World
How Britain can win again
It is time to win again. Britain does not have to be in decline. The state of our country today…
JCB hand £200k to Reform and Tories
The battle on the right is well underway, with competition between Reform and the Tories for attention, ideas and personnel.…
James Watson deserved better
James Watson has died at the great age of 97. Obituaries of the American scientist, who, with his late British…
What the heck is Rachel Reeves up to?
Welcome to my first Evening Blend. Unless there are earth-shattering events each Friday, my intention is to try to cut…
The October Budget was Reeves’s original sin
With hindsight, Rachel Reeves’s first Budget in October last year looks even worse than it did at the time. It…
Britain has imported Ireland’s sectarian strife
At times, I still hear my late father, Sean O’Callaghan’s, voice echoing in my mind. Sean died in 2017 but…
The French state is ashamed of its rose queens
Every summer in small French towns from Créon in the Gironde to Salency in the Oise, a young woman dressed…
No, Elon Musk: we Brits aren’t hobbits
‘When Tolkien wrote about the hobbits, he was referring to the gentlefolk of the English shires, who don’t realise the…
We begged Hollywood for Sydney Sweeney
Sydney Sweeney is back in the news again, because the news keeps making the news about Sydney Sweeney. This week,…
Is Labour trying to make life harder for poor kids like me?
Bridget Phillipson and I have a lot in common. Like the Education Secretary, who started life in a council house…
When will the prisons minister face up to the jail crisis?
The latest episode in the rolling farce that is His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service was this week revealed to be yet another foreign-born…
Prevent’s purpose is drifting from terrorism
When I was a Prevent counter terror officer a decade ago our case load was largely focused on Islamist terrorism…
Why has Martine Croxall been censured by the BBC?
Martine Croxall’s eyes spoke louder than her words when she corrected the clumsy and unnatural use of ‘pregnant people’ on…
Can Ukraine afford Zelensky’s winter giveaway?
Since taking office in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky’s decisions have often been a mix of blatant populism and good intentions. Today,…
Sports are finally giving up on virtue-signalling
Thank heavens for that. English football clubs will no longer have a minute’s silence for tragedies like floods, earthquakes and…
Reeves set to break manifesto pledge – and hike income tax
Rachel Reeves billed her £38 billion in tax increases last year – the biggest tax-rising Budget since Black Wednesday – as…
When the oldest hatred came to Villa Park
‘Scum’ barked at a Jewish man for the crime of taking a small Israel flag from his bag. ‘Get the…
Hatred was the winner in Maccabi Tel Aviv’s game against Aston Villa
On the field, last night’s losers were Maccabi Tel Aviv, beaten 2-0 by Aston Villa in their Europa League match.…
Jordan Bardella: the right-wing Mamdani?
There was a time when the French left turned its nose up at all things American. Too low-brow for them.…
Is it only left-wing leaders who are allowed to be young?
There was a time when the French left turned its nose up at all things American. Too low-brow for them.…
Top Tory team suffer bad night
After a decent conference speech, there was some hope among the Tories that Kemi Badenoch had finally turned the corner.…
The SNP’s useless land revolution
Few would argue that Scotland’s present pattern of land tenure is ideal. Around half of private land is owned by…
The looming threat to Israel
In the aftermath of war, a new front opens. Not in the ruins of Gaza’s cities, but in the corridors…
Will the Supreme Court force Trump to repay tariffs?
The most important thing to know about the Trump administration’s defense of its hotly contested use of tariffs to bring…
Is it too soon to say the truth about Dick Cheney?
Long before Donald Trump arrived on the political scene to warp all international diplomacy and finance around him, there were…
