War, climate change, economic stagnation, political polarisation — there seems to be no shortage of crises these days. Indeed, the situation is so perilous that the rarely hysterical Financial Times last year named “polycrisis” one of its words of the …
One year on, who blew up Nord Stream 2?
So whodunnit? Who destroyed the Nord Stream 2 at three minutes past midnight on September 26, 2021? Explosives set 262 feet below the surface of the Baltic caused a blast registering 2.5 on the Richter Scale. It ripped apart the …
Russell Brand’s Messiah complex
Was it rape? A powerful and charismatic man sees a beautiful woman bathing naked from his bedroom window and sends a couple of heavies to bring her up to his room. That night he has sex with her, and she …
Biden is no ally of the Michigan auto strike
When Joe Biden announced his intention to join a United Auto Workers’ picket line in Michigan, his breathless supporters lionised the “historic” and “unprecedented” decision. Amid the praise, there was little mention of the fact that Biden is only visiting …
The Left is losing the climate class war
Britain’s cosy climate consensus has been broken. No longer is “net zero” some airy target that can waft freely in the intellectual blue sky of speeches and policy papers — it is an ambition that has finally drifted onto the …
Legal prostitution is a gift to pimps
“Do you have what it takes to become a Brothel Tester?” Unsurprisingly, this sentence caught my eye while I was researching the latest atrocities in the sex market in Germany. Legalisation of all aspects of prostitution in what I call …
Capitalism is dead: long live Technofeudalism
I once heard an elderly Friedrich von Hayek begin a tirade against socialist planning with a charming personal tale. “The other day,” he said playfully, “I went into a shop. I left with an item that, previously, I had no …
Coco Chanel’s inferiority complex
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel destroyed the restrictive, oppressive tenets of Victorian dress with a zeal that was personal. The “exterminating angel of nineteenth century style” released the Modern Woman, an individual designed in her own mould. It was her lifestyle, as …
Rupert Murdoch was my fiercest competitor
“I’m calling to celebrate the demise of Maxwell,” said Rupert Murdoch down the phone to me on the morning Robert Maxwell’s private effects were being auctioned in a bankruptcy sale. I acknowledged that Maxwell had been a frightful scoundrel, but …
Net zero and the politics of narcissism
Earlier this week, John Gray visited the UnHerd Club. Below is an edited excerpt from his interview with Freddie Sayers.
I’m not a climate sceptic. I’m a disciple in that regard of a great friend who died recently, James Lovelock. …
Can paedophilia ever be a thought experiment?
Imagine that a philosophy professor is invited onto a podcast. The hosts ask him to describe a thought experiment he finds interesting or provoking. He decides to pick a scenario in which an adult male has sex with a “willing” …
Keir Starmer will never rejoin the EU
With Keir Starmer all but measuring the drapes in No 10, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that his pledge to renegotiate Britain’s treaty with the EU has set Westminster aflutter. The reality, however, is less exciting: Starmer’s promise is little …
Confessions of a Russell Brand superfan
I have been obsessed with Russell Brand since I was 11. I thought he stole the show in St Trinian’s and again in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I decided not to vote long before I legally could after he told Paxman …
Blue-collar workers are our only hope
Amid all the hysteria, technological wreckage and gallons of spilt ink, artificial intelligence’s most potent legacy is yet to be discerned. As we enter the fourth industrial revolution, everyone from the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab to 61% of Americans …
Will we execute the Russian oligarchs?
As the war was starting in the early hours of February 24, 2022, when the CIA was forecasting Kyiv’s imminent fall and a quick victory for Moscow, a wealthy Russian friend mailed me for my views. His own were conveyed …