They say the first step in fixing a crisis is to recognise there is a problem. So let us give thanks for a Labour leader’s dismissal of the belief that Britain’s health service is the envy of the world — …
Sunak’s platitudes won’t save Britain
“The cost of living, too high! Waiting times in the NHS, too long! Illegal migration, far too much!” This could have been Keir Starmer thundering from the Opposition benches. Except it wasn’t. This was Rishi Sunak’s assessment of the government …
The curse of Northern stereotypes
Here are some snapshots of modern Britain, taken by a well-known broadcaster, playwright and social commentator. The railways are dying; car traffic is thriving. To the drivers, who interact with their fellow human beings mainly by injuring and killing them, …
What Hong Kongers fear in Britain
We are being watched. We may be 6,000 miles from the Pearl River Delta, but that does not stop the long arm of the Chinese state reaching into this sports hall in a small town in South Gloucestershire.
I am …
Poundbury and the English apocalypse
To reach the King’s vision for modern Britain, first you must travel through his kingdom. Take a delayed train from London down to the south coast. Turn right at the docks outside Southampton, past a wasteland of Chinese shipping containers, …
The magic of Britain’s rainforests
In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, as the protagonists sail through a dark and eerie Thames Estuary towards the Congolese rainforest, the sailor Marlow remarks knowingly that “this also has been one of the dark places of the earth… when …
Was Prince Philip a womaniser?
Was Prince Philip a player right up until the end of his life? That’s the implication made, albeit discreetly, in the latest series of The Crown, which depicts the Duke of Edinburgh’s appreciation for Penny Romsey (later Countess Mountbatten) during …
Violence rules my A&E ward
I’ve seen everything on my A&E ward: from staff, police officers and members of the public being punched to full-on brawls breaking out. Even visibly pregnant staff are not immune to aggression. And that’s just in a fortnight: people don’t …
The Trad case for Brutalism
Some architectural preservation groups have an easier task than others. Those campaigning on behalf of medieval churches or Jacobean country houses are in many ways pushing at an open door, given the general British affection for lovely old buildings. I …
Can the nation survive Elizabeth?
I was camping by a lake when I heard the news. My son and I were off fishing and hiking in Connemara in the Irish west, hunting down pollock and wrasse and trout, and plunging into bogs on the slopes …
Our divine monarchy is finished
Queen Elizabeth was the last revered European monarch. There are a few other Konigs and Reines in Europe, flying part-time as KLM pilots, cycling on their own to official occasions or forced to abdicate because of garden variety corruption. These …
Richard Osman’s common people
In 1984, Clive James tabled the Barry Manilow Law: no-one you know likes Barry Manilow, while the rest of the world worships the ground on which he walks. This adage can now be updated. Until very recently, I didn’t know …
How Britain haunts America
The rhetoric of modern America is dominated by the paradigm of a biracial nation, but history is never black and white. Fissures between national and ethnic traditions have always been at the heart of its political conflict.
Their significance is …
Civil disobedience is coming
Britain may be recovering from a heatwave, but its politicians are already fearful that winter is coming. Only now, more than 170 days since the war broke out, are policymakers realising the potentially catastrophic implications of their gung-ho approach towards …
The West needs to grow up
The first modern revolution was neither French nor American, but English. Long before Louis XVI went to the Guillotine, or Washington crossed the Delaware, the country which later became renowned for stiff upper lips and proper tea went to war …
