Why billionaires are so uncool

“A million dollars isn’t cool,” Sean Parker explains to a jejune Mark Zuckerberg in the 2010 film The Social Network. “You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.” This single line of dialogue portended a major shift in global culture. “Cool” …

Big Tech has stolen our children

“Internet addiction” has lived a strange life since the Nineties. In 1995, a New York psychiatrist introduced the term, not to describe a real affliction of internet users, but to parody certain diagnostic tendencies in his field. Then other people, …

Is Nato heading for nuclear war?

On Monday, Europe crossed yet another red line in its ever-escalating, no-longer-so-proxy war against Russia. In a hastily arranged meeting of European leaders in Paris — a response to significant Russian breakthroughs on the Ukrainian frontline over the past few …

Centrist McCarthyism is taking hold

Why are so many working-class voters rebelling against the centre-left? For those establishment politicians being spurned in favour of populist movements, there is a straightforward answer: the masses, in turning away, are ignorant, delusional and bigoted.

Nowhere is this more …

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 …