For all their drama, and barring an Israeli counter-escalation, the weekend’s events do not change the course of the Gaza War. Six months in, the campaign has been a disaster for all concerned, apart from Iran and its regional allies. …
Is this the end of Angela Rayner?
Why shouldn’t the Tories make the most of Angela Rayner’s personal housing crisis? When you’re short of electoral options, there’s nothing better than punching your opponent’s bruise. If the police investigation launched yesterday reveals anything, it will land Starmer with …
The liberal lessons of the Cass Report
Pity poor Dr Hilary Cass, the eminent paediatrician charged with managing an independent review of NHS gender services for young people, whose final report was published this week. Given the hair-trigger sensibilities of interested parties, she seems to have been …
Will David Cameron cause WW3?
It’s hard to imagine a better metaphor for the miserable state of UK politics than David Cameron flying across the Atlantic in the hope of convincing America to continue funding a bloody war on Europe’s doorstep — only to fail …
The Cass Report’s cowardly converts
On International Women’s Day in 2022, Yvette Cooper seemed unable to define a woman: “People get themselves down rabbit holes on this,” she said. “I’m avoiding going down this rabbit hole.” Attempting to distract from this inability, she called for …
Can the Cass Report really be enforced?
When the US astronomer Carl Sagan stated that “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence”, he was riffing on an idea that has influenced the scientific method since the mid-1700s. If we are to conclude extraordinary things, ideas that conflict with what …
The toxic trope of ‘benefit scroungers’
The quickest way for a weak government to score cheap points with a sceptical electorate is to announce a load of stuff it’s going to “crack down” on. And so, in the past year we’ve had crackdowns on single-use vapes, …
Your boss doesn’t care about your feelings
You’re at work one day when your company’s “wellness” department begins handing out “emoji” stickers with words like “frustrated”, “overwhelmed”, and “stressed” printed below their creepy yellow faces. No one uses them, of course. But the message is clear: “[Insert …
The assisted-dying lobby has already won
What counts as a “dignified death”? On Monday, we got an intimation of what one looks like for Guardian readers, as journalist Renate van der Zee wrote about her elderly mother’s “completely calm, almost cheerful” legal demise at the hands …
Britain needs to deploy Warhammer
If the BBC is the cultural expression of the British state, then the omens are surely unfavourable. Its funding contested and overstretched, bogged down in interminable culture war disputes, the BBC does not know what it is for. Every few …
Britain’s future is Pagan
The West Country is better known for Poldark’s smoulder than the fires of Paganism. But, as a local Heathen priest, I can assure you that the Pagan revival down here is in full swing. Just last week, a builder working …
Scotland’s hateful hate-crime law
If the Scottish establishment is to be believed, ordinary Scots are positively frothing with hatred at the moment. Already Police Scotland record “non-crime hate incidents”, based solely on an onlooker’s perception of hatred, as a matter of course. But this …
The village that made Nigel Farage
In almost all respects, life for Reform UK’s “honorary president” couldn’t be any better at the moment. About to turn 60, Nigel Farage is earning more than ever, drinking less (a third of what he used to, he told me), …
Kate is not your drama queen
Just over a decade ago, the late novelist Hilary Mantel delivered a lecture to an event at the London Review of Books and triggered national outrage. In the course of a talk on “Royal Bodies”, which ranged widely across royal …
The lost art of hedgelaying
Among the rural professions, we hedgelayers get an easier time of it than most. Not in a physical sense, of course. Laying hedges is skilled hard graft. By the end of the season, which runs from the first day of …