Features
The real reason VAR has ruined football
The two main harms of government regulation, to be balanced against any benefits, are cost and delay. But there is…
Just how bad are Nato’s armies?
Given the relative sizes of their economies, one might conclude that Russia would quake before the military might of Europe’s…
‘J.D. Vance was right’: Is Europe finally waking up?
Munich, Germany The organisers of the Munich security conference weren’t subtle. A large statue of an elephant stood in one…
The truth about Britain’s hollowed-out armed forces
When Keir Starmer was told his pledge to raise defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP in the next…
All aboard the last bus out of Mousehole
It was lucky that the bus was behind schedule – mainly because the driver had stepped out to take his…
Who would Inspector Rebus support in the Scottish Premiership?
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme asks me to champion a favourite book and I choose Muriel Spark’s The Prime of…
Revealed: David Lammy’s curious relationship with Guyanese Big Oil
Better not tell Ed Miliband, but in spring 2022 his then shadow cabinet colleague, David Lammy, appears to have struck…
Europeans love offal – why don’t we?
The British used to love offal but now we tend to be a bit wimpy about it, unlike the French…
The gangs terrifying the countryside
Sergeant Rob Goacher was on patrol recently when the radio crackled with a tip-off. Two men were hare coursing –…
The horror of the male wig
Horrible injuries are commonplace in boxing but none, surely, has been quite so devastating as that sustained by the heavyweight…
‘Authority is like virginity. Once it’s gone, it’s gone’: Inside Keir Starmer’s downfall
Years ago, Peter Mandelson shared a key lesson with his protégé Morgan McSweeney. Reminiscing about his involvement in Labour’s 1987…
How Jeff Bezos destroyed the Washington Post
The debacle of the Washington Post’s hara-kiri last week dispatched the myth that a tech billionaire could save journalism. Jeff…
Apart from Mandelson, who is Labour’s biggest freebie lover?
Keir Starmer is Labour’s king of freebies. He promised to clean up politics, but has accepted more free stuff than…
‘Yes, it’s that bad’: inside Oxford’s Saïd Business School
How do you get into the University of Oxford? It is a question asked by thousands of young people every…
How Andrew could save the royal family
The tsunami of Jeffrey Epstein material released this month has been both horrifying and gratifying. It makes clear the extent…
What explains the weird military hype around Al Carns?
If Keir Starmer resigned tomorrow, the Labour party would be thrown into confusion. None of its factions has an obvious…
Meet the Jellycat kidults
On the fourth floor of Selfridges, in London, is the children’s toy department. Most of the vast space is given…
Is Keir Starmer prepared for the AI-pocalypse?
Is there any area of public policy which Keir Starmer’s government has got right? ‘Where very little is working, AI…
The Epstein Files are a reminder that emails live forever
Still they keep coming: email after email from Jeffrey Epstein’s personal correspondence, along with the almost unmanageable amount of other…
The glaring flaw in Keir Starmer’s AI plan
Like Harold Wilson and his ill-defined ‘white heat of technology’, Keir Starmer has latched on to artificial intelligence as the…
AI is coming for the lanyard class
Forgive me. I am going to begin by quoting two prominent left-wing Londoners – and agreeing with one. In a…
‘I want to stop the Antichrist’ – can Peter Thiel succeed?
Last December, we flew to Los Angeles to interview Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech tycoon and co-founder of PayPal. We…
The secrets of Putin’s shadow fleet
Of all the weapons in Vladimir Putin’s arsenal, the most strategically crucial has proved to be not hypersonic missiles but…
The inconvenient truth about polar bears
The BBC reported terrible news last week about polar bears: they are thriving. This is very annoying of them as…
Our armed forces are hollow – and our enemies know it
When you’re the chief of the defence staff, the head of the British armed forces, it’s never a good sign…
