Politics

The coronation of Sam Thompson, Scrappy Doo in human form, as King of the Jungle in this year’s I’m A Celebrity… was an inevitability. It was unthinkable that Tony Bellew – his still, stoic Scouse sparring partner – would not come second. And that Nigel Farage wouldn’t trail in third. When Farage made it through the public votes, all the way up to the final, there was much amused speculation about him coming out on top. The ‘banter’ outcome would’ve seen Farage take the crown, just for the sheer devilment of it. Yes, that would’ve been delicious, the ultimate wind-up of Farage’s many detractors. It was a pleasant daydream to imagine

For those who still believe in that old-fashioned thing called the British constitution, there has come a glimmer of hope from an unlikely source. Lord Cameron has threatened to withdraw Foreign Office support for overseas visits by Scottish government ministers if the SNP continues to disregard protocol on international jaunts. Humza Yousaf raised eyebrows during COP28 when he shook hands and chatted with Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The SNP leader, who was at the event in his capacity as first minister of the Scottish government, tweeted out a photograph of the meeting and said they had discussed the situation in Gaza. In the same tweet, Yousaf called for an

Teaching in the UK is in trouble. Less than half the number of secondary school teachers required this year, a record low, have been recruited, according to government figures released last week. STEM (science, engineering, technology and maths) subjects are particularly struggling: we only have 17 per cent of our target number of physics teachers and 63 per cent of maths teachers (down from 88 per cent last year). Yet this is a problem across the curriculum: the only subjects where the government met its targets were classics, PE and history. Teach First, the largest teacher training programme in the UK, announced this weekend that in order to tackle this

It was elaborately staged precisely to try and look unstaged. After a medals ceremony at the Kremlin for Heroes of the Fatherland day, Vladimir Putin joined an oh-so-unchoreographed gaggle of participants. One, Lt Colonel Artem Zhoga, appealed for him to stand for re-election. Although Putin admitted he had had second thoughts, he accepted ‘that there is no other way,’ and would indeed be running. This is, it is fair to say, not much of a surprise. Nor will it be a surprise if Putin wins in March. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be upsets along the way. Rig an election too much and too obviously and this defeats the

Welcome to our language: ‘rizz’. Here’s the OED definition: colloquial noun, ‘defined as ‘style, charm or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner’. It was announced on Monday as the Dictionary’s word of the year, and it’s here to stay sadly, because that’s how language works. That’s why we don’t speak like George Eliot characters. Rizz became popular the way all words do nowadays: they start somewhere opaque online, then filter effortlessly into real life. As a 23-year-old, I hear it semi-frequently, although I kind of wish I didn’t. What does it mean for a word to go ‘viral’? It means that everyone starts using them, and

Western liberalism was built on the principle of marrying out. Our beliefs about the freedom of the individual ultimately stem from the Catholic Church’s ban on cousin marriage, which helped create a worldview that was open, trusting and opposed to both clannishness and xenophobia. The medieval Church’s insistence that marriage be consensual was revolutionary and strange; back in the 13th century a romantic poem, The History of William Marshal, has the protagonist coming across an eloping couple who have defied their parents to seek true love. Our hero then robs them, and since the story was commissioned by Marshal’s sons to glorify him, we can assume that public opinion might have thought this