There is something strikingly different about Kemi Badenoch, the newly anointed Conservative Party leader. For a while I thought it might be that she is peculiarly old fashioned — a throwback to an age before the end of history and …
We need to talk about Southport
As additional terror-related charges against the Southport murder suspect Axel Rudakubana were announced on Monday, Merseyside Police was keen to deter us from discussing the case further. “We would strongly advise caution against anyone speculating as to motivation in this …
Labour’s blueprint for decline
If Britain’s cultural production leads the world in anything, it is in the imagining of grim dystopias which are only elaborated versions of contemporary British life: the line from 1984 to Children of Men is drawn through a particular, grudgingly …
Will an Etsy witch find you true love?
Something wicked this way comes. Across the land, jilted maidens are engaging in digital necromancy, wreaking revenge on past lovers and using £5 spells to bewitch Hinge situationships into confessing true love. Welcome to the coven of the Etsy witch. …
Rachel Reeves has no vision
In the Seventies, a Middle Eastern war precipitated a global energy shock and stagflation, and a US president invoked populist pleas to the silent majority against the counterculture. As the gold standard and the post-war Bretton Woods system teetered on …
Why centrist dads love fancy cheese
Forget Donald Trump, the Southport killer, or Tommy Robinson. The lead storyline this week was Centrist Dads’ cheese dream, or perhaps a lost Wallace and Gromit plotline: 950 wheels of artisan cheddar were stolen from Neal’s Yard Dairy in London.…
Obesity will starve the NHS
There’s one thing I’d happily see Rachel Reeves raise taxes on: junk food. Spend a day in my A&E department if you don’t believe me. I’m constantly treating people suffering from chronic conditions — type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, …
Will anyone miss Rishi Sunak?
Rishi Sunak is creeping out of the Tory leadership like a mouse walking past a sleeping cat. This is a shame because his departure is significant, marking the end of a political era that began in the Eighties. Sunak’s hero …
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 …
Why Scotland can’t get clean
Tourists emerging from Glasgow’s Central Station onto Gordon Street are immediately confronted with a scene familiar to every Glaswegian: cold air, tornadoes of litter, and the visible overlap of the city’s drug and homelessness crises. To the right, a group …
Why I miss the bitchy fashion police
Do you remember a time when women on television could be exhilaratingly rude about what other women looked like without everyone else being Deeply Disappointed? On Wednesday I had a flashback to this distant state of affairs as I saw …
Trump senses British weakness
It must be all-so familiar to Theresa May. There she was in 2017, holding hands with The Donald, walking in the White House as the first foreign leader invited to see the new Caesar after his inauguration. Poised to assume …
Blair was right about ID cards
Why won’t Keir Starmer support digital ID? When they caught wind of the electoral landslide, Blair and Blunkett lurched from their caskets to demand a return of this, New Labour’s most divisive and, eventually, most thoroughly defeated policy. But Labour …
How Osbornism failed
That American authority is shot. That an accord and relationship will have to be established with illiberal governments. That the dominance of the dollar is over. That the world will be defined from here on out by “multipolarity”, with Britain …
Keir Starmer is haunted by England
How do you know you’re in a ghost story? It isn’t always obvious. The ghost, after all, usually doesn’t appear until the very end. But there are signs. Perhaps it’s the time of year, or the Ulster rain pawing at …