Conservatism has died, not from an assassin’s bullet, or even from old age or because it was run over by a bus. It has died because there is no call for it anymore. This isn’t to say that nobody wants …
The true President of America’s Fifth Republic
The fireworks in America this Fourth of July will be fuelled by the country’s imminent election, in which a convicted felon faces off against a doddering old man who is too senile to know that he isn’t really the President. …
What Young Fogeys get wrong about housing
The Renaissance in Italy came from its cities, and not by accident. What we now call “agglomeration effects” were at work here. Within their curtain walls, all classes and factions were crammed together in lunatic proximity. Unable to grow out, …
Is Macron’s gamble actually working?
A 10-second clip from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi has been doing the rounds on French social media. In it, a hooded, decaying Emperor Palpatine arrives on the “fully operational” Second Death Star, cackling “Everything is proceeding as I …
The last bastion of Tory Britain
The flag outside the Spalding Conservative Club is at half-mast. This is not because of the wider Tory calamity — though it should be — but, the barmaid says, because a member has died. This is South Holland and the …
Will Labour finally save the left behind?
This election has been a missed opportunity to face a grim but manageable reality: beyond London and Edinburgh, the regional economies around Britain have accumulated deep structural problems. Household incomes are far lower than in south-east England because there are …
Arundhati Roy’s radical zeal
After bagging the Booker for The God of Small Things in 1997, Arundhati Roy made a life-altering decision: “to postpone reading Don DeLillo’s big book” about nuclear and bodily waste in order to make time for “reports on drainage”. This …
Tribal Britain won’t be governed
A few weeks ago, I attended a conference in London on the future of British conservatism, hosted by a thinktank funded by the Hungarian government. The future of British conservatism, it was swiftly revealed, was bleak — but not in …
Jordan Bardella is no radical
It’s been a long time coming, but after a triumphant showing at the European elections, and then such a strong result in the first round of the French parliamentary elections, it looks like National Rally, a Le Pen party, is …
Will Biden share Bannon’s fate?
All eyes are naturally fixed upon Joe Biden in the aftermath of last week’s “debate”. Will he stay in the race or bow out? Yet there is another, smaller political drama playing out inside the American political system at present, …
The death of the Conservative Club
In 1993, the then British Prime Minister, John Major, gave a speech to the Conservative Group for Europe: “Fifty years on from now,” he predicted, “Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county [cricket] grounds, warm beer, …
In Starmerland, the ladies are not for turning
Turn right out of the station, head down past the village green and the yoga studio and the osteopaths, and you will eventually arrive at the pebbledash semi that made Keir Starmer. Once upon a time, Hurst Green may have …
Can Labour tame the Civil Service?
This general election could well break records: pollsters are predicting the lowest turnout in modern history. People feel politically homeless. That there’s no point in voting. That none of the politicians can change anything. In this respect, they have a …
Why Joe Biden must save himself — and quit
When I first met Joseph Biden as a newly elected Senator in 1974 he was absurdly young and looked younger, but he had already suffered two tragedies: the financial downfall of his father from elegant affluence to poverty, and the …
British feminism needs a history lesson
These days, we tend to interpret figures from long ago as if they lived just across the road. Such is the thesis of French sociologist Olivier Roy, who argues that an erasure of national cultural history is well underway. We …