The first, largest, and simplest message to be gleaned from the Richmond Park by-election is that it is rarely sensible to behave as though the electorate is dominated by fools. Zac Goldsmith’s decision to trigger a by-election in protest at the Government’s decision to endorse a third runway for Heathrow was questionable in itself, not […]
Kate Bush has created a stir with remarks she made to the Canadian magazine Maclean’s. Bush explained that she “really liked” Theresa May, who she described as “wonderful” and the “best thing that’s happened to us in a long time”. It wasn’t long before people were tweeting their horror at the apparent evidence that “Kate […]
Herman Mashaba is an unlikely mayor for South Africa’s largest city. In a country that has been dominated for more than two decades by the left-wing African National Congress (ANC), no one foresaw political victory for a self-declared “capitalist crusader,” property rights zealot, and beauty products mogul who opposes the minimum wage and zoning regulations. […]
In death, as in life, Fidel Castro was an ideological Rorschach Blot. Some praised a revolutionary hero. Others excoriated a brutal dictator. Still others tried, uneasily, to split the difference. On the “revolutionary hero” side of the ledger were, inevitably, Castro’s old comrades on the British Left. George Galloway called “Comandante Fidel” the “man of […]
This article is taken from our Weekly Briefing email. Sign up here. There’s been a lot of talk recently about fake news and filter bubbles – about the tendency of social media to show us only the news that’s slanted towards what we already believe. But people often forget that even ostensibly neutral news is already […]
Some time ago, I toyed with the idea of writing about one of the most divisive issues in American politics: abortion. Unlike tens of millions of Americans, I do not care passionately about the subject. What I do care about is social concord and that is, increasingly, in short supply. Many Americans take their politics […]
Pain, said C.S. Lewis, is bearable if it has a purpose or a deeper meaning. A decade has now passed since the start of the Great Recession, and those who have borne the brunt of it are entitled to ask whether such a purpose lies behind the Western economy’s continuing troubles, and what it might […]
The news that students at City, University of London have voted to ban the Sun, Daily Mail and Express newspapers from their campus – a ban which could be extended to other media organisations – is just the latest example of how free speech is under threat at universities across the globe. The university’s student […]
It is, I know very well, not fashionable at the moment to praise members of the political class. And in particular, it is positively dangerous to celebrate anyone who might be thought either metropolitan, liberal or even a member of an elite. So to record my admiration for an Old Etonian intellectual, who occupied a […]
Dementia has become the leading cause of death in the UK. That, at least, is how the latest mortality tables from the Office for National Statistics have been reported. Anyone who has known anyone with dementia – which is pretty much all of us – will know that it’s a terrible condition. And it’s obviously […]
As one of the few people to self-refer as a “neoliberal”, along with my colleagues at the Adam Smith Institute, I take umbrage at George Monbiot’s denunciation of neoliberalism and all who sail in her. It’s not simply because he disagrees with me and mine. No, the umbrage comes from Monbiot’s entire and total ignorance of what to […]
On Thursday morning Stockholm was covered with at least 30 centimetres of snow. According to the Swedish national weather agency SMHI this is more than any other November day since records began in 1905. This freak of nature disrupted the daily lives of those living in Sweden’s capital. Part of the blame for the difficulties […]
It’s one of Edmund Burke’s most famous lines. “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment,” he told the electors of Bristol in 1774. “And he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” But there’s another line, just below, which ought to be equally well known. Parliament, […]
On November 1, the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe presented the Edmund Burke Award to the John Howard in a ceremony at the National Gallery in London. The award recognised not just Howard’s four election victories, but his extraordinary accomplishments in promoting conservative ideals in Australia and beyond. This is an edited transcript of his […]
The British press has suffered from some bad PR in recent years. It has been dragged through the Leveson Inquiry, investigated at length by the police, abandoned by large numbers of readers, and its future has been debated in parliament. Throughout all of this, the question of how to regulate a free press continues. The […]
There are journalists who master economics, and economists who master journalism. But few bridge the gap with quite such fluency as Tim Harford. As the Financial Times’s “Undercover Economist”, as well as a BBC radio presenter and prolific author, Harford has a gift for explaining economic theories and findings in the most accessible way possible. […]
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