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The Guardian |
David Marquand and Frank Field, both of whom died this week, never sat on the Labour benches together. The professor of politics and the...
I have been reading about the most abysmal place. It is a land where children, red-faced with their own radicalism, march alongside bearded...
When a child is scared of their parents, they can spend a long time plucking up the courage to talk. I learned this during a decade of volunteering...
In reporting on the encampments springing up on college campuses across the US, the media seem to have convened a terminology confab and agreed on...
‘I know the name,” texts a friend when I ask if she knows who Liz Truss is, but like most Americans can’t quite put her finger on why. “Like...
All the bigger British political parties are in favour of devolution, yet it proves oddly difficult to deliver. England is a remarkably centralised...
What is the role of AI in democracy? Is it just a volcano of deepfakes and disinformation? Or can it – as many activists and even AI labs are...
Fifty years ago, on 25 April 1974, a military-led movement in Portugal took down the rightwing authoritarian regime that had governed the country...
If your husband was a legally adjudicated sexual predator who cheated on you with an adult film star shortly after you gave birth to his son, and...
With every advance in human technology comes an advance in weird new emotional situations. For example, the Germans should invent a word for the...
I’ve used heroin off and on for decades now. I still do. Throughout my twenties, I had used drugs in ways that were often destructive to me. Back...
The government’s current position on the Rwanda scheme is unlikely to boost its electoral hopes – and to understand why, we should look to...
A couple of years ago, I received an invitation from a German cultural institution to present my debut short story collection, which was translated...
There’s something I heard that I can’t get out of my mind. It’s one line in a very long book full of other very good lines. This was the...
I was elected a member of parliament in December 2019, just months before the Covid pandemic changed all of our lives. As Britain’s first MP of...
I’ve been thinking about Moses, and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. The ecofeminist in...
There was a time in the UK when “culture war” conjured up a certain ugliness that disfigures political discourse across the Atlantic. Particular...
I wonder if I should award myself an honour, something grand-sounding. How about Most Excellent Keeper of the Belfry? It has a nice ring about it,...
Donald Trump, who once bragged that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, has gotten away for years with unimaginable...
A couple of weeks ago I went to go see a woman about a cat. The woman was my neighbour (we’ll call her L) and she had lost her tabby, Karma....
Despite what the fearmongers would have you believe, the latest inflation figures showed that inflation remains well under control. Not only is...
I have seen horses soothe even the most troubled of souls, with cognitive and neurological issues, to be able to be completely still for the first...
I gave up hugging people just before Christmas; I thought it was for the best. I’m in my mid-50s, possibly a bit smelly and live in fear of...
Commemoration, and what has increasingly become an almost ecclesiastic celebration of Australia’s short martial history, on Anzac Day relies on a...
“Look, if people don’t like the mug, they don’t have to get the mug,” Ed Miliband said, exasperated. We were on a train to Manchester for a...
For three and a half years, we worked in secret. Our families didn’t know what we were doing. Neither did our friends. We were making a film about...
Meet Madame Potato. She doesn’t actually exist, but, if things go my way, she’s going to be the world’s first “Miss AI”. I recently created...
Most people probably won’t pay much notice to their calendars showing this is St George’s Day, a celebration of a long-dead Roman soldier whose...
This battle was never about the removal of a single violent video for Elon Musk – it was always going to turn into a glib culture war fought with...
There will be a sigh of relief in No 10 with the passing of the Rwanda bill, as well as a degree of frustration. Having to steward another...
Panic and a screeching U-turn. The prime minister dismissed claims there were too few nursery places for every two-year-old in England (with...
I went past parliament last week and saw Angela Rayner. She is one of those politicians you couldn’t miss anyway, but she was also dressed in...
Donald Trump dodged financial calamity on Monday. The office of Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and lawyers for Trump reached...
Donald Trump is already in jail. He is pressed into confinement every weekday, except Wednesdays, beginning bright and early, no excuses, at 9.30...
“The protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to...
The climate crisis has long been defined by its lies: From the original sin of science denial, to Tony Abbott’s confected carbon tax panic, to...
When a prime minister knows he is heading for electoral wipeout, he has one of two options. He can choose dignified statesmanship, using his...
Only those born before 1998 could vote on Brexit, so there is no conceivable way of knowing which way today’s 18- to 30-year-olds would have felt...
Looking for a bargain beach house? Then you’re in luck. Kanye West has just lowered the price on his minimalist mansion in Malibu, California, to...
The most important thing I teach my students is to seek out people who disagree with them. That’s because the essence of learning is testing...
“I can’t thank you enough for your help.” This gratitude from a cancer survivor surprises me since I recall doing little of the sort. Some years...
I was one of the first people in the UK to make YouTube videos about sex and relationships. I started in 2011 when I was 19 years old. But at the...
Deciding on what the UK’s place in the world should be has been like watching politicians spin a wheel. Then spinning it again when the option...
Recently, I went on an adventure to an alien and intimidating place, a real no-go area: Belgravia’s interiors shops. My best friend is trying to buy...
Tit-for-tat confrontation between Israel and Iran has sparked concerns about escalation dragging the Middle East into all-out war. Such a scenario...
One, two, three, four, five, breathe, breathe. One, two, three, four, five, breathe, breathe. Lying on the cold tiles of my bathroom floor, I had...
If the last thing you remember about Australian dairy farmers is the $1 milk price war, it is worth thinking a little more deeply about the white...
Passover has an intensity I have always cherished. I love the sense of community, family, tradition, inclusivity and togetherness. We mark it with...
Many years ago, a friend from university invited some of us to his mum’s beach house at Walkerville South. His mum had bought the house super...
Almost everyone agrees the government’s Rwanda bill is a bad idea. Its effects on deterring immigration will be trivial. It fails to show that...
I grew up in a council flat in Batley, West Yorkshire, on free school meals. I was the first in my family to go to university and the first to forge...
The Spice Girls are like German biscuits in reverse. They don’t remind you of the seasons – the seasons remind you of them. On the eve of St...
The war in Ukraine will be a source of fascination and study for historians for decades to come. Even today, two years in, we’re starting to see...
The value of an effective air defence system and of unwavering international support was crystal clear the night of Iran’s massive attack on...
On Wednesday, the NBA announced that Jontay Porter, a center for the Toronto Raptors, was banned from the league for life. An investigation found...
Two conferences in two European cities. Two attempted bans (though only one successful). Two different responses from politicians and the media....
James Daly, the Tory MP who pestered the Greater Manchester police into reopening inquiries into Angela Rayner, rather gave the game away when he...
Something very interesting is happening in the UK, to do with nature, the expanses of land we think of as the countryside, and where all those...
There’s more to life than money, but societies can struggle to express it. When we talk about the state of nations and their citizens, we tend...
The discredited television personality Andrew Neil, formerly the laughing launch-face of the seemingly Ofcom-untouchable, fun-packed, fact-averse,...
Trotters up, or down? Even if you once admired Danny Dyer’s immortal summary of post-Brexit David Cameron – “He’s in Europe, in Nice, with...
There were fateful choices in the autumn of 1931 and the months that followed whose consequences affect us today. The beliefs still current in...
Our flat is a mess. I write this looking at a pile of laundry taller than I am, besides which are two semi-unpacked suitcases and a Fisher-Price...
I don’t like to blow my own trumpet but I’m really good at worrying. If a family member fails to answer my message within 30 seconds, they’re...
Sometimes I think the entire point of religion is to help men behave more like women. Members of a religious community are supposed to get along...
Australia has recorded its youngest apparent suicide in child protection custody – a 10-year-old boy, who had been in the custody of the state of...