‘Wherever Sir Stafford Cripps has tried to increase wealth and happiness,’ wrote the Conservative Scottish journalist Colm Brogan, ‘grass never grows again.’ But Roundup has its uses. When Brogan made this comment, Sir Stafford was Britain’s postwar ‘austerity’ chancellor of the exchequer, a post he held from 1947 to 1950. Dry as dust, Cripps had
Brexit won’t be over by 29 March 2019. Britain will legally leave the European Union on that date. But that won’t tell us what Britain’s future relationship with the bloc will be, or how closely aligned the UK will be to the EU. Those are questions for which we will have to wait for the
I was delighted to see Claire Foy win an Emmy award for her portrayal of the Queen in the fine Netflix series The Crown. It may have helped assuage her annoyance at initially being paid £200,000 less than her co-star, Matt Smith, who did a fairly good impersonation of a young, brooding Duke of Edinburgh.
Things I learned about the Germans after a fortnight living as a non–tourist in Frankfurt: 1. Germans, and Germany generally, are among the world’s most underrated things. True they are not so adept at wit, snark, banter, jocularity or general frivolity. But they are kind, welcoming, generous and unlike, say, the French, charmingly grateful
[Update: Mark Knight, the Australian cartoonist accused of racism for drawing Serena Williams, has deleted his social media accounts after receiving death threats to his family. References to his social media accounts have been removed from this article]. I have spent the morning trying to draw a cartoon of a black person without it being
I’ve always respected Alistair Darling and cannot imagine him saying anything ill-considered. But listening to him interviewed last Monday on the Today programme I heard him offer, as though it were obvious, an assumption so much less obvious than he appeared to recognise, that it set me thinking: not about the admirable former chancellor but
This column is not in my interest. But then, not for the first time. I cannot count the conversations conducted in recent years with reasonable, moderate people when expressing what should be reasonable, moderate views, during which my companions exhibit signs of drastic anxiety: fidgeting, darting pupils, twisting hands. The mumbling under the breath can
Over the summer, a no-deal Brexit became less likely. Eurosceptic ultras have been forced to be less blasé. The return of Steve Baker to the European Research Group, the lead Brexiteer bloc of MPs, has injected more realism into their discussions on the subject. Baker was involved with no-deal planning in government and has made
Abusing children is one of the most terrible things men do. We all agree about that. And I think we’re all aware, as Sajid Javid announced on Monday, that it’s a growing problem. The same technology that allows millions to share videos of romping kittens has created an awful, expanding market for images of children
Boy and I have been driving the Fawn mad by singing the ‘Johny Johny Yes Papa’ song. It goes (roughly to the tune Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star): ‘Johny Johny/ Yes, Papa/ Eating Sugar?/ No, Papa/ Telling Lies?/ No, Papa/ Open Your Mouth!/ Ha Ha Ha.’ In the likely event that you don’t know it, you’ll
I remember the moon landing very well. I was nine years old. I can remember too my sense of outrage and disillusion. ‘This is a blatant violation of the moon’s dignity and sovereignty,’ I told my parents, as the astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong attempted to secure the US flag to the lunar surface.
If I were Benjamin Netanyahu (and I’m not) I would be thanking whatever gods there be for sending me, at a tricky time, the most useful ally it is possible to imagine in UK politics. To Bibi’s aid has come probably the only man in Britain capable of single–handedly silencing public criticism of the Israeli
In a recent column, I vowed to return to a point made in passing. To refresh your memory, the American magazine the Nation printed a formal apology for running a harmless 14-line poem by a white writer about homelessness. The poet’s sins: using the word ‘cripple’ and adopting a voice lightly evoking what I gather
Every Wednesday morning in the House of Commons, about a dozen people can be seen making their way along the committee-room corridor to attend a ‘grassroots co-ordination committee meeting’. Before they get down to business, the group, a mix of MPs and campaigners, are treated to a monologue from their meeting chair, Labour’s Chuka Umunna.
Everyone knows the real reason people like Donald Trump are sceptical of climate change is that conservatives are fundamentally anti-science. Some doubt science because it conflicts with their religious beliefs; others because its implications might mean radically shifting the global economy in an anti-growth or heavily statist direction, which goes against their free-market ideology; others
The story of Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan is an interesting one, I think, for what it tells us about the right, the left and human nature. These two youngish people — both 29, one of them a vegan, the other a vegetarian — jacked in their wonkish jobs in Washington DC in order to
There’s an advertising campaign for the Swiss Alps at the moment urging people to go hiking there ‘and find the route back to yourself’. As Theresa May treks through the mountains of Switzerland on her annual summer holiday, Tory MPs are wondering what route she might find, or what life-changing ideas she might return with.
The crowd were singing ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’ again, at a festival in Cornwall, the words appended to a riff by the White Stripes which I once liked but now find a little nauseating. Vacuous, dimbo, middle-class millennials and — worse — their stupid, indulgent parents, all waving their hands in the air for Jezza. Meanwhile,
To mark last weekend’s one-year anniversary of the violent right-wing demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, a meagre two dozen card-carrying white supremacists showed up in the town, vs thousands of anti-racism protesters — proportions that may reflect the nation as a whole. Nevertheless, ever since the 2017 rally, the American left has thrown around the pejorative
Timeless in its wisdom, the book Parkinson’s Law is of course famous for Parkinson’s law itself: that ‘work expands to fill the time available for its completion’. But scattered through the now 60-year-old book’s pages of tongue-in-cheek social science and cod-mathematical equations are remarks that lodged themselves deep in my thoughts when first I read
