
Why England hates incompetent tyrants
The English hatred for incompetent tyrants runs deep. In 1215, King John of England was forced to sign a treaty limiting royal power, after his most powerful barons rebelled against his military incompetence, arbitrary decision-making, and swingeing tax regime. Yet …
Xi Jinping is not Mao reborn
Ever since he eliminated China’s two-term limit in 2018, Xi Jinping’s rule has produced a proliferation of articles and studies that compare his rule with Mao’s. The comparison is true only at a very superficial level, relating to the cult …
Down and out in the Paris Olympics
This April, 27-year-old Abdelkarim was forced to leave his home in the Paris suburb of Île-Saint-Denis — a decrepit squat inhabited by more than 300 migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees like himself. “There were about 200 police. They told everybody: ‘Let’s …
Studio Ghibli sold the West a fantasy
Before the internet, the only way for an American teen to watch anime was illicitly, on bootlegged video cassettes that were passed fan to fan like some visual drug. Each new discovery felt like a tiny revelation, a step into …
Is this the end for Zelenskyy?
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Western public has been sold the story of a Ukrainian front united in its unwavering commitment to a total military victory over Russia. Over the past few weeks, however, this narrative has started to …
Resignations won’t fix America’s universities
Societies rot from the head down, as fish are said to do. In the academy, too, the head rots first. Elite universities were the first to take to heart Marx’s admonition that the point is not to interpret the world, …
Blasphemy laws have returned to Denmark
Towards the end of Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine Part Two, our marauding anti-hero burns a copy of the Quran, along with other Islamic books, as a kind of audacious test. “Now, Mahomet,” he cries, “if thou have any power, come …
The case for Left Conservatism
In the New Tragic Age, we face multiple existential transformations of our society — de-globalisation, a rising multi-polar world order, and the scarcity of limited resources on a finite planet. Most of these changes are downstream from the latter: we …
How to decolonise Britain
There is something strangely flattering in the Russian and Iranian portrayal of Britain as a Machiavellian intriguer, bending the might of the American empire to its own will in subtle and devious ways. For the truth, alas, is somewhat different. …
This time, the EU could collapse
Over the last decade it has become an inevitable cycle: every election that shocks the interests and expectations of the EU’s technocrats is met with predictions of the bloc’s inevitable break-up. I’ve been guilty of this myself — even though, …
Meet the Iranians supporting Israel
Lily Moo is used to death threats: in the past 14 months, 19 against her have been reported to the police. An Iranian in London, she has been leading Woman, Life, Freedom marches in her adopted home — calling for …
Has John Lewis killed the Christmas ad?
Melting snowmen. Sad ballads. Lonely children. These are the staples of the inescapable “sadvertising” that has become as much a part of Christmas as the Radio Times double issue used to be. But something feels different this year. If you …
The Battle for San Francisco
San Francisco, for decades known around the world for its jazz, free love and beat poetry, has in recent years become notorious for a different reason. Tent encampments on its streets and open-air drug markets have become a reference point …
Nicola Sturgeon’s latest humiliation
Nobody could say Nicola Sturgeon hadn’t been warned. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls told the then Scottish First Minister that amending the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill to include self-identification would pose a danger …