Peter Mandelson
How the cranks won
Britain’s ruling ideology is founded less on what elites believe than on who they fear
The emperor’s old advisor
McSweeney’s performance before MPs suggests age and experience hasn’t brought clarity — only better excuses
The real problem with rigmarole
A journalistic focus on proceduralism distracts us from deeper political questions
The original sin
It should not have been difficult to see that there were problems with appointing Peter Mandelson
The man who knew too little
Faced with Mandelson, Starmer offers a bold defence: he didn’t know, and that’s what makes him blameless
Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law
Punishing anyone before they have even been convicted of anything makes me uneasy
Denial or confession?
Mandelson is a true prince of the logocracy, whose greatest skill was, and still is, the emptying of language of fixed meaning
Inner and outer Badenoch
On Good Morning Britain, Kemi Badenoch discovered that live television is less forgiving than Conservative HQ
Starmer’s countdown begins
With authority drained, discipline gone and rivals circling, the Prime Minister’s survival is now a matter of timing
Et tu, Anas?
McSweeney is out — and so are the knives
Most Read
American strategy in Iran is wiser than it seems
President Trump’s intervention will leave the world safer than it was
The lonely death of Henry Nowak
We must draw lessons from a horrendous and disgraceful case
Rewatching the English
English identity has become too surreal and discomfiting to define
Saint Nicola
Nicola Sturgeon wants sympathy for her husband’s crimes—but after years spent avoiding awkward questions, her latest reinvention may be the hardest sell yet.
A failed war on fags
The black market has taken over the tobacco trade Down Under
Critical briefing: Belgian Channel crossings
How the geographical spread of Channel crossings has been widening
In defence of lunchtime drinks
Hannah Spencer is being a tedious puritan
Countryside counter-attack
A ban on trail hunting reveals a government more interested in cultural punishment than rural survival
Knowingly crass and conflicted
This American culture is hegemonic because even to steal from it is to propel it
Eroticism and intrigue
Out of Vienna (Alpha-Classics)
The truth about Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was actually a black woman
What Louis Theroux ignores
Pea-brained influencers make for an easier target than Islamic misogyny
Manchesterism is dead in the water
Andy Burnham already appears to have abandoned hope for meaningful change
Paean to a green and pleasant land
The finest living example of that perennial English type, the countryman-writer
The fire in him
Gary Oldman is superb in Krapp’s Last Tape at the Royal Court
The Mexican baby business
In UK courts, parental orders for children born overseas outnumber those born to surrogates here