All anyone could think about was clothes. As the members of the first Labour Cabinet prepared to collect their seals of office — having formed a government 100 years ago today — the gravity of the occasion was almost lost …
Keir Starmer and the triumph of the middle class
The Labour Party has a bad habit of losing elections, but its overall success can’t be doubted. Historically speaking, one of its functions has been to defuse working-class militancy by channelling it into parliamentary forms — and at this, Labour …
How Bolshevism built modern Britain
Vladimir Lenin has a way of confounding Marxist historians, many of whom generally — and with good reason — attach odium to Great Man History. For he was that rare thing: an individual instigator of historical change. A hundred years …
The Asian-American class war
In the metropolises of the West, shops that sell bubble tea — or boba, as it is commonly known — have proliferated over the past few years, a microcosm of the boom in East Asian cultural exports. At the same …
Will the hard Left ever leave campus?
“I’m Jeff Bezos’s arch-nemesis.” A man dressed as a West Coast rapper is speaking before a 1,000-strong crew of Britain’s hardest Leftists. Since this is London, my first thought was: Ali G impersonator. “I cost Amazon $4 billion,” he swaggers. …
Why I’ve given up on the Conservatives
Victory should feel more satisfying than it does. Just a few years ago, arguing that globalisation had been a great policy error by the West’s political class was still viewed as a heretical position, its adherents fighting in vain against …
Why are liberals pretending to be racist?
The online dissident Right has long presented itself as a dangerous, outside force that threatens the foundations of liberal society. Yet ever since Donald Trump supposedly ascended to the presidency in 2016 through “meme magic” — rather than simply winning …
Is Rojava a socialist utopia?
If you want to start an argument among Western Leftists, you need only mention the word “Rojava”. Ever since its formation a decade ago, the Kurdish-led polity has split the Left into two camps. On one side, its defenders hail …
Modern socialism has no class
It is a strange time to be a socialist. When I was young, in the 2000s, socialism was about overthrowing capitalism or at least making it more fair for the workers condemned to toil within its structures. Socialism was unfashionable. …
The myth of lockdown socialism
After taking the summer off, the lockdown wars are back. Last week, enthusiasts for Covid restrictions attributed the Queen’s death at the age of 96 to the after-effects of Covid, rather than old age, and argued that this showed the …
America has an Oedipus complex
As in Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus Rex, we are witnessing a generational drama in which inheritors kill their proverbial father to marry their mother, in this case Mother Earth. The psychology behind this pattern is above my pay grade, but many …
The long march of the French Left
In the hit French television series, Le Baron Noir, unifying the Left is the holy grail of the main protagonist, Philippe Rickwaert. His main obstacle is Michel Vidal, the vain and uncompromising founder of Debout le Peuple, determined to steal …
Inside China’s fiction factories
“I want to influence the world with China’s intellectual property.” This is the great ambition of Tang Jia San Shao, 41, who wants to build the “Disney World of China” — a gigantic theme park inspired by his stories. But …
Why we’ll end up eating bugs
It’s that special time of year when the global elites gather together at Davos. Or rather it would be, if it weren’t for Covid. Thanks to the Omicron wave, the World Economic Forum 2022 has been postponed.
But don’t despair. …
The impotence of the French Left
The Communist candidate in the French presidential elections is a calm, likeable man called Fabien Roussel. Last week, he made an unremarkable statement: “A good wine, a good piece of meat, a good cheese; that’s what French Gastronomy is all …
