The Big Air Con

Airport world is a parallel dimension. No matter where they are geographically, all airports are essentially the same place, with a simplified “international English” and a time zone only loosely tethered to its location. Airport world even has its own …

Biden won’t win his war with China

When Donald Trump introduced a series of tariffs on Chinese goods, just over five years ago, Joe Biden was among his fiercest critics. Trump, he said, was “crushing” American farmers, workers and consumers by sparking an “irresponsible trade war”, and …

Why is Greta wearing a Keffiyeh?

Why is Greta Thunberg wearing a keffiyeh? The Swedish activist is the poster-girl for climate change. The keffiyeh, though, symbolises a wholly different cause: solidarity with Palestinians in the current conflict with Israel. What does that have to do with …

How to spot the next mania

In the late Eighties and Nineties, the psychiatric profession became infatuated with “recovered memory”, which was conceived in the US but also captivated Europe, including Britain. Practitioners claimed that patients sexually abused as children would naturally repress any recollection of …

The case for Left Conservatism

In the New Tragic Age, we face multiple existential transformations of our society — de-globalisation, a rising multi-polar world order, and the scarcity of limited resources on a finite planet. Most of these changes are downstream from the latter: we …