What’s your deprivation fetish? Does the sight of a single mother pushing a pram with one hand while horsing down a Greggs sausage roll get you going? Perhaps the spectacle of a homeless person punting knocked-off earbuds on a street …
Welcome to the stagnation nation
Fifteen years after the great financial crisis blew Britain’s economic settlement apart, we’re still scrabbling around for a replacement. The staggering scale of our problems was revealed yesterday in Jeremy Hunt’s thoroughly depressing budget statement. Despite heavy doses of magical …
Make Britain Victorian again
In 1946, lorries and diggers rumbled into the grounds of Wentworth Woodhouse, then one of England’s grandest mansions. Its manicured lawns, gardens, and parkland stood on a coal seam that neared the surface, and the Labour Party’s Minister for Fuel …
The narcissism of wedding photographers
Photographers have long had an uneasy relationship with the sacred. There is the age-old anxiety that a photograph can steal a soul. And last week, more than 900 wedding photographers signed a petition complaining that “problematic vicars” can be “rude, …
How the miners created a new working class
In 1984 I was lending a hand to some miners who were picketing a power station when a police officer kicked me rather viciously in the leg. I suppose he was only doing his job. A few days later I …
Welcome to Britain’s prefab nightmare
“Lovely, isn’t it?” I’m standing in the kitchen with a resident of Lockleaze, Bristol, as we survey the construction site just a few yards from the end of her garden. She is, of course, being sarcastic. “I’m just so depressed,” …
Will Tower Hamlets follow Rochdale?
The Palestinians flags come in clusters. They may dominate entire streets, hanging high on lampposts out of the reach of a stepladder should anyone be tempted to take them down. Or they gather outside shops, communal buildings and particularly around …
How universities killed the academic
Po-faced poIs it possible to write a satirical campus novel anymore? Satire requires exaggeration and the pointed introduction of absurdity, but it is hard to see how modern university life could be further embellished in these respects. As usual, there …
How universities killed the academic
Po-faced poIs it possible to write a satirical campus novel anymore? Satire requires exaggeration and the pointed introduction of absurdity, but it is hard to see how modern university life could be further embellished in these respects. As usual, there …
Rochdale has already lost this election
Rochdale is a terrible place to live. I spent time there in the late Nineties reporting on the grooming gangs and found a toxic mix of self-serving politicians, poor policing, grinding hardship and failing social services. The borough has one …
How Islamophobic is Lee Anderson?
Sometime during the late 20th century, the Irish Republican movement decided to align itself with the Palestinian cause in an attempt to build — as they saw it — a kind of global anti-colonial alliance. In response, the Loyalist movement …
Fifty years on, who governs?
After months of speculation, the beleaguered Conservative prime minister summoned the cameras to Downing Street to make a special announcement. The economy was stagnating and his attempts to bring down inflation had been hammered by an energy crisis. Public sector …
Britain doesn’t need a sick king
If we were living in the world of mythology, King Charles’s cancer might have some dire consequences. It’s possible that the entire economy would collapse, famine would kill off millions of citizens and those who survived might perish of plague. …
Black panthers are roaming Britain
Last summer, I was driving along a country road at dusk when a great, black cat appeared in front of me. Far longer than any Labrador, it slunk demurely across the path and into a hedgerow. I turned at once …
The Nigel Farage of Edwardian England
Horatio Bottomley was never taken very seriously by political commentators. Even his “remarkable conjunction of names is quite enough to create mirth”, mocked one newspaper. But for 15 years or so, either side of the First World War, he was …