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CHAMPAGNE SOCIALISM BURNS FRENCH CULTURE – and Australia’s descent into censorship | S3 Ep 24

In this episode: Far-left riots bring France to its knees while President Macron attends #CelineDion concert. Australia’s Royal Commission into…

THE GREEN GROCERS OF THE APOCALYPSE – communism is back in fashion | S3 Ep 23

In this episode: The ‘Green’ Grocers of the apocalypse bringing communism via your weekly shop. Victoria collapsing underfoot – but…

ALBO, THE COFFEE WHISPERER – Labor might be the worst economic managers of all time | S3 Ep 22

In this episode… Albo’s ‘not-so-cheap’ coffee. ☕️ Is Jim Chalmers a good Treasurer? Is the 5% house deposit scheme causing…

Left-wing violence

In a recent speech, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned about the deadly danger of left-wing activism, claiming that…

The left’s fraudulent language

Many years ago, I was on an appointments committee to select between two candidates for a lecturing position in the…

24 Oct 2026

Voters should have the right to remain silent

A man picked up by police on suspicion of robbing a petrol station is entitled to say nothing. Not a…

24 Oct 2026

Let the Brethren hand out

Australia is talking about religious freedom again. Allegra Spender wants to restrict the exemptions under which religious schools make decisions…

24 Oct 2026

Praising and censuring

Let’s hand out some bouquets and brickbats this week. Start with the praise.  Angus Taylor and the Libs have nailed…

24 Oct 2026

One Nation must de-woke Victoria, because the Libs won’t

Labor in Victoria is rotten at two levels – economic and cultural. If the Liberal leader, Jess Wilson, and the…

24 Oct 2026

Australian notes

I sometimes wonder if Greg Sheridan reads his own columns. In last Saturday’s Australian he has penned a jeremiad which…

24 Oct 2026

The lost decade they made for us

Australia used to be good at getting richer. In the ten years to 2012, real national income per head grew…

24 Oct 2026

Why is the Albanese government so vindictive?

Governments of the doctrinaire far left, such as the Albanese government, share certain defining instincts which are truly appalling. These…

24 Oct 2026

Albanese fans the flames

Brendan Nugent describes himself on X as a ‘plant person’ who believes ‘The world should be run by dogs and…

24 Oct 2026

Conservative leadership

Sorry, Josh, you had your go. And you blew it. Politics is both a brutal and an unforgiving game. As…

If socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists

Nobel Prize-winning economist, Friederich Hayek, argued the price system and market competition are the only effective ways to organise a…

17 Oct 2026

The New Statesman open letter is wrong about Palestine Action

Proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist group was probably the most contentious action Yvette Cooper ever took as home secretary.…

22 Oct 2026

What do Italy’s rioters want?

‘Facciamo come in Francia!’ shouted the masked and hooded rioters on Sunday in Milan and other major Italian cities, notably…

22 Oct 2026

Labour isn’t going to stop the Boriswave

Labour aren’t going to stop the Boriswave settling. That’s the truth. As someone who, last November, praised the Home Secretary…

22 Oct 2026

Lola-Fleur and the long tradition of radical babes

On Monday night, with the glass still being swept up from the latest événements, French viewers were offered a spectacle…

22 Oct 2026

Is Abdul El-Sayed racist?

In his failed 2020 presidential campaign, “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg famously scored 0 percent with black voters in multiple polls.⁠ Abdul…

22 Oct 2026

Badenoch and Burnham seemed to enjoy sparring at PMQs

Andy Burnham had a reasonably easy Prime Minister’s Questions today. He didn’t produce any embarrassingly quotable slogans about national security…

22 Oct 2026

The humiliation of Miatta Fahnbulleh

Another week and another PMQs: Mr Burnham and Mrs Badenoch haven’t really had any major zingers yet, preferring a sort…

22 Oct 2026

Is Vladimir Putin once again stringing Donald Trump along?

Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff has been in St Petersburg today, meeting with Vladimir Putin to discuss American-led proposals…

22 Oct 2026

Is AI a bubble?

The news is full of speculation that we are about to see a bursting of a “bubble” in AI. “Will…

22 Oct 2026

Is this email hack an attempt to destroy the AfD?

Hundreds of thousands of private emails from Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have been hacked and published online, exposing…

22 Oct 2026

Vance’s delicate 2028 dance

JD. Vance is clearly trying to thread a needle as he prepares to run for the Republican presidential nomination next…

22 Oct 2026

The SNP’s craven support for the Jackdaw gas field

SNP leader John Swinney finally agrees with Westminster on something. The Holyrood first minister has welcomed Downing Street’s decision to…

22 Oct 2026

The dark horse who stands to benefit from France’s riots

Marine Le Pen is the political winner from the anarchy that erupted in France at the weekend. A poll conducted…

21 Oct 2026

What exactly is the point of the Covid inquiry?

The latest report of the Covid Inquiry has concluded that elderly care home residents were sacrificed to save the NHS…

21 Oct 2026

What’s really causing anti-Semitism in British schools

Sir David Bell’s report into anti-Semitism in schools (which will be published this afternoon but has been widely trailed) is…

21 Oct 2026

Labour backbenchers throw tantrum over Jackdaw

It has been mere hours since Andy Burnham gave the go-ahead to Jackdaw, and Labour backbenchers are already throwing a…

21 Oct 2026

Why you shouldn’t shrug at New Zealand’s greyhound racing ban

Greyhound racing ended in New Zealand on August 1. Those who neither own a greyhound nor care for the sport…

9 Aug 2026

A New Zealand republic in Jacinda Ardern’s lifetime?

New Zealand’s former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, believes the nation will become a republic within her lifetime. We have heard…

21 Jun 2026

The row over English becoming an official language of New Zealand

Parliamentarians in New Zealand have been limbering up for an oddly unedifying debate over what ought to be the most…

4 Mar 2026

What they don’t tell you about Christmas in New Zealand

‘I still think New Zealand the most beautiful country I have ever seen,’ Agatha Christie marvelled in 1922. Evidently she’s…

22 Dec 2025

Dear Mary: How can I stop my husband from telling the wrong anecdotes?

Q. My problem concerns lavatory usage. I have been staying with some new, much younger, friends who live on the…

24 Oct 2026

There is a logic to a tourist tax

As if our hospitality industry hadn’t experienced enough government abuse, last month saw yet another blow: permission for cities to…

24 Oct 2026

Who gives us ‘breathing space’ – John Healey or God?

The government jargon-turning mills must have rung to cheers of delight when the phrase breathing space was minted afresh, all…

24 Oct 2026

What cost-of-living crisis? A day at the Newmarket sales

Inspecting yearlings in the rain at Newmarket last Thursday was a bit like looking at girls in the Windmill Club…

17 Oct 2026

Instruments of war

Drum Major Henry Barnes Jackson was 40 years old, had served in the Great War in the British Army, and…

24 Oct 2026

How Sweden has kept communism at bay

Stay-behind cells in the second world war and the Cold War are familiar to students of intelligence and military history.…

24 Oct 2026

The end is nigh: Switzy, by Emma Cline, reviewed

Emma Cline’s first novel, The Girls (2016), sold more hardback copies than any other debut novel published in the UK…

24 Oct 2026

Dark, dank and mysterious: the haunting strangeness of boglands

‘Bog’ is an unlovely word, and the expressions in the bog lexicon – ‘bogged down’, ‘bog standard’, ‘bog off’ –…

24 Oct 2026

Alternative universes: Exit Party, by Emily St John Mandel, reviewed

The premise of this novel is weird and delightful. At a party in the year 2031, with the American civil…

24 Oct 2026

‘There’s a 50-50 chance I’ll get bumped off’: an American scholar foresees his death

On a drizzly morning in January 1984, Malcolm Kerr, the president of the American University of Beirut (AUB), was walking…

24 Oct 2026

The intellectual passions of J.R.R. Tolkien

It was December 1942 and J.R.R. Tolkien was having doubts about his new book, a sequel to The Hobbit published…

24 Oct 2026

Homesick for Tennessee: The Newer World, by Sebastian Barry, reviewed

‘I am become a name,’ Alfred Tennyson has Ulysses declare in his 1833 poem, an epigraph that sets up Sebastian…

24 Oct 2026