Politics
Dinner party talk won’t help Gaza
I’m one of the Silent People who sit on the sidelines of the great political events and debates of the…
Britain shouldn’t put up with Donald Trump
History is the march of folly and far too many of my countrymen are hearkening to a drumbeat which would…
The National have bungled their Rishi Sunak satire
The Estate begins with a typical NHS story. An elderly Sikh arrives in A&E after a six-hour wait for an…
Could Japan soon be governed by chatbots?
Tokyo Could Japan be the world’s first -algocracy – government by algorithm? The concept has been flirted with elsewhere: in…
‘Let Keir be Keir’: inside the cabinet’s away day
Labour ministers face a range of terrible political choices, but when the cabinet met for an away day at Chequers…
How governments gaslight
The posters now plastered around German public swimming pools are so hilarious that you may have seen them already. Keeping…
The vicious genius of Adam Curtis
In an interview back in 2021, Adam Curtis explained that most political journalists couldn’t understand his films because they aren’t…
Being stalked by a murderer was just one of life’s problems – Sarah Vine
At times one cannot believe what the Gove family endured during frontline government service, and politics gets much of the blame as Vine looks back over the wreckage
A small world: Shibboleth, by Thomas Peermohamed Lambert, reviewed
A satire on Oxford university life points up ideological tensions, the pettiness of college politics and the patronising ways of the young and privileged
Rachel Reeves, the Iron Chancer
Gordon Brown may not be every teenager’s political pin-up. But as an Oxford student, Rachel Reeves proudly kept a framed…
Britain needs reform
This week’s spending review confirms that where there should be conviction, there is only confusion; where there should be vision,…
Delightful nostalgia for political wonks: The Gang of Three, at the King’s Head Theatre, reviewed
The Gang of Three gets into the nitty-gritty of Labour politics in the 1970s. It opens with the resignation of…
My apology to Reform
I have read countless commentaries explaining why we shouldn’t take Reform’s victories last Thursday too seriously. They are all wrong.…
A football regulator would be an own goal
It’s that time of the year again in football when the Championship sweeps all before it: it’s full of joy…
The benign republic of Julian Barnes
The novelist presents his utopia – of unilateral disarmament and the public ownership of transport – in the tone of a thoughtful vicar giving an anodyne sermon somewhere in the Home Counties
My brush with a rabid money
India A crowded bus station. A lady monkey with a baby clinging to its neck sidled past me, eyeing the banana…
Meet the Zoomer Doomers: Britain’s secret right-wing movement
One of the striking aspects of the AfD’s success in the German elections was the party’s popularity among the young,…
Modernisation has sent Russia spinning back to the Stone Age
Howard Amos portrays a once hopeful country now sweeping the past under the carpet as it alternates between pitying itself and pitting itself against the rest of the world
Reversing our economic decline is not easy, but it is simple
We are becoming poorer because we keep choosing to increase spending, taxes and debt, rather than incurring any short-term discomfort, argues Jon Moynihan
It’s moving to think how happy Van Gogh was in Brixton
When a phrase really takes off in the political sphere, you will recognise it by the frequency with which it…
My guide to liberals
Last Saturday I was making my way across the road from St Pancras to King’s Cross when I noticed a…
Time is running out to tackle the dangers posed by AI
While we can all appreciate the benefits of AI, it is developing faster than anyone imagined, with no consensus on what constitutes acceptable risk
Donald Trump and new political disorder
Donald Trump isn’t back in the White House yet, but already his victory is being felt across the world. Greenland…
Brutal and brilliant portrait of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford
The Last Days of Liz Truss? is a one-woman show about the brief interregnum between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.…
Has the term ‘racist’ become devalued through overuse?
Adam Rutherford 4 January 2025 9:00 am
Quite possibly. But racism remains all too real today – even though half the British population deny it exists