Columns
Keir Starmer may have a better chance of taking Labour to power than anyone expected
First impressions matter in politics. Once the public have made their mind up about a politician, they rarely change it.…
The corona curtain-twitchers are watching
Welcome, then, to a country in which the police send drones to humiliate people taking a walk and dried pasta…
The longer lockdown continues, the more imperilled we become
Comically, Chinese Communist party officials have speculated that Covid-19 was planted by the US army. Yet a respectable conspiracy theorist…
My isolation reading list
A psychiatrist once told me that it takes one’s subconscious about three weeks to catch up with a significant life…
Don’t let anyone tell you there’s a war on
‘Shut up — don’t you know there’s a war on?’ Strong hints of that attitude have emerged in recent weeks,…
How will the ‘war’ on coronavirus change Britain?
In the past ten days we have seen the greatest expansion of state power in British history. The state has…
The world of make-believe is stranger than we realise
Last summer, in the bc era, I took my then three-year-old to a new group play session: ‘Lottie’s Magic Box.’…
In this strange new world, where do we find purpose?
Perhaps we are at least past the beginning of this crisis. The phase where the hunt for multipacks of loo-rolls…
Shakespeare knew a thing or two about self-isolation
‘Now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in To saucy doubts and fears.’ Shakespeare got there first, as ever, and…
There’s no sign of apocalypse in East Finchley – yet
I was mansplaining to my wife earlier this week about why we ought to be very, very concerned by the…
Don’t tell me what I can read
At least none of us will have to pretend that we read Woody Allen’s memoirs. This week the publishers Hachette…
Britain has its first punk-rock government
The most surprising thing about the letter from Guardian and Observer journalists moaning about Suzanne Moore’s supposed ‘transphobia’ is that…
The test of the Budget
British politics has not lost its flair for the dramatic. If it was not enough to have Sajid Javid resign…
An open letter to the friend who dropped me after Question Time
I’ve put off sending a private email that’s been ready to go for weeks. Then last Sunday, I read Julie…
A guide to coronavirus hoarding
We have now got past the absurd stage of glaring in a reproachful manner at Chinese people on the tube.…
The unbearable lightness of Boris Johnson
Months ago, not long after Boris Johnson’s 2019 general election triumph, I wrote a Times column of a cautiously hopeful…
The Budget’s corona contagion
When Sajid Javid resigned in a row with No. 10, there was much speculation about what would be in the…
