Contemplating a new year always raises questions. Was there a Third Protocol? What was wrong with Oral-A? Can Keir Starmer survive 2026 as prime minister? It is the biggest question in politics this year and the fact that it does not have an easy answer illustrates the mess Starmer has got himself into over the
A traditional British Christmas is not complete until we have all enjoyed the seasonal cancellation of a celebrity, under the mistletoe. Excitement mounts during Advent as to who the luckless sap might be this year and then, on cue, the little cardboard door is at last opened and we all gather around the tree for
Convicted last month of plotting what could have proved the worst terrorist attack in British history, Walid Saadaoui had hoped to murder at least 50 people in Prestwich, because ‘Prestwich is full of Jews’. He was caught purchasing four AK-47s, two handguns and 1,200 rounds of ammunition. For Saadaoui’s fires of righteousness on social media
What would you like the priorities of His Majesty’s government to be? I have quite a long list. Sorting out the economy would certainly be up there, as would closing the border. But I imagine the government has had to put such things on the backburner because it turns out that one of its actual
Keir Starmer will start the new year as he means to go on: by attempting to convince his troops that he is still the best man to lead them. The Prime Minister will begin 2026 by hosting Labour MPs at Chequers. The motive behind the outreach is simple. ‘The only question that matters this year,’
We will remember 2025 as the year that a madness which had gripped us for a decade finally succumbed to that most irritating of things, reality – and the edifice it had built began to crumble like a 1970s brutalist building constructed from high alumina cement. It is not quite the case that woke is
A few years ago the podcaster Lex Fridman published a list of books that he was hoping to read in the year ahead. It included works by George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Hermann Hesse and others. If he had published this in the world of print media he might have got back some encouraging noises. But
I can’t be the only neurotic mother to have rejoiced when the Princess of Wales revealed recently that she has a strict ‘no phones at the table’ rule. The Prince of Wales then later let slip that Prince George, who is 12, isn’t allowed a smartphone. When George eventually does get a phone, William added,
If you like your period dramas butchered, then you are in for a real treat. The 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth falls on 16 December, and we are promised a slew of adaptations, documentaries and lectures to mark it. Inevitably, some of these will try to put a ‘new spin’ on Austen, to make
I once tried to write a novel but lacking any ear for dialogue or skill at characterisation, I abandoned the attempt. The plot, though, was quite good. A couple on a smallholding are facing hard times. Their farm is failing. Daily life is shot through with anxiety, and they retreat increasingly into their interior worlds.
I grew up in the 1980s but in many ways it was more like the 1880s. We lived with my grandmother on the Northumbrian coast and the routine of our days echoed the routines of her youth, perhaps her mother’s and grandmother’s, too. We were like an elephant family in an African game park, following
Many years ago, a friend described one of my serious literary novels as ‘clever’. I was offended – but I shouldn’t have been. The friend was from across the pond, where I now understand ‘clever’ simply means smart. For Americans, cleverness infers a shallow, facile intelligence. Applied to people, it often hints at sly, calculating
I’m committed this winter to too many expensive building projects at once. As the balloon of my bank balance drifts ever lower towards the waves, and the crests of red ink lick the wicker of my basket, I’ve realised something has to be thrown out. Thus it was that last week I found myself in
For perhaps the first time in my life I have experienced ‘fomo’ – fear of missing out. It is strange to feel this teenage sentiment now I am safely in my forties, and even odder that it should occur in relation to a party political conference in Liverpool. Yet as I sat watching videos from
Too much information. That’s what you’re about to get. I wouldn’t read another line if I were you. I will be talking, at length, about my prostate and, by extension, my old fella and why I will not let the medical clergy anywhere near either of them, not the private medics or the chaotic maniacs
It is easy to criticise the Budget. The process was a chaotic mess. For many on the right, Rachel Reeves’s £26 billion tax raid to placate Labour MPs was a form of madness as well as badness. But good politics means understanding your opponents. One former No. 10 Tory thinks there was method in the
During last week’s excruciating Oval Office make-nice between an insultingly buddy-buddy American President and a fraudulently obsequious New York City mayor-elect, the contest was over which pol was the more patronising. At one point Trump graciously granted his petitioner permission to call him a ‘fascist’ while clearly implying the guy’s OTT campaign rhetoric had been
Readers tend not to approve of rows between columnists, but I must take issue with something Lloyd Evans wrote in ‘No life’ last week. Our theatre critic claimed that his companionship ‘is very low calibre’, that he ‘can’t match anyone in conversation’ and that he ‘can barely recall making a witty or worthwhile comment’ in
For quite a few members of the House of Commons culture, media and sport committee, the answer to the claims of left-wing bias against the BBC could be annulled by the simple expediency of firing the only supposedly right-of-centre person within the corporation, Robbie Gibb. It is a curious logic that the left employs. This
Rachel Reeves is lucky that the name ‘omnishambles Budget’ has already been taken. When the entire document was published long before she got to her feet in the Commons, the only thing that would have made this most chaotic pre-Budget period more shambolic would have been if the Deputy Speaker had banned her from making
