Barack Obama has always been good at bringing Americans together, making us feel like we’re on the right track. So his involvement in a new Netflix nature documentary series feels decidedly on-brand: not only does the series celebrate something we …
The PsyOps war comes to Ukraine
Zakarpattia, Ukraine
Far from the war, in Ukraine’s sleepy, western city of Uzhhorod, whose crumbling pastel-coloured Habsburg-era buildings straddle the river Uzh, government officials are concerned about the growing tension with Hungary. Despite Hungary’s voting in favour of EU sanctions …
Sweden’s inconvenient Covid victory
When, the summer before last, the results of the first Covid wave began to be tallied in the media, there were different ways of measuring the devastation. One way of looking at the pandemic was to focus on how many …
Gary Neville won’t save Labour
When he played football, Gary Neville was often compared to a rat. He was never beautiful, not in his callow face, and certainly not on the pitch; no one made that claim for him. In 600 appearances for Manchester United …
How Marine Le Pen conquered Normandy
Here is a confident prediction about tomorrow’s first round of the French presidential election. In my lovely, peaceful village in the Calvados hills, Marine Le Pen will comprehensively top the poll. President Emmanuel Macron will come third or maybe even …
The week the trans spell was broken
I always knew it would start with sport.
Back in 2018, when the obvious fallacies of gender ideology made me feel merely puzzled as opposed to completely enraged, a friend of mine went to the Commonwealth Games. He’s a sportswriter, …
How philosophy sacrificed the truth
Back when I was a graduate student in the Nineties, first at St Andrews University and then at Leeds, philosophy departments were terrifying places. Seminar rooms often felt like amphitheatres.
Every week, the same ritual would unfold in the senior …
Why we fear dead bodies
It is almost exactly two years ago that we were first asked to stand on our doorsteps to clap for NHS staff. As the weeks went on, the target of our applause was widened: to healthcare workers and emergency services, …
Does Prince Andrew deserve forgiveness?
The Queen must have known that choosing Prince Andrew to accompany her down the aisle at Westminster Abbey would bring her little but condemnation. “Still a sweaty nonce” was one such response on Twitter, charmingly expressing what many might nonetheless …
Britain needed the Falklands War
On the morning of Monday, 5 April 1982, the aircraft carrier Invincible slipped its moorings and eased into Portsmouth Harbour, bound for the South Atlantic. It was barely ten o’clock, yet the shoreline was packed with tens of thousands of …
Ukraine has split the far-Right
Toby Cook was a 19-year-old with a history of mental health problems, a growing recreational drink and drug habit, and a mounting sheet of criminal charges when he decided to leave his native Australia and travel to Ukraine in 2018. …
Putin has made Nato stronger
War is the domain of paradox, contradiction, and boundless surprise. It is not merely because of ignorance or stupidity that military history is a record of crimes, follies, defeats, and very few victories worth their cost. Even so, the Ukraine …
Boris Johnson is no clown
There is a secret pact between the aristocrat and the anarchist. The anarchist dislikes rules, while the aristocrat can afford to ignore them. Kicking over the traces is proof of his authority, not of his criminality. Those who set the …
Russia is dying out
“One hundred and forty-six million [people] for such a vast territory is insufficient,” said Vladimir Putin at the end of last year. Russians haven’t been having enough children to replace themselves since the early Sixties. Birth rates are also stagnant …
The fall of Seattle
This February, Bruce Harrell, newly installed as mayor of Seattle, made it official that his city has gone into decline. “The truth is the status quo is unacceptable,” he said in his first state of the city address. “It seems …