The vibes continue to shift. Five minutes ago, “cousin marriage” was the punchline to a highbrow joke about the Hapsburg Jaw, or perhaps a lowbrow one about what counted as Normal for Norfolk. Now all of a sudden, the relative …
Cousin marriage isn’t ‘unspeakable’
The vibes continue to shift. Five minutes ago, “cousin marriage” was the punchline to a highbrow joke about the Hapsburg Jaw, or perhaps a lowbrow one about what counted as Normal for Norfolk. Now all of a sudden, the relative …
The politicians lying about Syria
Old grievances in Western politics have been reopened by the sudden fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. And they are as dispiriting in their dishonesty as they are myopic in their self-interest. On the one hand, we have the unrepentant interventionists …
How Syria will shape Europe’s future
War is of its nature an uncertain business. Only in retrospect does Assad’s fall, so improbable last week, now look fated. It is ironic, given the opprobrium with which Arab normalisation with his regime was greeted by pro-rebel advocates, that …
What is Melania Trump thinking?
Behind the feline eyes, the serrated cheekbones and campy glamour, there is a hint of pain to Melania Trump. She displays a vulnerability, a sense of betrayal and a frustration at being misunderstood. She has described herself as “the most …
Ireland’s migration election
In many ways, Dundrum looks like the average Irish village. There’s a family butcher, a pub called Bertie’s, and rows of squatting slate-grey terraces. Yet walk down the R505, where Dundrum melts into the hedgerows of County Tipperary, and you’ll …
Winters of Discontent are coming
I was expecting Starmer to be awful. But less than six months into his premiership, his government’s prissy authoritarianism, student-union self-righteousness, and vindictive taxation has plunged Labour from a net favourability rating of +6 on taking power in July to …
The progressive case against immigration
The battlelines on immigration have hardened predictably. Left-leaning voters proudly display “refugees welcome” yard signs, while Donald Trump supporters cheer his pledge to implement “largest deportation operation in the history of our country”. Amid such partisan attitudes, it has become …
The dangerous martyrdom of Tommy Robinson
Tommy Robinson is a paradox: he is a brave and enormously successful activist-journalist with a mean right hook. At the same time, he’s prone to sentimentality, sensitive to criticism and sees himself as a victim, tethering his own private troubles …
Would you move to Mother Russia?
Last year, Tucker Carlson scandalised America by travelling to Russia and interviewing Vladimir Putin. As US viewers denounced the idea that one ought to speak to an enemy such as Putin, Tucker strolled around Moscow, filming himself taking the subway, …
Can Kamala become the Border Czar?
For days now, US politics has been roiled by an incredible rumour, mentioned in the middle of last week’s presidential debate: migrants in Springfield, Ohio are kidnapping and eating cats, dogs and even geese at local ponds. The two parties …
Canada’s Enoch Powell moment
Brampton, Ontario, situated in the sprawling outer suburbs of the Greater Toronto Area, is in many ways your typical Canadian city: rows and rows of middle-class houses with verdant lawns line quiet streets, with strip-mall parking lots and big-box stores …
Tommy Robinson, England’s class clown
There is a paradox at the core of the English far-Right: namely, its quaintly un-English preoccupation with race. It’s the reason why, over the past 30 years or so, Tommy Robinson and his ilk have been so marginal to our …
The housing crisis tearing Leicester apart
The South Asian neighbourhood of Highfields in Leicester is made up of long, sloping streets of terraced houses, built largely between the Victorian era and the Second World War. At that time, Leicester was a major centre of Britain’s booming …
The triumph of the Neotoddlers
Across the West, protests are getting larger, more frequent and more disruptive. Over the weekend, the UK saw nationwide anti-immigration riots in which mosques and other buildings were set aflame. A few days before that, Just Stop Oil activists sprayed …