Rupert Murdoch’s hold on British politics has finally been broken. The politicians who competed to court him are now scrapping to see who can distance themselves fastest. As the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, says when we meet in his Commons office on Tuesday afternoon, ‘The spell has been broken this week and clearly it will
Ed Miliband was beaming when I saw him talking to Rupert Murdoch at the media magnate’s summer party at the Orangery, Kensington Palace, just three weeks ago. Ed Miliband was beaming when I saw him talking to Rupert Murdoch at the media magnate’s summer party at the Orangery, Kensington Palace, just three weeks ago. The
For the past half a century, the Tunisian film director Nadia El Fani would have had no problem showing her new documentary, Neither God Nor Master, which explores her atheism and disdain for radical Islam. But before the Jasmine Revolution, Tunisia was the most socially liberal country in the Muslim world. Its Islamist extremists were
What do you do if you want to upset your parents these days? Properly rebel, I mean. You certainly don’t get a tattoo. Tattoos won’t bother anybody — they’ve become a fashion accessory, adopted as widely as bangles and bracelets. Shrewd money is investing in the sector, because it’s going through a growth spurt: tattoo
I’d like the art therapists to be next, if at all possible. I’d like the art therapists to be next, if at all possible. I mean, next in line for the national outpouring of bile and contumely. My closest friend is an art therapist and his smugness is beginning to get my goat, especially coming
Long before the phone-hacking scandal attained volcanic proportions, I scarcely knew a journalist in London unastonished to hear that last Christmas, the prime minister dined at the Oxfordshire home of Rebekah Brooks. Even were she Mother Teresa, which some evidence suggests she is not, it was plainly a lapse of judgment for David Cameron to
Why can’t we have traffic laws for pedestrians? Imagine you’re driving down Piccadilly one day. Suddenly, without the slightest warning, you brake to a halt, causing the car behind to smash into you. Or you change lanes without indicating, right into the path of someone who’s overtaking. Or you change direction completely, executing a perfect
County cricket ought to be important because it provides the players for Test cricket. You won’t find your budding Strausses, Cooks and Swanns playing on village greens or even in the estimable Lancashire and Yorkshire leagues. If they are really good they will be in a county side. The problem, however, is that when they
