United kingdom

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Is Kanye West the David Bowie of his age? 

Kanye "Ye" West has been barred from appearing at London’s Wireless Festival by dint of having his temporary visa withdrawn. The move has generally been met with approval, save by those disappointed fans of his music whose pre-ordered tickets will now be refunded. “Kanye West should never have been invited to headline Wireless," said Prime Minister Keir Starmer. "This government stands firmly with the Jewish community, and we will not stop in our fight to confront and defeat the poison of antisemitism." Fair enough, many might say. Last year Ye released a single entitled "HH" (Heil Hitler) and declared himself a Nazi on social media. Ye has now made a series of groveling public apologies.

kanye west
fascism
Douglas Murray

Can the chaps in chaps smash fascism?

I have spent a small portion of my time lately wondering what I would do if I thought communists were about to take over Britain. At the more civil end of things, I could see myself going on an anti-communist protest, though I would shrink away if I noticed that my fellow marchers were flying swastikas. I don’t exactly know what I would do next. Perhaps I would hope for another election soon, and do what I could to unite other anti-communists. One thing I am fairly sure I would not do would be to dance. In fact, were this country facing the prospect of Stalinism coming at us full force, the last thing I would do would be to get a DJ, book a stage in Trafalgar Square, hire some go-go dancers and rave it up.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

The real reason the left hates Israel

“Listen to what the man on the left of the camera has to say about Israel, the man who is addressed as Nick,” a radical Corbynista friend suggested to me the other day in a social media message designed to change my mind about the Middle East. It’s part of a sustained campaign on his part which dates back at least ten years and is usually conducted with good grace, if never accord. So I listened to what this chap Nick had to say, with growing hilarity. Not because of what he said – which was what you might expect from a rank anti-Semite, but because of who he was. For it was none other than Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National party. Mr.

israel
energy crisis
Tim Shipman

How bad could the energy price crisis get in Britain?

The energy price surge caused by war in the Middle East has sent shockwaves through Westminster. It has pushed up inflation and the cost of borrowing, causing panic in the cabinet and the recognition that government intervention could be needed on a vast scale to support the cost of living. The UK Prime Minister told a private audience: "The assumption that the growth of the developed countries can proceed steadily on the basis of cheap energy has been shattered almost overnight." He further observed: "The problem is not simply one of inflation. It is the whole structure of the economy." In the Treasury there is something approaching a siege mentality. The Chancellor has "to spend [her] time firefighting.

Sunday

Charles Moore

Will books soon become extinct?

I am glad that BBC Radio 4 is producing a series called How Reading Made Us, presented by the subtle, super-literate Times of London columnist James Marriott. I must declare an interest. Roughly 98 percent of my earnings over 45 years have depended on the fact that plenty of people like reading. Now we are thinking harder, however, about the fact that form affects substance. The idea of an encyclopedia, for example, as developed (from classical roots) in the 18th century, was that all needful knowledge on a particular subject could be assembled and consulted in a book or series of books. With AI, there is little need for this form. The form of a book, which often seemed so compendious, can now seem cumbersome. Fiction, too, is affected by form.

books

Saturday

Toby Young

Am I an extremist?

The Communities Secretary Steve Reed recently rose in the House of Commons to unveil “Protecting What Matters,” the British government’s new “action plan” to “strengthen social cohesion” and “tackle division.” According to the accompanying press release: “Millions of families, friends and neighbors will feel a stronger sense of community, unity and national pride thanks to renewed efforts to stamp out extremism, hate and division announced today.” I was not among those millions. Conspicuous by omission in the announcement was any mention of Islamist extremism.

extremist

Thursday

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

Is ‘international law’ practical?

The acceleration of history and the increasingly rapid advancement of the postmodern project, aimed at the transcendence of humanity by itself, makes consideration of the fundamentals of the progressive project necessary, but also inevitable. Among them is its dedication to the hectic search for hitherto unsuspected “human rights” and their instant realization in the name of “natural law,” a subject the French historian and political philosopher Pierre Manent has studied in depth and brilliantly illuminated in a number of works, most recently Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason.

Wednesday

Jules Evans

How AI led a psychiatrist to a breakdown

This is the story of Paul, a 52-year-old psychiatrist who had a psycho-spiritual crisis triggered by overwork and overuse of AI. But this is not a usual AI cautionary tale, because Paul also says AI helped him navigate said crisis and make sense of it. Is he still in the grip of AI-induced mania? You decide. Paul has ADHD, and took a common form of stimulant to treat it until recently. He is interested in big ideas and spirituality. Early last year, he was working freelance and using AI to help him produce two or three 5,000-word reports a day. Because it was so useful at work, Paul started talking to AI more and more, sometimes for 20 hours a day. One night, he uploaded books by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius into an AI and spent the night chatting to “them.

Friday

Jawad Iqbal

Is Keir Starmer really, truly sorry about Peter Mandelson?

Sir Keir Starmer wants everyone to know how sorry, really sorry, he is for giving Lord Mandelson the job of Ambassador to the United States. On a visit to Belfast yesterday, the British Prime Minister issued his latest and perhaps most abject mea culpa so far. It came just hours after the publication of embarrassing government documents detailing the process (or more accurately, the lack of one) that existed when it came to appointing the now disgraced peer to the plum diplomatic role in Washington. Sir Keir told reporters:   The release of the information shows what was known. That led to further questions being asked…But that doesn’t take away from the fact that it was me that made a mistake, and it’s me that makes the apology to the victims of Epstein, and I do that.

mandelson

Friday

Sam Olsen

Trump isn’t the greatest threat to the Special Relationship

Britain’s refusal to fully back the United States over strikes on Iran has triggered an unusually public transatlantic row. It has also revived an old question about the future of the so-called "Special Relationship." When Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, many in Westminster doubted Keir Starmer could build a workable relationship with him. The two men could hardly be more different in temperament or politics, and predictions of an early rupture were widespread. For a time, however, Starmer appeared to defy those expectations. Britain weathered Trump’s latest tariff wars better than most countries, and the Prime Minister seemed to have found a cautious way of managing Washington’s unpredictability.

special relationship

Thursday

Tim Shipman

‘Whose side are you on?’: how Keir Starmer alienated Britain’s allies over Iran

The American-Israeli attacks on Iran were publicly called Epic Fury, but behind the scenes it is Britain’s handling of the war which provoked that reaction – not just from Donald Trump but from the UK’s allies in the Gulf. A Labour peer was in Washington when the first missiles slammed into Tehran on Friday evening and Keir Starmer refused to voice support. A member of the Trump administration told the peer: "Britain used to not contribute that much, but you were a good ally. Now you’re contributing nothing and you’re not even a good ally." A version of events has quickly become established: a Prime Minister with a near-religious belief in international law hid behind the advice of his Attorney General, Richard Hermer, that the attacks were illegal.

starmer

Thursday

Tim Shipman

Is the Trump-Starmer bromance over?

"The Special Relationship only exists when the Americans want something," a former Downing Street aide observed after Donald Trump rejected the Chagos Islands deal. There are profound differences between London and Washington over military action against Iran while the fourth anniversary of the war in Ukraine this week has exposed further fault lines. The result is that Anglo-American relations are at their worst point since the general election. Keir Starmer’s team argues he should not be ousted at a time of huge international instability. But the reality of the Anglo-American relationship raises three questions. Where did things go wrong? Does the PM still have some kind of relationship with Trump?

starmer

Monday

Michael Simmons

Former UK ambassador Peter Mandelson arrested

Peter Mandelson, Britain's short-lived ambassador to the US, has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.  In a statement to journalists, London's Metropolitan Police said: Officers have arrested a 72-year-old man on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was arrested at an address in Camden on Monday, 23 February and has been taken to a London police station for interview. This follows search warrants at two addresses in the Wiltshire and Camden areas. Moments before the Met’s statement, Mandelson was photographed being led out of his house by police. The move comes days after the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, also under suspicion of misconduct in public office.

mandelson

Thursday

Alice Cockerell

The literary appeal of the English upper classes

“However British you are, I am more British still,” said the American expatriate novelist Henry James, explaining his fascination with all things aristocratic and Anglo. It’s a type of fascination that’s only gathered steam over the years. A grand representative of the establishment, Lady Anne Glenconner, sold thousands of copies of her first book, Lady in Waiting, in the US, and recently discovered that her (admittedly predominantly homosexual) American fanbase has taken to throwing Lady Glenconner-themed costume parties. Meanwhile, Carla Kaplan, whose biography of Jessica “Decca” Mitford, Troublemaker, went on sale at the end of last year, discovered that Decca, known as “the Queen of the Muckrakers,” has a manic following among cowboys and long-haul truckers.

Monday

Michael P. Gibson

Is there a free-speech defense of Grok’s deepfakes?

There are scenes in blockbuster teen movies from the 1980s and 1990s that wouldn’t fly today. I think of Revenge of the Nerds, that classic raunchy coming-of-age tale about pocket protector-wearing geeks no woman would ever touch with a three-foot slide rule. You might recall the heroes of the story install hidden cameras in a sorority house in order to spy on naked, skinny, blonde cheerleaders. In triumph, the Byronic dirtbag yells, “We’ve got bush!” In our purportedly more enlightened age, Hollywood has forsaken making risqué teen comedies for vulgar imps; instead the vulgar imps have taken their raunch to the lawless internet. The powers of AI have multiplied their mischief. Their latest prank is to tell Grok, an AI chatbot on X.

grok

Friday

Virginia Blackburn

AI marketing is driving me to distraction

For years, retailers have been behaving like needy friends. My phone would ping. “Hi there!” an email would read, “We’ve missed you.” Who could this be? I would wonder happily, before realizing that the warm and loving message was from someone in the marketing department of the emporium from which I’d once bought a couple of pairs of expensive shoes. Emma usually, or Olivia. With the advent of artificial intelligence, though, personalized, over-the-top PR is getting much, much worse. At least in the past you’d needed an actual Emma to send these emails, some girl who’d gone into marketing, typing enthusiastic nonsense all day. There was at least a human who had “reached out” – they always “reach out.” AI is just so needy.

Thursday

Ian Williams

Inside the Cambodian cybercrime compounds run by Chinese gangs

The scrappy Cambodian border town of Poipet, long associated with vice and criminality, was shaken shortly before Christmas by the sound of F-16 fighter jets screaming overhead. The Thai Royal Air Force was, astonishingly, bombing a series of casinos. At least five fortified compounds were damaged, which were part of a vast industry that has conned millions of people across the world out of billions of dollars. This was “a war against the scam army,” Thailand’s army said. Scamming is a mainstay of Cambodia’s economy. The country earns an estimated $12 billion annually from online scamming alone, around half the value of its formal economy. Poipet is just one small outpost of a Chinese organized crime network, many elements of which have links to the Chinese Communist party.

Preston Byrne

Will Congress shield the US from foreign attacks on the First Amendment?

Britain’s Online Safety Act is part of an escalating censorship war between Europe and the United States. It was sold to the British public as legislation that would protect children; in practice, it is a far-reaching internet censorship statute with explicit extraterritorial reach. The OSA purports to grant the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, the power to do what no one on Earth has the lawful power to do: compel US websites to censor themselves and their users. This affects everyone, not just tech firms. If the UK can impose British speech rules on US companies, then the First Amendment stops being law and becomes a suggestion. At least 29 nations, mostly America’s allies, have enacted similar laws.

Wednesday

Christopher Caldwell

European leaders have changed their tune on war

Ten days after Thanksgiving, news watchers were exposed to one of the more culturally incongruous images in recent history: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron beaming in front of the British Prime Minister’s house at 10 Downing Street, giving each other the locked-thumbs handshake familiar to African-American jazz musicians and professional athletes of the 1970s. Right on, brother! At that moment, according to Ukrainian media, thousands of Zelensky’s soldiers had been encircled by Russian troops near the city of Pokrovsk (or Krasnoarmiisk, as it may well soon be renamed). Large gaps were appearing in the Ukrainian front, desertions were rising and Russians appeared to be opening a new front east of Kharkiv.

european leaders
Rod Liddle

The West has become ungovernable

My favorite opinion poll of recent times was the one which showed that Donald Trump is disliked by more than 90 percent of Danes. This is a glorious achievement and one of which the President should be proud, and perhaps boast about from time to time – averse though he may be to boasting, of course. This was the lowest favorability rating for Trump anywhere in Yerp and I suppose is partly occasioned by his determination to pry Greenland from the grasp of these ineffably smug Scandis because they have no idea what to do with it and have mismanaged its meager affairs for decades. A personal admission: I cannot stand Danes.