Columns
How Covid-19 will change the Tory party
Politics is full of events that are meant to change everything but actually do little. Yet the coronavirus crisis will…
We’re all guilty of recruiting this virus to our cause
There must be a quote from Shakespeare for this, but so far I haven’t found it. It’s the way we…
The joy of short stories in these taxing times
From time to time, usually when things are quiet, the government brings on the dancing girls. David Cameron made Carol…
The British have bought the lockdown hook, line and sinker
I am a type. I don’t like groups. I maintain few memberships. I question and resist authority, especially enforcement of…
There’s nothing equal about this virus
Filthy germ-laden townsfolk were out and about on the footpaths near my home on Easter Sunday, dragging with them their…
The online museums you’ll never want to leave
‘We don’t talk about the war.’ Yet those of my generation and older reference it daily. The coronavirus is an…
Coronavirus has made amateur mathematicians of us all
‘What is the point of learning maths? When do you ever actually need it? How does it ever affect your…
Monkeys, bats and our national trust
There was always one key flaw in our species. Which is that someone always shags a monkey. I have expressed…
If anything is ‘essential’ right now, it’s cigarettes
The owners of my local grocery shop, a mile or so from my house, very kindly sell me cigarettes in…
Dominic Raab is the constitutional choice, but a complicated one
We have never had a moment like this before in our history: a time when the Prime Minister is, in…
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.…
