World
Parents should share blame for plummeting school attendance
Is school optional nowadays? Last year, 140,000 children were classed as ‘severely absent’ from the classroom, a rise of 134…
Lloyd Austin’s medical mystery scandal
Questions are growing over who knew what, and when, about the hospitalization of the defense secretary Lloyd Austin, the most senior…
The unbearably smug spectacle of the Golden Globes
Does anybody actually watch televised Hollywood award shows anymore unless, like me, they’re being paid to? Until ‘The Incident’ at…
What’s the truth about the US defence secretary’s mystery illness?
Questions are growing over who knew what, and when, about the hospitalisation of the American Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, the most…
The depressing world of influencers
Walid Sharks is taking a nasty beating at the AO Arena in Manchester. It’s the second round of his fight…
Theresa May gets her Brexit dividend
There’s nothing so ex as an ex-Prime Minister. But while the likes of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and David Cameron…
The Post Office scandal was too boring for politicians to fix
The government is now ‘under pressure’ over the Post Office Horizon IT scandal. The pressure comes in the form of…
Fact check: Sunak’s ‘tax cut’ claims
Rishi Sunak seems to have a New Year’s resolution: to claim that taxes are falling and say it so often…
Does the Prime Minister believe in the Rwanda scheme?
Does Rishi Sunak believe in Rwanda? An election year has begun, with Rishi Sunak still struggling in the polls and…
What do Munroe Bergdorf and Andrew Tate have in common?
For inadequate men scared by self-willed women, by the start of the 21st century, things were getting dangerously out of hand. The old right-wing ‘Kinder, Küche,…
Russia’s egg shortage is panicking Putin
The fall of the house of the Romanovs in 1917 may have been a long time coming, but arguably it…
Keir Starmer says it best when he says nothing at all
There is a modern country music standard called ‘When You Say Nothing At All’. The song, taken to the top…
Why German farmers are taking on the ruling coalition
He wanted to get away from it all. The splendid solitude of the tiny North Sea island of Hooge was…
Is Japan finally embracing immigration?
Japan has long been known for its steadfast refusal to submit to the allure of large-scale immigration, as a country…
The dark side of Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina
Politics in Bangladesh is very much a one-woman show, starring prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who has ruled the country for…
Why hasn’t Russia collapsed?
Following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the calamitous, early missteps of the Russian army, many Western…
The sad world of the online influencer
Walid Sharks is taking a nasty beating at the AO Arena in Manchester. It’s the second round of his fight against…
George Floyd was no martyr
To write that George Floyd died is to take a position. The received belief is that he was murdered – a murder bigger, in…
Russia is still very much a security threat inside the UK
At 1.30 p.m. on 7 September 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident and BBC journalist, approached a bus stop at the…
Who cares about the FA Cup?
The third round of the FA Cup, underway this weekend, is one of the highlights of the football calendar –…
The Reform party is just another Thatcherite redux
What exactly does the Reform party stand for? Helpfully, its leader Richard Tice gave a press conference on Wednesday at which he…
Biden’s phony January 6 memorialization
It’s fright month in Joe Biden’s America, folks. Today, January 5, the president will travel to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to…
Why the left poses a greater threat to American civic order
Over a leg of lamb, I joined five other expat Americans for Christmas. Our topic du jour was which faction in our…
The trouble with Armando Iannucci
Armando Iannucci is a bit of a mystery to me. With shows like The Day Today and The Thick of It, he created…
When will Rory Stewart’s time come?
Can a dose of moral earnestness revive Tory fortunes? This is the question raised by Rory Stewart’s recent memoir, Politics…
