Nigel Farage is a study in contrasts. He’s the Dulwich College-educated former investment commodities broker who has defined his political career in opposition to the establishment. A Thatcherite disciple, his project is the ruin of her party. And, for a …
How Britain forgot Keighley’s grooming gangs
“If you want to write an article on grooming gangs in Keighley, please don’t.” The local councillor bristles. “Keighley is a pretty town,” he retorts. And he’s right.
Blanketed in two inches of snow, Keighley is a feast of pretty …
What the Left gets wrong about moral panics
Does fear and rage suffuse your body whenever you read the news or look at social media? Have you considered you might be in the grip of a moral panic? For there is, if you believe the headlines, a lot …
Britain can’t cope with nuclear power
In 2010, Nick Clegg made a fateful intervention against nuclear power. On the eve of becoming deputy prime minister, the then-Lib Dem claimed that building new reactors would take too long: they wouldn’t “come on stream” until about 2021 or …
Lessons in antisemitism from the NEU
Perhaps the clues were always there. When the “national education union” was formed in 2017, it dispensed with the rules of grammar for its new image. Capital letters, typically used for proper nouns, were dispensed with in its logo. This …
How Justin Welby hollowed out the Church
Most media comment about Justin Welby has naturally focused on the safeguarding lapses that triggered his downfall. What of the wider landscape? In big-picture terms, his 12 years as Archbishop of Canterbury involved a reprise of George Carey’s Evangelical vision …
Elon Musk: neo-feudal prince
In a surreal cascade of events, the internet personality Andrew Tate has launched a political party. He has done this seemingly in response to a resurgence of interest in the scandal of Britain’s predominantly Pakistani Muslim “grooming gangs”, as these …
Why we can’t escape the Victorians
Charles Dickens never used profanity, despite publishing several million words of prose. It’s exactly the sort of titbit that makes us imagine history was much the same: that before the 20th century, there was never any swearing, nor much sexiness, …
Why the police ignored the rape gangs
The statistics behind the rape gang scandal — let’s banish the wholly inadequate word “grooming” — are staggering. For over 25 years, networks of men, predominantly from Pakistani Muslim backgrounds, abused young white girls from Yeovil to London to Glasgow. …
The dangerous aesthetic of psych-ward TikTok
“Welcome to a day in the life of a psych-ward patient.” A TikTok creator called BPD Babe rolls out of a bed full of cuddly toys. Awaiting a consultation, she kicks her Crocs in the air with excitement, like a …
The myth of cultural unity
During her campaign to lead the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch described women from ethnic minorities who, when she was canvassing during the election, would hand the matter over instantly to their husbands saying: “I can’t speak to you.” This is …
Liberalism won’t survive 2025
It is an odd feature of America’s political system that the drawn-out handover of power from one ruler to his successor takes place over the Christmas holidays: the liminal moment when the waning year gives birth to its successor, a …
Snobs miss the rare beauty of darts
A world-champion darts player writes home…
Dear Mother and Father,
Shame you can’t congratulate me. I am, I know, a disappointment to you. You hoped I would follow in your footsteps and become a literary critic or expositor of abstruse …
Why girls deserve a drink
Remember those first moments of alcohol-fuelled exhilaration when you were young? The energy rising lightly in your solar plexus and making your cheeks ache from smiling; and how time would drop away, so that there was only now, tonight, this? …
Is the Tradwife just a kink?
Picture this. Christmas morning — my many, many rosy-cheeked children barge into the bedroom. Me and my strapping, hairy husband Brick are a bit bleary-eyed, but no matter. He can lie in. I float downstairs: around the locally felled, artisan-bauble-bedecked …