Something doesn’t seem quite right about Nigel Farage. We’re in the backseat of a car parked outside the Rifle Volunteer, and he’s just spent a solid hour in his element: shaking hands, grinning and taking selfies with supporters in Ashfield. …
The populist battle for Ashfield
Something doesn’t seem quite right about Nigel Farage. We’re in the backseat of a car parked outside the Rifle Volunteer, and he’s just spent a solid hour in his element: shaking hands, grinning and taking selfies with supporters in Ashfield. …
Iran’s next president will be just as powerless
It took nearly 24 hours for the regime in Tehran to finally confirm that the deeply unpopular and uncharismatic Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and other prominent officials, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abodollahian, had died when their Seventies-era helicopter crashed in …
Europe’s insurgent Right won’t change anything
Depending on where you stand politically, you might view the Right-populist surge in the European Parliament as either a grave threat to democracy, or as a striking victory for it — and a major step forward in “taking back control” …
Labour has broken Gen Z’s heart
Summer has finally arrived in London. Beer gardens are packed, Lime bikes whizz through disgruntled traffic. There is a quiet optimism: the election is soon. For the first time that we can remember, we might not have a Tory government. …
Farage’s army is on the march
What a difference a week makes. This time last Saturday, I was watching Nigel Farage’s ragtag rebel army in Great Yarmouth struggling to rouse themselves for one last attack on the fortress of Westminster, somehow knowing in their heart of …
Britain doesn’t want to go to war
The differences between the two main parties in the UK on most foreign policy questions are matters of almost imperceptible nuance. As we were reminded in the first election debate, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are united in their …
Who won Sunak vs Starmer?
There was one clear winner in last night’s prime ministerial debate on ITV. It was, of course, the moderator. While Kier Starmer droned and Rishi Sunak piped and yapped, Julie Etchingham radiated a sincerity that neither of the men on …
Trump is converting America’s nuns
Bespectacled and berobed, a softly spoken nun may seem an unlikely figurehead for the hard-Right of American politics — but Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God isn’t just any nun. With her broadsides against liberalism, President Biden, and Satan’s …
How political is Orbán’s football obsession?
The first time I interviewed a president of Ferencváros, Hungary’s most successful football club, the taxi driver who picked me up from the stadium asked if I was a new signing. Nothing, perhaps, could have been more revealing of the …
Clacton: the birthplace of Brexit
Clacton-on-Sea is a funny old place. To reach it one has to drive through the smart commuter villages of the Tendring peninsula, the farthest extremity of north-east Essex, between Colchester and the North Sea. These villages have more than their …
The aristocrats who martyred Trump
I have no wish to add to the existential howl attendant on Donald Trump’s conviction in a Manhattan courthouse for a crime that I, like most Americans, would be hard pressed to explain. I don’t like Trump as a politician …
Keir Starmer: an ungrateful beneficiary of Brexit
A few months before the 2016 referendum, I published an article called “The Left Case for Brexit”. In it, I put forward reasons for thinking that the Labour Party might be the principal beneficiary if Britain disentangled itself from the …
Ramaphosa has slain the Rainbow Nation
A disrespectful Afrikaans expression refers to a person seeing their gat or backside. It means to get one’s comeuppance. In last week’s South African 2024 general elections, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) saw its gat and the only remaining …
Trump is Hillary Clinton’s spirit animal
Sometimes, I feel a little bit bad for Hillary Clinton — and not just because she missed out on a history-making presidency by a paltry 80,000 votes. It’s because she’s a feminist icon who will nevertheless always be remembered for …