Donald Trump’s shock US election victory has provoked a transatlantic howl of disbelief from a cosmopolitan elite aghast that American voters have had the temerity to reject its one true liberal world-view. Hillary Clinton’s loss is seen less as the rightful humiliation of a discredited machine politician and more as proof that the masses have,
‘I am a Messianic Jew,’ says the jittery young man at the rectory door. He is pale and drawn, with a close-shaven scalp and several days of bristles on a sharp chin. The bloodshot eyes search for me swimmingly. ‘A Jew, a Messianic Jew,’ he emphasises. I should have a clever rejoinder, but I am
For the past few weeks, British news-papers have been informing their readers about two contrasting battles in the killing grounds of the Middle East. One is Mosul, in northern Iraq, where western reporters are accompanying an army of liberation as it frees a joyful population from terrorist control. The other concerns Aleppo, just a few
The exchange of letters this week between Mark Carney and Philip Hammond made it very clear who the supplicant was. The Governor of the Bank of England informed the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he was prepared to extend his term by one year. Carney pointed out that while the personal circumstances that had made
There are lots of signs at Gatwick about how it is unacceptable to be ‘rude or abusive’ to Border Force staff. One poster warns that losing your temper or gesticulating in a threatening manner could be a criminal offence. Keep a lid on it, is the-message. My wife Joanna and I recently had plenty of
Enrolling at Parsons College in New York the other day, a friend was asked to state her name, subject and PGPs. Her what? Her preferred gender pronouns. In other words, did she want to be referred to as ‘she’ and ‘her’, or ‘he’ and ‘him’, or ‘it’, or ‘they’, or none of the above, and
This weekend at the Edenbridge bonfire in Kent, near where I live, an effigy of Donald Trump will be burned. Last weekend, at Halloween, people up and down the land went out dressed up as him, or as a woman being groped by him. It is hard to imagine any American doing anything like this
‘Prefabs to solve housing crisis,’ screamed the front page of the Sunday Telegraph last weekend. Can the shortage of homes in Britain really be so bad that ministers are floating plans to encourage the first new generation of temporary, pre-packed houses since the great reconstruction drive which followed the second world war? The UK is
We’re continually assured that government policies are grounded in evidence, whether it’s an anti-bullying programme in Finland, an alcohol awareness initiative in Texas or climate change responses around the globe. Science itself, we’re told, is guiding our footsteps. There’s just one problem: science is in deep trouble. Last year, Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet,
So, is that it? The end of sweetness, and the end of taste? Physically speaking, those things will no doubt carry on, when The Great British Bake Off moves to Channel 4 next year. We’ll still take vicarious pleasure in the mouth-watering sweetness of someone’s ‘crème pat’. The taste of lavender will still ‘come through’
‘Bad policy.’ ‘No discernible impact on the key outcomes it was supposed to improve.’ ‘Deliberate misrepresentation of the data… a funding model that could have been designed to waste money’. ‘A waste of £1.3 billion’. ‘Failed’. The media’s treatment of the troubled families programme, whose evaluation has recently been made public, cannot have cheered David
Talking to Camille Paglia is like approaching a machine gun: madness to stick your head up and ask a question, unless you want your brain blown apart by the answer, but a visceral delight to watch as she obliterates every subject in sight. Most of the time she does this for kicks. It’s only on
Six months ago an old friend of mine was murdered on his doorstep. This week his killer was sentenced to life imprisonment. In both cases, the first I heard of it was when someone I follow on Twitter posted a joke with a link to a news story. Both jokes were whimsical rather than callous
Marine Le Pen can be excused for thinking her time has come. With six months to go until France’s presidential election, the left-wing government of François Hollande has produced only one winner, and it is her. She’s providing the Gallic contribution to the insurgent charge epitomised elsewhere by Brexit and Donald Trump. France, the home
I have been wondering these last few weeks whether it would be cheaper to excavate a basement and buy a Geiger counter and iodine tablets, or emigrate to New Zealand. Call me frit, but I don’t like the way things are heading. Probably the second option is easier: Armageddon outta here, etc. I can re-enact
The old KGB headquarters in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, is a sinister place, full of ghosts. It is a solid 19th-century neoclassical building with walls thick enough to have muffled the screams of those under interrogation. The cells in the basement are as cold and damp as they were in Soviet times and there are
Global greening is the name given to a gradual, but large, increase in green vegetation on the planet over the past three decades. The climate change lobby is keen to ensure that if you hear about it at all, you hear that it is a minor thing, dwarfed by the dangers of global warming. Actually,
A typical Kentish town, with its grammar school at one end and its secondary school at the other, is a throwback to the Bad Old Days, or the Good Old Days, depending on what your views are on academically selective state education. If Theresa May’s plans go ahead, the whole country might look something like
Oh dear. Mark Carney is irritated. His proud independence has been challenged. The Prime Minister had the temerity to admit that she was not altogether thrilled with his ‘super-low’ interest rates and quantitative easing. These policies meant that people with assets got richer, she pointed out. ‘People without them suffered… People with savings have found
Forget killer clowns. Halloween was once a very different affair from the Americanised gorefest it is now. In its-original Irish form, as when I was growing up, it was an opportunity for children to dress up in their parents’ clothes, wear a mask and a hat and go begging from door to door for nuts,