World
Sunday shows round-up: Wes Streeting says the NHS is ‘addicted to overspending’
This week, Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced their plan to abolish NHS England, which Starmer has said…
Is Rachel Reeves tough enough to cut disability benefits?
There are, as Rachel Reeves keeps telling us, some tough choices to be made. Whether she is personally tough enough…
It’s been a poor five years from Andrew Bailey
The pound has not collapsed. You can still trade shares, bonds and currencies in the City of London. And inflation,…
The Falkland Islands have become surprisingly diverse
What springs to mind when you think of the Falklands? You might imagine the wild, windswept landscape, sparsely populated by…
Can Dale Vince make Labour go even greener?
Dale Vince has donated millions of pounds to Labour, but the green energy tycoon is only just getting started in politics. Having helped remove the…
My day talking about penis size on the TfL cable car
For me, one of the great pleasures of public transport is getting into a conversation with a stranger. But in…
Why Sweden needs the bomb
Imagine the Guardian newspaper fully committing to increasing Britain’s stockpile of nuclear warheads. It may sound fanciful, but that’s the closest…
What The Leopard is really about
Written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa at the end of his life in the late 1950s, it is a novel…
The crocodile casualties of the second world war
At the end of February, 1945 about 1,000 surviving Japanese soldiers based on Ramree Island off the coast of Arakan,…
Skype was a relic of happier times
Sometimes epics end with a whimper not a bang. This is the case for Skype, whose demise Microsoft has announced…
Did Blair persuade Carney to run for PM?
To Canada, where Mark Carney is settling into his first week in the top job. The former Bank of England…
Will Trump’s spending bill luck run out?
It isn’t just a weekend of warmer weather for the President, who took off for Mar-a-Lago yesterday evening. It is…
Starmer insists ceasefire coalition has momentum
Following Thursday’s big speech on public sector reform, Sir Keir Starmer has since turned his attention back to foreign affairs.…
Can Chuck Schumer hang on?
Are the Democrats on the verge of their own Tea Party? This question is dogging the Democratic Party, as Senate…
Trump’s foreign policy isn’t unprincipled
“He [Donald Trump] sees American leadership as merely a series of real estate transactions.” That was the verdict of the…
Reeves reignites freebies row over Sabrina Carpenter show
It’s shaping up to be a difficult year for Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who is struggling to get many within her…
Reform are setting Labour’s agenda
No two politicians could be less alike than Sir Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage. But it looks as though the…
Ramadan can be a time of suffering for those who dare break the rules
Ramadan, which this year runs until the end of March, is viewed by Muslims as a time of compassion and…
Is Friedrich Merz floundering already?
Friedrich Merz promised to do things differently. Ahead of the country’s federal election last month, the likely next chancellor of…
‘Trump’s America has made a suicidal choice’: An interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy
Bernard-Henri Lévy is running on fumes. Plus ça change. “I slept as always last night, a few hours, with chemistry…
How Europe’s electric battery dream ran out of power
Setting ourselves stringent net zero targets will help us get ahead of other countries in the race to develop green…
How Reform can survive its civil war
After a spectacular week of feuding, opinion polls appear to show support for Reform UK remains unscathed. Reform somehow still…
The licence fee is at the root of the BBC’s problems
The BBC’s reputation is in shreds – again. Its Hamas propaganda film, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, had to be withdrawn after it…
Howard Hodgson is a tabloid survivor
Howard Hodgson ends lunch in a rage against unearned fame. ‘Marilyn Monroe: drunken actress,’ he says, ‘fat drunken actress. Gets killed. Ohhh!…
How good titles are chosen
Liszt’s compositions tend to have descriptive titles — “Wild Chase;” “Dreams of Love” — whereas Chopin avoided titles. Thomas Wentworth…
