Principled leaders like Volodymyr Zelensky are the exception, not the rule
So perhaps the best long term solution to this feeling of utter powerlessness is to question why, exactly, we always look to the loudest and lairiest for…
Instead of teaching children racial and emotional literacy, how about we teach them to be literate?
Whenever you read about a particularly cretinous new strategy, policy or initiative, there’s a strong chance it’ll have something to do with Brighton and Hove City Council….
War shows the folly of ignoring farmers’ role as food producers
Britain has been blindsided by the threat to our food security as a result of the war. For years, Defra has been incapacitated by food and environmental…
Unity and action can destabilise Putin
There is a tendency in politics to claim that every policy initiative is “world beating”. During the pandemic, we had global-leading vaccine programmes, the best testing regime,…
The case for a tax rise has become even harder to sustain
Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, will make his spring financial statement later this month in a landscape utterly changed by the Ukraine crisis. Energy prices were rising at…
Can the West afford an energy embargo?
The ultimate sanction against Russia for invading Ukraine is an embargo on its sales of oil and gas. Impounding the yachts of billionaire oligarchs is incidental to…
Trump was right on Russia. He could have been its deterrent
Donald Trump is like one of those Roman emperors who everyone hated at the time but historians later admit was prophetic. His advice on Ukraine is to…
Welcome to ugly island, dreamboat Justin Trudeau
Trudeau then repeated his remarks in French. What he said, I wish I knew (I dropped French in favour of smoking behind the bike shed), one just…
Vladimir Putin never believed the West would cut off Russian oil: that was a grave mistake
The Ayatollahs are being cut some slack too. A deal could open the way for the return of 1m barrels a day of Iranian crude, though it…
It is wishful thinking to expect the Russian people to topple Putin
We in the free world might well still hope for an end to the Ukraine conflict. Still, as we ratchet up economic sanctions on Russia and help…
Inside the shadowy world of celebrity ghostwriters
Prominent ghostwriter Andrew Crofts – who has written 80 books for a range of politicians and billionaires, charging a reported six figures – was thrown in at…
Katie Price: What Harvey Did Next, review: one in the eye for the rubberneckers
People tend to have strong opinions about the one-woman soap opera formerly known as Jordan. Even if it’s purely based on glimpsed headlines or half-remembered gossip, she…
Life and Death in the Warehouse should strike guilt into all next-day delivery junkies
Finally, after limping back onto television with so little energy that you wonder why they bothered, BBC Three has a programme to get people talking. Life and…
Our House, review: as ever with an ITV drama, the message is clear – all men are awful
Martin Compston’s character in Our House (ITV) seems like a stand-up guy, but of course he’s not. He’s a man in a TV drama! Everyone knows the…
Clash of the captains: Kirk, Picard and the battle behind Star Trek Generations
Star Trek writers Ronald D Moore and Brannon Braga slouched into their boss’s office on the Paramount Studio lot in the summer of 1992 expecting to be…
What’s on TV tonight: Our House The Real Peaky Blinders, and more
The WitchfinderBBC Two, 10pmThis terrific six-part comedy drama is set in 1645, in the middle of the English Civil War and at the height of fears about…
Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier ‘the romance of the century’? It feels more like a tragedy to me
The next day, they drove to the studio, but Leigh was far too deranged to work – “Eyes overbright, she chattered ceaselessly.” One night, her maid rang…
The show to make you fall in love with architectural drawings
When Sir John Soane – architect of the Bank of England and collector extraordinaire – died in 1837, he had something like 30,000 architectural drawings tucked into…
A bold and beautiful Pixar animation about female puberty? Turning Red is exactly that
It’s hard to know what’s more impressive about the latest Pixar film: its boundless artistry, ingenuity and loopy comic verve, or the mere fact that the studio…
Yuck! This new biography of Carrie Johnson is absolutely enraging
I’m no advocate of cancel culture but these two little words pretty much sum up the writer’s antediluvian mindset. There are other clues. Do any of us…
Tonight with Andrew Marr, LBC, review: the voice is back – it just needs a little work
For weeks, in all the promotional material surrounding his new radio gig, Andrew Marr has been talking about “getting his voice back”. “Anyone wanting bland, safe, wearily…
Putin has learnt nothing from his beloved Soviet history books
Given the events of the 1930s in Ukraine, it is perhaps not surprising that a number of Ukrainians initially wanted to help the Nazis. In doing so,…
Ukraine crisis puts SNP plans for another Scottish independence vote in doubt
SNP plans for a new independence referendum could be shelved again due to the Ukraine crisis, the party’s Westminster leader has suggested. Ian Blackford said that his…
Monday evening UK news briefing: Putin lays out Russia’s demands to end war in Ukraine
Back home, Boris Johnson has warned that the use of Russian oil and gas cannot be cut off overnight, as he pledged to unveil a new energy…
Boris Johnson: Criticism of Lord Lebedev’s peerage ‘suits Vladimir Putin’s agenda’
Criticism of Lord Lebedev’s peerage “suits Putin’s agenda”, Boris Johnson has claimed, as he denied overriding security concerns from Britain’s spy agencies about the appointment. On Monday,…