Features

The many failures of China’s vaccine programme

At the start of the year Sebastián Piñera, president of Chile, went to Santiago airport personally to greet a consignment of vaccines from China. ‘Today is a day of joy, excitement and hope,’ he said from a podium on the tarmac. ‘As you see behind me, there is the plane that brought a shipment of

Why sanctions against Putin and his allies don’t work

An ‘act of aviation piracy’ was how Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary described the forcible grounding of one of his planes in Minsk by Belarusian authorities in order to arrest a dissident who was on board. ‘A shocking assault on civil aviation and an assault on international law,’ said the UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab. The

Katy Balls

Scotland is open – and desperate for English tourists

When I told my friends I was heading to the Outer Hebrides on holiday — escaping from London as soon as it was legal to do so — I thought they might be envious. Instead, a few were worried for my safety. ‘Just don’t say you’re from England,’ suggested one. Another encouraged me to ‘lay

We’ve become a nation of armchair psychiatrists

Are we becoming a nation of amateur psychoanalysts and armchair psychiatrists? We all speak the language of therapy and are quick to diagnose and label friends, strangers and even loved ones. Prince Harry does it to his wife Meghan Markle in a forthcoming five-part series on mental health for Apple TV that he’s co-produced with

Why I’m considering cancelling my second Covid jab

I am considering cancelling my second Covid-19 vaccination. I received my first jab in March, and at the time I happily booked the date for the second one in June, confident that by then we would be continuing to see a fall in infections. But last week the story changed. The B.1.617.2 variant, first identified

Comedy gold: the economics of internet irony

If you’re looking for proof we live in a computer simulation, consider the farcical story of dogecoin. Named after an internet meme about a talking dog, the joke currency was created as a parody of bitcoin. Dogecoin has no practical uses, yet online investors have ploughed billions into it. ‘We thought it would just make

James Forsyth

Bloc buster: David Frost on Brexit, Barnier and the backstop

In an eyrie at the top of the Cabinet Office sits David Frost, Boris Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator who is now the cabinet minister responsible for handling the European Union. His office has the genial feel of a don’s study — there’s a book of Anglo-Saxon verse on his table alongside one of Greek poetry

Is the worst yet to come in the Middle East?

Beirut We can’t say yet if the latest fighting between Israel and Hamas is the start of ‘the big one’, a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising. That possibility was raised by the grandest of Middle East commentators, Thomas Friedman, in the New York Times. Friedman is sometimes mocked for his prognostications. A ‘Friedman’ is defined

TikTok intifada: the role of new media in old conflicts

In Israel last month, a video on the social media platform TikTok encouraged users to film themselves assaulting Orthodox Jews. That video became a spark that ignited outrage across the country. A band of Jewish extremists, Lehava, organised a march in response. They clashed with Arab groups at Damascus Gate. In a situation that was

Palestinians in Jerusalem live in a strange limbo

Jerusalem Thomas Friedman has a lot to answer for. The New York Times’s oracle has ruined, through overuse in his columns, the best source of local knowledge for journalists: the cab driver. No other hack can now quote his driver for fear of colleagues’ ridicule. Which is a pity, because the cab drivers in Jerusalem

Britain must investigate its Islamist ‘dawa’ networks

A few months ago, William Shawcross was asked by the government to lead an independent review into its anti-terrorism strategy, Prevent, and to ‘consider the UK’s strategy for protecting people vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism’. Ever since his appointment was announced, Shawcross has been attacked by an array of activists who want to minimise

Fraser Nelson

The great pretender: Nicola Sturgeon’s independence bluff

During the Scottish leaders’ debate, Nicola Sturgeon was asked a rather awkward question: what would she say to voters who want her as First Minister, but who certainly do not want another referendum, especially at such a delicate stage for the country? ‘What are they meant to do if they want you, but don’t want

Selling the family home to pay for care is not an injustice

The sound of the well-off grumbling about their finances is always an unattractive one. But there is one gripe that has become particularly powerful, filling the airwaves and shaping public policy. This is the persistent, ever louder complaint from many households that they are required to sell the family home to pay the costs of