Ed West

Apparently the new Muppets film features Russians as the baddies, a sign of the times as we increasingly draw into a new ideological cold war with the old enemy. Or perhaps a hot, ethnic war, if events in Crimea get any worse, events which raise questions about western foreign policy. Why are we getting involved

Last Thursday’s cover story makes alarming reading, Alex Massie arguing that Alex Salmond may come close to achieving victory in September’s vote. Alex wrote: ‘It is beginning to be appreciated, even in London, that Alex Salmond might just win his independence referendum in September. The break-up of Britain will have begun, David Cameron will have

Apparently there’s some sort of anniversary coming up to do with a war, you may have noticed. To commemorate this the British publishing industry has launched a ferocious selling offensive, no doubt aided by recent remarks from Michael Gove, Tristram Hunt and Boris Johnson. Like with any historical incident, our views of this conflict are

The Ukip candidate for Wythenshawe and Sale East has come up with a rather interesting idea: he wants to move the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to Manchester, bringing 700 jobs to the city. I imagine that a lot of Ukip supporters would be quite happy to see the department metaphorically sent to Zurich

Monday’s episode of The Unbelievable Truth, in case you missed it, featured comedians Marcus Brigstocke and Rufus Hound. I did miss it, partly because I read about how Hound thinks David Cameron wants to kill your children, and I just couldn’t face the jokes about the Daily Mail and ‘hoards of Romanians!’ Even Charlie Brooker’s

I have this theory that the reason why the British public is so hugely in favour of cutting welfare to the bone, and the British media so hostile, is that many (maybe most) journalists still depend on financial support from their parents well into their 30s. Since most media folk come from the sort of

As Rod pointed out the other day, Arthur Scargill’s purchase of his council flat illustrated the triumph of Thatcherism over its opponents; like any winning ideology it created the conditions for its followers to flourish and increase in number, and so securing the revolution. That’s one of many things that Tony Blair had in common

I try to avoid mentioning Owen Jones because he already gets so much attention from people on the Right, including quite a lot of abuse on t’internet; the poor man’s probably blocked more people than have followed me. But his letter to Ukip voters in today’s Independent interested me as a study in what Jonathan

If I was going to measure possible reasons to desert the Tories at the next election, and I can think of a couple, plans to concrete over the countryside would score pretty highly. As a theoretical idea about something happening miles away from my home it almost makes me want to write letters to the Telegraph;