Protest
Britain should resist copying the EU’s corporate responsibility law
Big corporations have a lot not to be proud of, and we certainly could do with laws to rein in…
Don’t ‘Kill the Bill’
Are the rights of protesters and the rights of all other citizens fairly balanced? Think back to the Extinction Rebellion…
Revolution and repression
Certain novels complicate the very notion of literary enjoyment. This, by the author of the international bestseller The Yacoubian Building,…
Eliminate the positive
Sam Byers’s worryingly zeitgeisty second novel, Perfidious Albion, imagined a post-Brexit dystopia dominated by global tech companies, corrupt spin doctors,…
Olympics’ organisers could regret banning ‘taking the knee’
Knee-taking and fist-raising protests have been banned at the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, with the International Olympic Committee warning athletes who flout the rules…
Models of obedience
Protests are being staged against the proposed bill to change the laws on protest. But there is a bigger issue…
Portrait of the week
Home The government sketched a scheme for a coronavirus passport, or ‘Covid status certification’, to be tried out at the…
Why will nobody publish my cartoons?
I am having very little success in getting my collection of cartoons of great religious founders published. Perhaps it is…
Normal life matters
I wonder exactly when we agreed that it is more of a priority to gather with strangers than to meet…
Portrait of the Week
Home More than 30 million had received their first dose vaccination. The government remained confident of supplying second doses and…
The year of living obediently
I wonder if British universities will follow Cornell’s innovative approach to ensuring students are protected from wretched viruses? The American…
In defence of Millwall fans
It is an enormous shame that the Millwall fans who booed their players for ‘taking a knee’ in support of…
Letter from Bangkok
Three years ago I sat down to write a novel set in my adopted home city. Placing its claustrophobic action…
Election notebook
Earlier this summer left-wing activists announced a ‘semi-autonomous zone’ in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle. Denuded of law enforcement…
The police’s picky attitude to protests
I’ve never been a great fan of public demonstrations. When I was at university, one of the great causes du…
US protestors are clearing the way for Trump
‘This city is not going to stop burning itself down until they [the protestors] know that this officer has been…
The mob are turning into Trump’s useful idiots
Protesters have been setting fire to yet another American city today to tell us that black lives matter. This latest…
The slipper revolution
Could this be the end for Europe’s last dictator?
Cancelling Kindergarten Cop is a step too far
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s late-Eighties to early-Nineties comedies have not gone down in history as great triumphs. Films like Junior and Twins…
Age of the Econian
The public school elite who rule the wokerati
Tear gas Ted
The mayor manning Portland’s barricades
Stone cold facts
Scotland’s statues attest to a history buried under sentimental nationalism
The lunacy of the ‘largely peaceful protest’
The great conundrum facing the anti-American left at the moment is how to react to the violent protest ripping up…
Open letters have become ransom notes
In the States, the ‘open letter’ is enjoying quite the formal renaissance. Curiously, recent examples of this newly popular epistolary…
LA Times thirsts after ‘Naked Athena’
‘She emerged as an apparition from clouds of tear gas’, writes Richard Read; ‘[a] woman wearing nothing but a black…
