Shadow Cabinet
Reform has the real “Shadow Cabinet”
Establishment gatekeeping is as futile as it is absurd
Riding the fire horse
Nigel Farage has offered more questions than answers in a promising but perilous year for Reform
I Am Drama, says Starmer
“Here, have Yvette Cooper,” said 2008
Rebecca Long Bailey – classroom warrior
On schools policy, Keir Starmer is no heir to Blair
Most Read
American strategy in Iran is wiser than it seems
President Trump’s intervention will leave the world safer than it was
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.
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
A failed war on fags
The black market has taken over the tobacco trade Down Under
A profound Tory
Simon Heffer’s biography of Enoch Powell very much deserves revisiting
Beauty from the ruins of war
Painting gave artists and their viewers a temporary way out of the grim wartime reality
A below-par Riley is still better than most
The Palm House by
Gwendoline Riley; My Death by Lisa
Tuttle; Still Talking by Lore Segal
Britain must maintain its cultural inheritance
We should not allow our masterpieces to disappear overseas
Is Keir Starmer failing?
To fail at something, he would have to do something
Ring engagement
The Mash meets The Ring!
Too starstruck to see Marilyn’s faults
Only Some Like It Hot endures, though not because of anything Monroe does in it
Keeping the faith
Brexit triumphalists can’t understand how other people living in the UK in 2026 do not share their enthusiasm
Our new five-party system
First-past-the-post no longer means
an electoral carve-up between the
Tories and Labour, allowing “fringe”
parties real political influence
The malignant mediocrity of managerialism
A country ruled by lawyers and HR managers will be culturally desiccated and politically sclerotic
Exile and exaltation
Bohuslav Martinu: The Symphonies (Deutsche Grammophon)