Forget Donald Trump, the Southport killer, or Tommy Robinson. The lead storyline this week was Centrist Dads’ cheese dream, or perhaps a lost Wallace and Gromit plotline: 950 wheels of artisan cheddar were stolen from Neal’s Yard Dairy in London.…
American capitalism is fatally flawed
America’s ability to build is now a matter of survival and recovery. It is a question of building not only factories in the Midwest or whole cities out of the wilderness, but also basic infrastructure in the aftermath of Hurricane …
In defence of stereotypes
Everyone seems to agree that you shouldn’t put people in boxes. Men and women are uniquely individual, and therefore not to be stereotyped. Why not, however, isn’t so clear. It can’t be because all stereotypes are negative and offensive. The …
Britain needs its luxury class
It’s an idyllic Friday in Spring and I am standing on the factory floor of a silk factory in the heart of Suffolk. Guiding me through this labyrinth of looms is Julius Walters, the 11th-generation Managing Director of Sudbury Silk …
English nationalism is built on a lie
Someone once called nationalism the most contradictory of all political ideas. If it can lead straight to the gas chambers, it can also free you from oppressive imperial powers. For every Franco or Modi there is a George Washington or …
Can the Left reclaim free trade?
For the past half century, the Right has been the self-appointed guardian of the free market. In one of her first acts as Conservative leader in 1975, Margaret Thatcher strode into a meeting and banged a copy of Friedrich Hayek’s …
The delusion of having a meaningful job
I suspect Montaigne was being coy when he complained of the “wild and useless weeds” that would encroach on his mind in idleness. It is to those wild shoots that Montaigne owed his genre-defining essais, and thus his lasting influence. …
Karl Polanyi’s failed revolution
Few 20th-century thinkers have had such a lasting and profound influence as Karl Polanyi. “Some books refuse to go away — they get shot out of the water but surface again and remain afloat,” Charles Kindleberger, the economic historian, remarked …
The enlightened case for being selfish
Ever since the events of October 7, the streets of American and Western cities are routinely filled with heated demonstrations. The vast majority of the people in attendance are usually not themselves citizens of Palestine or Israel, but locals whose …
Why Liz Truss will never repent
What roles do reason and emotion play in politics? Is success a matter of winning over hearts, or about changing minds? To solve this conundrum comes a memoir by someone who apparently can do neither very well: Ten Years To …
Your boss doesn’t care about your feelings
You’re at work one day when your company’s “wellness” department begins handing out “emoji” stickers with words like “frustrated”, “overwhelmed”, and “stressed” printed below their creepy yellow faces. No one uses them, of course. But the message is clear: “[Insert …
Should women be paid for housework?
At a conference in 2015, I got talking to a man who had worked as an engineer for the Scottish Electricity Board in the Seventies. He told me that during that time, working-class women sometimes used their home electricity meters …
Green capitalism is a con
If religion was the opium of the masses in the days of Karl Marx, then today’s drug is the cult of green capitalism. The West has been fooled into thinking that a combination of futuristic green technologies and green growth …
33 concepts to survive the year
As a writer working on a catalogue of humanity’s wisest ideas, I spend my days searching for concepts by which to better understand the world. I find such ideas everywhere and everywhen, from Ancient Greece to Silicon Valley, and periodically …
Zola understood our lust for shopping
The most fun I ever had spending money was during a shopping spree at a toy store. It was almost Hanukkah, which falls near my birthday, and my parents asked me what they should get me for both occasions. I …