We have entered a new dark age. I’m not just referring to the situation in Britain since last week. Though if I were, that too would seem irrefutable. I mean in a far broader sense – that the world has entered a new dark age. The first dark age was characterised by a lack of information.
The principal concerns of the electors vary rather more widely than the pollsters and pundits would suggest. One man in Guisborough – probably middle-aged, short of teeth, a little unkempt – suggested to me that the government needed to clamp down on foreigners importing bees into the country. This was being done covertly, he said.
Rishi Sunak performed a mea culpa when his shadow cabinet convened on Monday, taking full responsibility for the election loss. There were, he said, lots of lessons to be learned. He tried rallying his team, reminding them it was time to knuckle down and prepare for the King’s Speech. When those around the table began
Memorably sweeping statements tripping easily from the tongue have a habit of worming their way into assumptions we make and ending up as the judgment of history. The word ‘appeasement’ rather than the decisions Neville Chamberlain actually took have consigned the name of a defensible statesman to something approaching a term of abuse. ‘Milk snatcher’
The dullest assertion you can make about Donald Trump is that he’s a narcissist who has no interest in the American people and only cares about himself. Competent pundits don’t waste wordage on such an over-obvious observation. Less obvious, though more so since last week’s dog’s dinner presidential debate – in the aftermath of which
I was amused the other week to read George Osborne’s Diary in this magazine. In it the man now in charge of giving away the British Museum’s collection recalled something John Major said to him in 1997. This was that the Conservative party ‘will never win while we remain in thrall to the hard right
Outside a café on the outskirts of Reading, Rachel Reeves is listening to the concerns of small-business owners. ‘Something that has affected us over the past couple of years is our relationship with Europe,’ says an attendee to nods from the others. ‘We end up not trading because it’s not worth it.’ Reeves sticks to
I have never been a contributor to Twitter, partly because my comments would not be subjected to the intensive hygiene and cleanliness vetting which goes on here, for example. Instead it would all spew out untreated and lumpily noisome, like a Thames Water pipe on to your nearest beach, and I would be toast within
Some of my good male friends, Tories, are sick of terfs. I can see it in their shifty eyes, in the way they won’t quite look at me when terfy issues creep into conversation, but stare gloomily at the skirting board. Terf stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, and terfs are women who insist that
As all non-bigoted readers will know, this is the holy and most ancient month of Pride. The time of year when – like our ancestors of yore – we bedeck our banks, supermarkets and public buildings with the latest variant of the rainbow flag. For a while now, the flag has kept coming with added
When Rishi Sunak stunned his cabinet colleagues by calling a snap election, they feared the worst. Fast forward a month and what they originally saw as the worst-case scenario now looks like quite a good result. At the time, losing the election but retaining 200 MPs seemed plausible. While the polls vary, the consistent theme
Nine days of campaigning to go and I haven’t been milkshaked yet. I’ve hung out near McDonald’s in the hope – anything to get ten seconds on the evening news. It seems that in my constituency, the rank, sanctimonious, narcissistic and dim-witted monomaniacs of the new, kind and gentle left are somewhat thin on the
For progressive onlookers abroad, the Labour landslide now projected next month will seem a cheerful counterweight to the EU parliamentary elections’ lurch rightwards and will represent a huge, refreshing popular shift in Britain to the left. Yet according to at least one recent poll, this perception would be statistically mistaken. Add the Conservative and Reform
The opposite of attraction is repulsion. Political commentary gives too little attention to a party’s (or leader’s) capacity to repel. Attractiveness to some may itself inspire disgust in others, simultaneously lifting support yet imposing a ceiling upon how high. Here’s a quiz. Our last five elections have seen Labour and the Conservatives slugging it out
For some while I have marvelled at the way in which artworks seem to have become the focus of hatred for people wanting to say something banal. If you wish to make a point about politics, the climate or anything else, there are a range of ways to do it. But the least effective must
During the 1983 general election, I campaigned every single day with great zeal and avidity. I knocked on quite literally thousands of doors enquiring of people if we, the Labour party, could count on their support on 9 June. I would start at 9 o’clock and finish 12 hours later, taking a break at about
On a street in Camberley, Surrey, a pensioner stands in the doorway, rollers in her hair, staring with some bemusement at the Liberal Democrat canvasser in front of her. Her preparations for Ascot have been interrupted. ‘I definitely won’t be voting Conservative. I used to be a member, but you look around now and, no!’
The first editor I worked for was Charles Moore and, like many of his old and ageing former staff, I still think of him as the boss. We’re like sleeper agents, the remaining skeleton crew of the old Daily Telegraph, ready to rise up at any moment and defend the right to hunt with hounds.
There is a favourite Fleet Street story about the legendary Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie. While editing the paper, he discovered that his horoscope writer was recycling copy. He decided to dispense with her services in a letter that opened: ‘As you will no doubt have foreseen…’ You do not have to hold claims to being
It’s a sunny Friday afternoon in Gullane, an affluent seaside town on the Firth of Forth. For political campaigners, golden hour is the perfect time to speak to middle-class locals working from home at the end of the week. A huddle of Labour campaigners go door to door, ticking off names on a clipboard and