When you’re the chief of the defence staff, the head of the British armed forces, it’s never a good sign if your phone rings on a Sunday evening and it’s the permanent secretary. On this particular Sunday, in March 2021, the reason for the call was the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign
How a profession speaks to its subjects is always of interest to a writer, sometimes perversely so. Over the past few weeks a persistent problem with my foot worsened and appeared to take charge of things. (This isn’t going to be a piece moaning about ill health, I should reassure you.) The hospital took soundings
My eight-year-old son’s eyes widened when I unwrapped a Christmas present I got from my parents: a bottle of cherry brandy from the Lyme Bay winery in Axminster. ‘Can I have some?’ Humphrey asked, for he had been hitting the cherry brandy hard over the summer. Not the alcoholic kind, of course, but the cherry
A few years ago, everyone in Westminster was obsessed by The West Wing, but a decade of chaos and populism has rendered Aaron Sorkin’s vision of idealists devoted to the public good obsolete. The madness of the last government left even The Thick of It a tame parody of reality. But listening to everyone from
When Britain handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997, Tony Blair was in melancholic mood. The newly elected prime minister turned to his aides Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell and mused: ‘We shouldn’t lose any more territory. Britain needs to be big. Look at a map. Britain is so small.’ Nearly 30 years later,
Two years ago my quality of life began to go downhill. It happened when BT Openreach gave our old copper landline a compulsory upgrade to ‘Digital Voice’, meaning all calls would be made over wifi. A succession of visiting engineers failed to resolve the crackling and the cutting out on the new digital line or
It has been obvious for some time that there are basic concepts that the liberal British Establishment simply does not understand. Like money. Or tax. Or business. Or going to the pub. Or the fundamental value of free speech. Well, now we can add a whole new roster of more baroque concepts to this list:
I write spy thrillers that attempt to deal authentically with the world around us. The Syrian civil war. Spy games with Vladimir Putin. Russian meddling in the US. The shadow war between Israel and Iran. Tension inside the US-UK intelligence partnership. These are the settings for my first five novels, and in all of them
Two of Ukraine’s most famous ballet dancers face dismissal, cancellation and possible mobilisation into the army. Their crime? They dared to dance a segment of Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake during a European tour. The Ukrainian Ministry of Culture slammed Serhiy Kryvokon and Natalia Matsak’s performance as ‘promoting the cultural product of the aggressor
‘There’s no way of finding out what’s really happening in there,’ says Aaron Rainey, an XL bully expert who advises police forces and dog owners across the UK. ‘Nobody knows where the kennels are – the police keep the information under wraps in case people turn up and try to break out their XL bullies.’
Those pondering why Robert Jenrick defected to Reform UK have focused on the political momentum of Nigel Farage or the performance of Kemi Badenoch, but the key conversation was the one he had with his father on Boxing Day. ‘He’s a very straight talker,’ Jenrick explains when we meet at Reform’s headquarters on Tuesday afternoon.
Donald Trump has probably not read Machiavelli, even the short one, The Prince. Machiavelli’s most famous advice was that it’s better for a prince to be feared than loved. But above all, he said, a ruler should strive not to be hated. Nobody likes a bully. The US President, however, clearly doesn’t care about any
Roedean is now known as ‘Beijing High’. Cheltenham Ladies’ College is ‘Hong Kong College’. In the country’s most elite boarding schools, pupils say that they are one of just a handful of English children. Others note that Chinese has become the dominant language in hallways and dormitories. Many English parents can no longer afford a
It was a weekend of mixed emotions for the European Union. There was the news from Donald Trump that he will impose a 10 per cent tariff on eight European countries in retaliation for their opposition to his plans to take control of Greenland. But on a brighter note, the EU finally signed the Mercosur
It came to pass in 2020 that a decree went out from the General Synod that all the Church of England must be carbon net-zero by 2030. And this ruling was first made when Justin Welby was Archbishop of Canterbury. And all went to have a good hard look at their church heating systems, every
If Reform get into government, there is one man they seem likely to turn to for guidance. He is an obscure figure, unknown to many, yet has acolytes across the political spectrum – from Dominic Cummings to Gordon Brown. His name is Richard Burdon Haldane and he died almost a century ago. It was recently
All innovations seem unseemly to fogeys. When bitcoin, the first of the cryptocurrencies, was launched in 2009, we dismissed it as a deplorable and transient phenomenon. Its inventor, who called himself Satoshi Nakamoto, would not reveal his real name. Perhaps he did not exist and whoever hid behind the pseudonym was having a joke at
The forces arranged in favour of banning social media for under-16s are powerful and wide-ranging. The unlikely alliance includes the leader of the Tory party, more than 60 Labour MPs, Big Suze from Peep Show and the patron saint of all bad ideas – His Majesty King Charles III. It seems probable that when amendment
Last week the Bank of England was warned to prepare for a financial crisis triggered by the discovery of extraterrestrial life. But the really worrying scenario isn’t aliens. It’s us. A century ago the state pension as we know it was introduced. Taxes from employers and their staff were used to pay out benefits to
Ramit Sethi wants to make you rich. He is not a household name in Britain, but the Stanford psychology graduate is one of the biggest personal finance influencers in the US. He hosts a successful podcast, Money for Couples, has written bestselling books and even has a Netflix show, How to Get Rich. All his