The Week

Leading article

Where’s Boris?

Before Boris Johnson became Prime Minister there was widespread expectation that his government would be chaotic. It was thought that he would be good at articulating the broad sweep of government policy, but that his administration would quickly sink into turmoil. In the event, the opposite has happened. Three weeks on, the government appears to

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the Week – 15 August 2019

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, proposed an extra 10,000 prison places and the expansion of stop-and-search powers. PC Stuart Outten, 28, was cut in the head with a machete after he stopped a van in Leyton, east London, in the early hours; Muhammed Rodwan, 56, of Luton, was charged with attempted murder. While trying

Diary

Diary – 15 August 2019

I lay low during the ‘season’ as I can’t think what to say to people any more. I went to only two summer parties, a personal worst for me: Lady Annabel Goldsmith’s annual gold-plater in Richmond, and Jenni Russell and Stephen Lambert’s Notting Hill do, where I found myself introducing David Cameron to Seumas Milne.

Ancient and modern

Boris Augustus

The Tories, allegedly a ‘one-nation’ party, are currently imposing Brexit on a divided nation. As a result, some Tory MPs will vote against Brexit, effectively abandoning the party. This raises the question of political values – the question being, what happens after Brexit? Romans faced the same problem when the republic collapsed (27 bc) and

Barometer

Barometer | 15 August 2019

Girls only Polish village Miejsce Odrzanskie was reported not to have had a single boy born in the past decade, though 12 girls have been born in the same period. However, such an imbalance is far from a freak occurrence:   — Assuming a 50-50 chance of a baby being male or female, the probability

Letters

Letters | 15 August 2019

God Sir: In his defence of Christianity (‘Losing our religion’, 10 August), Greg Sheridan writes as if Christianity and religion are interchangeable terms. His claim that the vast majority of people who have ever lived have believed in God may be true, but most of them were or are not Christians. And when he mentions