Philosophers have seldom lived up to the ideal of radical doubt that they often claim as the prime directive of their tradition. They insist on questioning everything, while nonetheless holding onto many pieties. Foremost among these, perhaps, is the commandment …
Black kids should study Larkin
On a Friday morning in March 2020, I entered a secondary school for the first time since I had left for university. I was there for an interview. The opening was for a tutor, not a teacher: instead of handling …
The boomers destroyed the Tories
Boris Johnson stands over your hospital bed, mask and medical gown on, forceps at hand, shining a lamp brightly down on your face. There had better be a good reason you’re undergoing this surgery. Pain must have a purpose.
Think …
How to fly a Spitfire
The hangar is patriotically dressed with tiny flags and a large resin model of a Sunderland bomber. Miniature pilots in its cockpit have painted smiles. Sensible women are handing out buns and tea. Forties jazz plays; I might be in …
How the elites exploit inflation
I can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu at the current debate about global inflation. The similarities between today’s spiralling situation and the inflationary crisis of the Seventies are too striking to be ignored.
Nearly 50 years ago, …
Keir Starmer’s gambling problem
When Tony Blair’s government liberalised gambling, smartphones were still the stuff of science fiction. Sir Alan Budd, who wrote the 2001 review that the 2005 Gambling Act was based on, recently conceded in a House of Lords inquiry that “no …
On the frontline with the Right Sector militia
The sun is beginning to set over the Donbas front line, and I’m hurtling down hedgerow-lined roads eerily reminiscent of English country lanes at 100km an hour, bouncing around in the back of a civilian SUV spray-painted dark green as …
Inside Wakefield’s corrupt election
“I have been a foster carer for over 14 years and have never sexually assaulted anyone. I am happily married to Janet.” Paul Bickerdike secured 102 votes when he stood for the Christian People’s Alliance in last July’s by-election in …
How the RA uncancelled me
It has now been a year since I woke up to nearly the entire UK press in my inbox, wanting to speak to me.
The Royal Academy of Arts had just publicly announced that they would no longer stock my …
Why should lesbians have sex with men?
These days, a woman who calls herself a lesbian invites suspicion. Over the past 20 years, bars, bookstores, and festivals, once set aside for women attracted to other women, have rebranded themselves as “trans-inclusive” or “queer”, shut down, or gone …
The kids aren’t alright
A few months after I had my twins, I heard a phrase that, I was promised, would change the lives of me and my children, and only for the better: “baby-led.” I was complaining to a friend about my difficulties …
The man who broke Boris
Regardless of what he says, the Prime Minister’s time as a mover of events, rather than a prisoner of them, is up. That fate was inevitable from the moment a young Boris Johnson declared he would be “world king” one …
The media is run by trolls
The Star Wars franchise has always been a cultural mirror, with each manifestation reflecting the fears, hopes, and political themes of the moment it was created. The original 1977 film was steeped in the anxieties of a postwar landscape; the …
We are parading our virtue
What are processions for? Last Thursday evening, around a thousand people of all ages gathered in my local market square, and processed across the playing fields to light a beacon in honour of the Platinum Jubilee. My daughter was near …
Severodonetsk will decide Ukraine’s future
More than 100 days on, the fate of Russia’s campaign to capture the entirety of the Luhansk region still hangs in the balance. If the whole Luhansk region falls, the rest of Ukraine’s east may very likely follow. Both the …