In a quiet group chat in an obscure part of the internet, a small number of anonymous accounts are swapping references from academic publications and feverishly poring over complex graphs of DNA analysis. These are not your average trolls, but …
Why is fashion selling children?
It’s always difficult to decide what to buy the toddler in your life for Christmas. A handbag shaped like a teddy dressed in BDSM gear, perhaps? Or a dog collar and lead? In a new ad campaign for the fashion …
How we appeased China’s Zero-Covid regime
In the streets of China, people are rising up to reassert their human dignity in the face of the most dehumanising machine of social control in the world today: the Chinese Communist Party’s Zero-Covid terror-state.
For three years, the Chinese …
John Mearsheimer: We’re playing Russian roulette
Until the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Professor John Mearsheimer was mainly known in academic circles as a leading scholar in the “realist” school of foreign policy. That is to say, he takes an unsentimental view of world affairs as being a muscular …
The forgotten genius of Compton Mackenzie
It was a most fortuitous shipwreck. The S.S. Politician floundered on rocks near the island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides in February 1941, cutting short its journey from Liverpool to the USA. The hull was breached and the ship …
Mermaids’ useful idiots
It’s incredibly easy to criticise Susie Green, the influential and, as of Friday, ex-CEO of Mermaids. But I’d like to say this in her defence: she never lied about who she was.
From her early interviews in 2012, when her …
The betrayal of Britain’s seaside towns
It was the first night of Blackpool’s Illuminations, when seven miles of promenade are transformed into a parade of glitter set against the ink-black Irish Sea. The traffic had poured in from across Lancashire to crawl, bumper to bumper, beneath …
Humanism is a heresy
“There is nothing particular about man. He is but a part of this world.”
This observation on the pretensions of humanity — cool, disillusioned, unsparing of sentimentality — was made in the Forties, midway between our own time and the …
Britain’s squalid housing crisis
The Conservatives are doomed. But it won’t be Brexit that destroys the party in its current form. That’s ultimately a symptom of a far larger problem: a slow but inexorable collision between voters’ desire for ongoing growth, and voters’ desire …
Sam Bankman-Fried’s elitist altruism
Elizabeth Holmes dressed in the same style every day: black turtleneck sweater, black slacks, and black low-slung shoes. This “uniform” underlined her deified status as a busy billionaire dedicated to changing the world, setting her apart from mere mortals with …
Is America angry enough for Trump?
Elizabeth Warren will never be president. The senior senator from Massachusetts is in many ways hugely qualified for the job. She has a list of legislative achievements to her name, and on subjects like cryptocurrency reform she is still on …
The architecture of autocracy
For a building project marketed like a Hollywood blockbuster, the latest footage from the deserts of northwestern Saudi Arabia is a little underwhelming. A column of trucks is moving sand, a row of diggers poking at the barren landscape like …
Should England fans support Iran?
Neymar smirks down at me from a billboard. Nearby, Ronaldo and Mbappé gaze off in the direction of the sea. A few streets down, Lionel Messi holds a ball in the crook of his arm, looking sweet. Here in Dubai, …
The media’s Manchester snobbery
Late on Tuesday night, I was sitting on a bus back to Manchester city centre from Salford Quays, where I had just watched La Traviata at The Lowry theatre. I was the sole passenger on the top deck, except for …
The many ghosts of Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama has always been surrounded by ghosts of herself, each one a projection of someone else’s fears or fantasies. She was a terrorist fist-bumper. She was a fashion icon. She was a shrill liberal scold or the original girlboss …