Up until a few days ago, ministers could see how the government might regain its footing in the polls after several weeks of self-inflicted damage. The argument went like this: as Christmas approaches voters will see that life in Britain — and specifically England — carries on with very few Covid restrictions whereas elsewhere in
No sooner had an inch or two of snow fallen on our upland areas last week than the climate-change Morlocks were out on social media, shrieking and bed-wetting themselves into a catatonic stupor. Nurse, nurse, bring the meds, quickly. ‘There! Told you!’ was the general gist. If it is snowing there cannot possibly be global
I’m not sure how many readers know the name of Anthony Smith, who died on Sunday aged 83, but a fair number will. He spent almost a decade at the BBC, helped start Channel 4, directed the British Film Institute, chaired many committees and for 17 years was president of Magdalen College, Oxford. But while
Much is now being made of the evils of empire. As a child of empire I bridle. I acknowledge the wrong and injustices of colonialism, the racism, and the greed too. I accept that a re-balancing of history was due. It’s good that the darker side of the picture has now moved into the light.
Comparing Saturday’s Downing Street press conference to Groundhog Day would insult one of my favourite films. The hilarious, multifarious strategies our cinematic protagonist employs to repeatedly negotiate the same day in February are anything but monotonous. No. 10’s top-down strategies for containing Covid are always the same. That press conference seemed like a cheap Chinese
As this paper has argued since the time of the Tiananmen Square massacres, this country should offer Hong Kong people a way out via immigration. We made the 1984 Hong Kong agreement with China: we owe some protection to the victims when it goes wrong which, thanks to Xi Jinping, it has. He has torn
‘So you think it’s all over? Ho ho ho!’ That’s the message from Satan’s dark laboratory (twinned with Wuhan’s) where the Omicron variant turns out to have been bubbling in its test tube while we dared to resume our normal lives during the autumn. But whether that ugly little globule ruins Christmas or proves to
