Italy is preparing to go back to the polls and this time Matteo Salvini looks set to return as the undisputed king of Italian politics. His Lega party (formerly the Northern League) has split with its coalition partner, the Five Star movement. For Salvini, the appeal of a general election is obvious: Five Star’s popularity
Last summer, when Italy became the first major European country to get a populist government, Steve Bannon was cock-a-hoop. The former White House chief strategist had spent much of his time in Europe last year aiding and abetting populists. He called Italy ‘the centre of the political universe right now’. He was full of praise
Frank Johnson, editor of The Spectator until cruelly sacked to make way for Boris Johnson, never wasted ideas. He liked to reuse them. Often. Every summer he would write the same column attacking the silly season. August, Mr Johnson maintained, was not silly at all. The first world war started in August. The Nazi-Soviet pact
How we love bringing history into our political debates. It may seem strange in a country where so little history is taught at school, but perhaps that makes it easier. We grab hold of vague notions of the past for a Punch-and-Judy brawl. There could hardly be a better example of this than Brexit, in
The picture on the front of the Animal Blessing Service programme featured a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a goldfish, a cockatoo, a hamster, a snake and a ferret. In the event, the congregation was confined to people and dogs, including my two cockers. We sat in a circle in the shady courtyard of St
I’ve been coming to the Edinburgh Fringe for five years, but this is the first time I’ve dipped my toe into the stormy waters of performing. My show Iain Dale All Talk is a series of 24 interviews with politicians, media personalities and, er, Christopher Biggins. As I write this, I’ve just compèred the last
Jazz died in 1959. At least, that’s what New Orleans trumpeter Nicholas Payton wrote in 2011 as part of a series of tweets that riled jazz lovers the world over. It later transpired that he meant jazz the word (which, he reckoned, was ‘a label forced upon musicians’) rather than jazz the genre. Semantics aside,
