Ever felt your ears burning? I get as much flak online as the next believer in the existence of human biology, but recently I’ve noticed it ramping up somewhat. For the purposes of researching this column, I gingerly dipped my …
Why do progressives watch porn?
Is it time we started having less nuanced conversations about porn? We’ve all encountered the alternative: the sort of smug, self-styled progressive who maintains that every political controversy can be resolved by sufficiently “nuanced conversation”. The trickier a problem looks, …
George Osborne’s sordid Elgin plan
From the very beginning, Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon’s statues and friezes caused something of a discursive British civil war. On one side were humanists, like Lord Byron; on the other were Empire apologists, who defend Elgin’s actions and support …
Boris and the world’s worst birthday party
“No cake was eaten, and no-one even sang happy birthday.” As parties go, it was a miserable one; as scandals go, however, it was more than enough. Amid all the political kerfuffle over his appearance at the Standards and Privileges …
Why China’s peace plan for Ukraine will fail
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, Beijing’s faithful lieges in Europe were quick to declare that China, perhaps even Xi Jinping himself, was “the key” to ending the war. The truth could not be more different: in …
Pornhub is screwing its workers
Sex work is work. Accept the proposition; start from there. The next question is: what kind of work, with what compromises? Very good work, if you listen to the porn performers interviewed in Netflix documentary Money Shot: The Pornhub Story. …
The true Left is not woke
It is 85 years since the great bluesman Lead Belly coined the phrase “stay woke” in “Scottsboro Boys”, a song dedicated to nine black teenagers whose execution for rapes they never committed was only prevented by years of international protests …
The betrayal of Baghdad
Baghdad. Winter is almost over. Traces of Saddam Hussain still litter the city. There is so much chaos, you’d think the Western coalition had never tried to rebuild the place. And, after all these years, it wouldn’t feel strange to …
Larkin’s lesson for Northern Ireland
In May 1950, Philip Larkin was appointed sub-librarian at Queen’s University in Belfast. He knew little about the city, or indeed the university, but needed a change. His application for a job in London had been rejected. Belfast offered an …
Black gold fuelled the Iraq War
Even before the conspicuous absence of weapons of mass destruction shattered the pretext for the Iraq War, it was haunted by black gold. Whether oil motivated George W. Bush and his advisers’ decision to invade was part of the bitter …
Does the Right need techno-Trumpism?
One of my informal metrics for political cut-through in our synapse-frazzled age is “could you play this sentence over a bass drop and have the crowd go wild?”.
The last time a British politician managed this was early in 2020, …
The battle to control America’s mind
“How can a man in a cave out-communicate the world’s leading communications society?” wondered Richard Holbrooke, the dean of the American Diplomatic Corps, in the aftermath of 9/11. What startled Holbrooke, and presumably many of the readers of his Washington …
The corruption of California
I backed into a spot where I could watch both entrances of the Papa Johns Pizza parking lot, punctual for my rendezvous. To be safe, I had first taken a slow cruise through the lot, on the lookout for the …
Why Progress isn’t feminist
It’s now an open secret that most Instagram influencers edit their images: smoothing skin, whitening teeth and plumping curves. Last year, OnlyFans content creator Diana Deets, also known as “Coconutkitty”, was castigated for making her NSFW images and videos seem …
BlackRock’s tyrannical ESG agenda
As February turns to March, the finance world is waiting with bated breath for one of its most dubious annual traditions: The Larry Fink Annual Letter to CEOs. Since 2012, when the BlackRock chief executive wrote his first letter, the …
