“No more wars, I’m going to stop wars” vowed Donald Trump in his first post-election speech to voters. And his campaign was marked by his critique of neocon-led military engagements in the Middle East, though with little detail as to …
The NHS is failing epilepsy patients
Megan Gardiner was 17 weeks pregnant when she died alone one June morning in 2022.
She had experienced her first epileptic seizure 12 years earlier, two days after her thirteenth birthday. “We heard a scream and then a loud bang,” …
I was the target of Guardian misinformation
It was quite the flounce. “This is something we have been considering for a while,” The Guardian intoned with the gravity of an Old Testament prophet as it declared in an editorial that the organisation would no longer be posting …
The dangers of normalising Bashar al-Assad
A few weeks ago, a refugee using the pseudonym “Laila” left Dahiye, a South Beirut suburb smashed by Israeli airstrikes. She fled with her family, and travelled east to the Syrian border, with just enough money to cover the journey. …
America’s new caste system
I’ve been teaching Tocqueville’s Democracy in America for a very long time. But only recently have I come to appreciate some of his deepest assumptions and their implications about the whole democratic experiment. In particular I’ve been thinking about the …
Covid masked liberal weakness
Donald Trump is back in the White House — and among Democrats, the blame game has already begun. Nancy Pelosi, for instance, has claimed that Joe Biden should have held off supporting Kamala Harris, instead encouraging an open primary. Harris …
Why didn’t Jews vote for Trump?
On 28 June 1969, patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, fought back against the police harassing them. This was the signal event in the formation of the modern Gay Rights Movement. More than half a …
How universities teach students to shame
Oxford colleges are suffocating places, stuffed to the gunnels with competitive and perfectionistic types, precocious in some ways and very immature in others. Everybody knows everybody else, adolescent hysteria and gossip can travel fast, and an atmosphere dominated by a …
Democrats need a new Clinton
A shattered Democratic incumbent. A rambunctious Republican outsider. An election marred by economic turmoil and the usual destabilising violence in the Middle East. A campaign of contrasts, of relentlessly negative liberals, dismissing their rival as extremist, and conservatives pushing forward …
Is Ukraine becoming a kleptocracy?
Tanks. Howitzers. Missiles. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the West has delivered a mountain of aid to the beleaguered Kyiv government. The Pentagon alone is estimated to have sent over £50 billion in military support, even as tiny Luxembourg managed …
The rebel cult of Murakami
For middle-aged Japanophiles, the recent Japan boom among the young can at times feel exhausting. Japanese pop, rapid and relentless, sounds like something put together by toddlers on a sugar binge. Meanwhile, the popularity in the West of manga and …
Robert Kennedy Jr: America needs a revolution
This article was first published in May 2023.
For decades, as a scion of the Kennedy family and environmental litigator, Robert F. Kennedy Junior was considered an establishment hero. In recent years, however, his rhetoric against Covid lockdowns and vaccines …
Is Trump a blessing for Starmer?
The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump’s election victory is a nightmare for Keir Starmer. Trump not only embodies much that Starmer holds in obvious contempt, but his very presence in the White House captures much of Britain’s essential weakness …
What revolutionary France can teach Elon Musk
A nation in turmoil. An economy in flux. A professional class paddling in profligacy, and a public increasingly disgusted by the out-of-touch elite in the centre. The answer? A brilliant outsider, a financial wizard and a foreigner, who can whip …
North Korea is ready for war
When Trump returns to the White House next year, he’d be wise not to ignore one of the obsessions of his first term: North Korea. For while the Kim regime has been prodded from the news agenda over recent years, …