Britney Spears and the girl industrial complex

I met Britney Spears exactly once. It was December 1998. I was 12 and she had just turned 17. We were standing side-stage at a concert where her...

Is Stormont about to collapse over the Northern Ireland protocol?

Jeffrey Donaldson has threatened to collapse the Stormont Assembly unless the Northern Ireland protocol is thrown out.  Donaldson’s policy problem...

How 9/11 internet culture created a blueprint for modern conspiracy theories

It was a chilling image: a man visiting New York on a sunny autumn morning on 11 September 2001. He goes to the top of the World Trade Center –...

How Covid-19 vaccines dramatically reduce death rates

Worshippers fear new high-rise towers could shroud Britain’s oldest synagogue in darkness

Given the bellowing and swearing my mother had to endure from me just to get me to Hebrew school for my bar mitzvah lessons, it says a lot that I...

How the freak economics of the Thatcher years warped boomers’ views on tax and house prices

“To understand the man,” Napoleon Bonaparte is reputed to have said, “you have to know what was happening in the world when he was 20.” Boney...

Tories fear voters won’t forgive Boris Johnson for his broken promises

An impatient Boris Johnson was pestering Downing Street officials relentlessly to show him the draft Conservative election manifesto. It was 2017 –...

What do we remember when we remember 9/11?

Our remembrance of 9/11 is about the greatness of America; in the process, it fails Americans. Those who are old enough will recall where they were...

The Cumbria coal mine debacle underlines the incoherence of UK climate policy

“Coal, cars, cash and trees.” These are the four areas in which Boris Johnson has told the world the country will make “extremely bold”...

Sitting out 9/11 with Blink-182

Flags and warships – that’s what I remember most clearly. Flags flapping from every street corner and planted in every trimmed lawn, and...

The Cumbria coal mine debacle shows the incoherence of UK climate policy

“Coal, cars, cash and trees.” These are the four areas in which Boris Johnson has told the world the country will make “extremely bold”...

Nicola Sturgeon is refusing to back down on trans rights – but resistance is growing

Depending on where you stand in the debate, Nicola Sturgeon’s approach to the reform of trans rights is either brave and principled or a...

Why we can’t treat our way out of the mental health crisis

For years now, like other mental health advocates, I have been arguing that the NHS needs more resources to deal with the nation’s burgeoning...

How the NHS now dominates public spending

Why the government’s argument for cutting Universal Credit isn’t credible

According to reports in the Financial Times , there is much concern within government about the consequences of removing the £20-a-week Universal...

Boris Johnson’s social care tax rise: The north pays for the south, the poor pay for the rich

Just days before the House of Commons faced a vote on Boris Johnson’s tax rise to fund social care, many of his own MPs were ready to rebel. At...

Why Boris Johnson’s reshuffle might be more trouble than it’s worth

Reshuffle… delayed? Reshuffle… imminent? Reshuffle… cancelled? That Conservative MPs had been asked to remain in Westminster, and civil servants...

How the war on terror changed America

The “theatre of war” is a term used to describe the area in land, sea or air that becomes a site of military operations. Carl von Clausewitz...

Big Red Machine's How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last is a world of misty, unassuming beauty

Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon’s respective primary musical projects, though contemplative, are hardly shy. Dessner is known for his role on keys...

Kacey Musgraves’s Star-Crossed: clichéd, overproduced country pop

Kacey Musgraves’s 2018 album Golden Hour, a collection of luminous love songs, has been the stand-out country record of the past few years....

How the tax system squeezes graduates

The 1.25 percentage point rise in National Insurance announced by the government yesterday means the UK tax burden has reached its highest rate...

Will the money raised by Boris Johnson’s new tax hike ever be spent on social care?

The government will increase National Insurance from 12 per cent to 13.25 per cent next year to do… what, exactly? The headline that Boris...

How the war on terror led to the forever wars

I was expecting a quiet day in Downing Street on Tuesday 11 September 2001. I had been serving as Downing Street chief of staff since 1997, and...

Both leaders are entering the new political season on the wrong side of their parties

If Conservative MPs have a specific anxiety about Boris Johnson’s government it is that the Prime Minister is a leader for good times: that he...

Labour needs a radical social care alternative – and fast

Rushed, muddled, half-baked and inadequate though it is, the new Health and Social Care Levy represents a watershed in Conservative thinking about...

Why the social care crisis is not over

Despite being billed as a generational attempt to solve Britain’s social care crisis, most of the new revenue set to be raised by a 1.25 point...

Commons Confidential: Theresa’s Tory boycott?

Accused of the longest sulk since Ted Heath devoted his post-premiership decades to pouting at Margaret Thatcher, wounded Theresa May is suddenly...

The haunting of Hilary Mantel

In the long, strange, stop-start months since The Mirror and the Light was published last March – the book came into the world minutes before the...

Shon Faye wants a “deeper conversation” about trans liberation

Sometimes Shon Faye has to remind herself that what she’s doing isn’t normal. It’s a thought that struck her as she recorded the audiobook for...

The new age of American power

In August 2021, the dismaying scenes at Kabul airport stirred a number of gloomy pronouncements about the decline of American power. The anguished...

Boris Johnson’s government lacks the necessary imagination to reform social care

Social care would not be the perennial problem it is if only Britain really had a National Health Service. The NHS bears the flaws of its birth. It...

Boris Johnson is exploiting the public’s misunderstanding of National Insurance

After years of writing about intergenerational inequality and the burden placed on the young in this country to subsidise ever-increasing benefits...

Why Unite's new leadership presents an opportunity to revive worker power

Sharon Graham’s shock election as Unite’s new general secretary, replacing Len McCluskey after his decade in the top post, has sparked much...

Are Islamic philosophers critical of authority?

Whatever the phrase “medieval philosophy” calls to mind for you, I’m guessing it isn’t creative originality unbound by traditional ways of...

How the tax system penalises graduates

The 1.25 percetage point rise in National Insurance announced by the government yesterday means the UK tax burden has reached its highest rate...

Why Tory MPs won’t rebel over Boris Johnson’s National Insurance hike

The Conservative rebellion against Boris Johnson’s national insurance hike to pay for health and social care looks likely to be a muted affair...

How England’s social care crisis has grown

Boris Johnson’s government today announced that it would increase National Insurance by 1.25 per cent to help address England’s social care...

From the NS archive: Take another chance

Abba, the Swedish pop group that last week released their first new music in 40 years, have not always been cool. As Amanda Whittington wrote in...

Does punishing adults for their childhood mistakes really improve society?

We live in an age where we are expected to be perfect. Aesthetically, this is self-evident – take a look at Instagram, where manipulation,...

From the NS archive: The food situation

Almost immediately after the Second World War broke out, Germany adopted a tactic from the UK’s First World War playbook and targeted Britain’s...

From the NS archive: Old wine in new skins

In this piece of fictional reportage, Chute Collum (full name Vera Christina Chute Collum), a remarkable woman – journalist, suffragist,...

How the drug ivermectin became such a dangerous Covid meme

In his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme”. Although nowadays “meme” has come to mean a shareable online picture,...

Podcast: Labour’s lost future: the 20-year decline of the Labour Party

How Boris Johnson will try to bounce Tory MPs into voting for his tax rise

Boris Johnson will announce plans to increase National Insurance by an expected 1.25 per cent this afternoon, as he faces down Conservative Party...

Who are the winners and losers of Boris Johnson’s social care reforms?

In his first speech as Prime Minister on 24 July 2019, standing outside No 10, Boris Johnson made a promise to the public: “I am announcing now –...

Why Justin Trudeau’s snap election is backfiring

Just over four years ago, Theresa May dissolved parliament, triggering an early UK general election that seemed a safe bet to the Conservatives....

Sarah Harding’s story of delayed cancer treatment will become grimly familiar

News of the Girls Aloud star Sarah Harding’s death on Sunday 5 September shook fans and the wider British public. A generation had grown up...

The big problem with Boris Johnson’s social care plan

Boris Johnson returns from summer recess with an immediate fight on his hands to finalise and push through a plan to increase national insurance to...

What the issue over Boris Johnson’s social care plan reveals about Britain

Boris Johnson returns from summer recess with an immediate fight on his hands to finalise and push through a plan to increase national insurance to...

Canadian election 2021: can the Conservatives sustain their surge?

The leaders of the five main Canadian parties will face off in two televised debates on 8–9 September, amid an unexpected surge in the polls for...

Who owns the image rights of a child?

The question of whether a child should be considered an autonomous individual is a relatively new one. It was only in the 20th century that the...

A third of under-40s in England have still not received one Covid-19 vaccine dose

Vaccination rates are now slowing or levelling off in almost every age group in England, apart from the youngest bracket.  A third of under-40s...

Is Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s new chief economist, an “outrageously bad appointment”?

It’s not that the Bank of England didn’t try to find a chief economist who wasn’t a 53-year-old white man. In fact, it went to great expense:...

Sarah Harding brought boldness to Girls Aloud

Sarah Harding’s voice, as fans pointed out on Twitter, was the first we heard on the debut Girls Aloud single “Sound of the Underground”, and...

What the problem with Boris Johnson’s social care plan reveals about Britain

Boris Johnson returns from summer recess with an immediate fight on his hands to finalise and push through a plan to increase national insurance to...

Why the Bank of England spent £43,000 on diversity consultants – and hired a 53-year-old white man

It’s not that the Bank of England didn’t try to find a chief economist who wasn’t a 53-year-old white man. In fact, it went to great expense:...

The UK government hasn't even begun to confront its huge education challenge

There’s an old joke about a mother waking up her son on the first day of term. “I don’t want to go to school,” he whines. “The kids hate me,...