Twee tea towels; tubby Toby jugs; cigar-puffing cosplayers. Churchill’s apotheosis surely ranks among the most odd developments in British cultural life. He has grown so larger-than-life that one in five teens thinks he’s a fictional character. And for some, moist-eyed …
Why haters gonna hate Jacob Rees-Mogg
According to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s housekeeper her employer “likes it quite stiff”. It turns out she’s talking about the starched crease on his boxer shorts but it might as well have been his attitude to the proverbial upper lip.
We learn …
The British scientists working for China
When Keir Starmer met his Chinese counterpart earlier this month, he gripped Xi Jinping’s hand and proclaimed the importance of a “strong” bilateral relationship. The meeting marked a warming of relations between the two nations, which have been decidedly frosty …
I’ve seen too many bad deaths
As an emergency physician, I make agonising life or death decisions every day. When caring for a terminally-ill patient whose organs are failing, and who can’t recognise her own children, I work with colleagues and family members to decide whether …
Kemi must turn Britain’s vice into virtue
In her first month as leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch has got off to an opportune start. Ignore all the headline-grabbing chatter about her unpopularity, the latest YouGov survey reveals that she has opened a viable route to …
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 …
Assisted dying ignores what it means to be human
Of all people, you might expect humanists to have protecting human life at the core of their ideological DNA. Instead, they are queuing up to plunge in the needle of death. This week, as Parliament prepares to debate the assisted …
The Guardian’s culture of cowardice
“I’m not sorry to be leaving Guardian newspapers. For years now being Jewish, however non-observant, and working for the company has been uncomfortable, at times excruciating…It will be a joy to know that I’m not a part of that anymore.”…
Environmentalists have lost the plot
The sun is the source of energy in “the economy of nature”, writes Robin Wall Kimmerer, red-hot botanist and professional ponderer from the Native American Potawatomi nation. She spends her latest book The Serviceberry, a follow-up to the 2013 sensation …
John Prescott’s failed class war
“He’s top class and I’m bottom class,” recalled the late John Prescott of his time serving the drinks to Sir Anthony Eden as a steward on the MV Rangitata. On doctor’s orders, Eden and his wife had embarked on a …
Stonewall and the search for meaning
Is Trans Day of Remembrance being dropped down the memory hole? This time last year, Stonewall was urging followers to observe November 20 as an “important day to honour the lives of our trans siblings who have been taken from …
John Prescott never pulled his punches
“Every leader needs a John Prescott,” Tony Blair liked to say of his deputy. “I couldn’t have made all the changes I made, and needed to make, in the Labour Party without the support of John.”
He was right. One …
Burn down the Church Machine
I love the Church of England. I love its liturgy, I love its glorious parish churches, I love its lack of ideological fervour, I love the gentle and inclusive way that it is porous to those outside of the Church, …
The rise and fall of the political maverick
It isn’t unusual for the tail to wag the dog. Time and again in history, the powers that be have been deemed unfit for purpose. Hence the need for another locus for real power — the political aide. Kings have …
Humiliation won’t heal hospitals
You learn to be tough as an NHS doctor. But starting my shift a few days ago, even I was shocked. I spotted a patient, clearly someone with severe mental health issues, stuck on the ward without proper care. I …