War, climate change, economic stagnation, political polarisation — there seems to be no shortage of crises these days. Indeed, the situation is so perilous that the rarely hysterical Financial Times last year named “polycrisis” one of its words of the …
Why Britain can’t control inflation
“We are living in an expensive and increasingly poor country,” thundered The Guardian‘s political editor, furious at the crumbling state of the nation unable to pay its workers properly. “It is not much use lecturing people about paying themselves more …
Why we need World Cup nationalism
The tyranny of globalisation finally seems to be waning, but the liberal Left aren’t too happy about it. Writing in The Guardian this week, Gordon Brown complained that “nationalism has replaced neoliberalism as the dominant ideology of the age”. For …
How Morrissey revived the Union Jack
“Has Morrissey gone too far this time?” It’s a question that could have been asked on any given day in the last 30 years. But this specific occasion is one of the earliest examples of the genre: the NME’s response …
Australia is ruled by clowns
Of all the absurdities currently plaguing Australia’s political class, perhaps the most revealing is the recent surge in voters Googling “April Sun in Cuba”. For the uninitiated, April Sun in Cuba is a Seventies song by New Zealand band Dragon. …
How to lose a leadership election
With MPs reassembling after their February break, the great Boris Johnson Leadership Melodrama will soon be back in the headlines. For the time being, at least, the Prime Minister survives, bloodied but not yet fatally wounded by that tumultuous encounter …