Why the populists failed

If you want to feel a certain sense of dread, look around you, at the accumulating challenges facing Western societies, and at the leaders chosen to manage them. The archetypal, boringly competent, technocratic politician of the past 40 years stands …

Can Liz Truss tell a story?

The most arresting opening to a wedding speech I have come across started thus: “Being asked to give the Best Man’s speech is a bit like being asked to have sex with the Queen Mother.” The audience gasped, clearly a …

Poverty is not inevitable

The energy companies are drowning in dollars, while a season of strikes continues to dismay much of the media. Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News talks about “taking on” the trade unions, as though they were a bunch of armed …

What does Liz Truss see in Canada?

Faced with soaring costs of living, increased collateral damage from the war in Ukraine, and widening national inequality, Liz Truss seemed curiously optimistic in her first speech as Prime Minister. What could possibly be driving such bullishness? Absent any sign …

Schools shouldn’t fly BLM flags

After more than two years of disruption, American schoolchildren are finally returning to something approaching normal education — in-person, and without masks or social distancing or other “non-pharmaceutical interventions”. But many of these children are returning transformed. Last week, data …

How Labour can beat Truss

Tony Blair used to say that the worst thing about being in opposition was that you would wake up every morning thinking about what you wanted to say, while government ministers were waking up thinking about what they were going …