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![]() Jonathan FreedlandThe Guardian |
I t was only an aside. Keir Starmer wasn’t planning to talk about Brexit, but a subject almost as perilous for his party: migration. Still, Good...
T wo portraits, two very different stories of Britain. Saied Dai’s painting of Theresa May, unveiled this week, is the latest example of what has...
T he tragedy of Joe Biden is that people see his age, his frailty and his ailing poll numbers and they miss the bigger story. Which is that his has...
H ere’s a suggestion for how Keir Starmer might use this final weekend of the summer recess before politics resumes in earnest on Monday. He should...
F or a sport touching warp speed in the pace of its development, the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand is already proving another great...
I blame the father. Frederick Trump raised his children, one in particular, to believe that the world was divided into winners and losers and that...
E lon Musk’s latest change to Twitter, the social media platform he has appeared intent on sabotaging ever since he was strong-armed into honouring...
B eware the strongman leader who fears jail. Donald Trump is running for president in part because he sees a return to the White House as a literal...
W ell, that settles nothing. The night of three byelections gave just enough of a split decision for all sides to claim victory. And by all sides, I...
Y ou may think we have all the proof we need. More of it is in front of us right now, with heatwaves scorching through Europe, breaking records,...
N ews that one of the UK’s leading poetry prizes is introducing a category for spoken word artists is as welcome as it is overdue. The move by the...
I t’s a paper ticket, from before the age of the QR code, and it announces the Rolling Stones at Wembley Stadium on Saturday 26 June 1982. I was 15,...
H ere’s a parlour game for the political geek in your life. When did Tony Blair win the 1997 general election? Don’t accept the reflex answer –...
T o those who have never got round to cultivating a Reddit habit, reports that swathes of the news aggregation, content and discussion platform have...
L et Nigel Farage be our inspiration, let John Redwood be our role model. Not the way they would want, revered as the founding fathers of Brexit,...
T he story of four children discovered deep in the Amazon jungle, grieving, hungry and insect-bitten but otherwise uninjured despite being lost for...
L ike Joe Biden’s ascent to the White House, Donald Trump’s indictment for unlawfully holding classified documents and obstructing justice offers...
T he three tenors of showman populism, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Silvio Berlusconi, reached the top through a combination of telegenic...
T he gap between the political narrative and life as experienced by the average voter is widening dramatically. The United Kingdom faces serious...
T he death this week of the painter and writer Françoise Gilot added a full stop to one of the most flamboyant chapters of 20th-century art history....
The war for Ukraine gets darker and more terrifying, and now a new front has opened up many miles away – in a US Republican party whose biggest...
“I t is the philosopher alone who can conceive the grandeur of Manchester, and the immensity of its future”, wrote Benjamin Disraeli in his 1844...
W hen the flat roof of Singlewell primary school in Gravesend, Kent, fell in five years ago, there was no sign of structural stress until 24 hours...
B oris Johnson will haunt Rishi Sunak till the end. The current prime minister is desperate to put the recent past behind him, to persuade the...
I n April, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, suggested that severe drought would become “one of the central political and territorial...
D o political parties concur because they agree about their goals or their fears? Phil Tinline argues in his book The Death of Consensus that it is...
I t started with an ick. Three months ago, I came across a transcript posted by a tech writer, detailing his interaction with a new chatbot powered...
I t lasts no more than a second, but it is a moment for the ages. Interviewed on BBC Newsnight on Monday, Nigel Farage made a confession that, by...
T he leasehold system of property ownership in England and Wales is a feudal relic, a hangover from the middle ages when powerful families wanted to...
H as there ever been such a flutter in the pop culture dovecote as the one provoked by the “leak” that an unknown book, due to be published in...
W e may come to remember this period as the interlude: the inter-Trump years. After the sigh of relief heard around the world when Donald Trump was...
C rowds will line the streets to take part in the coronation. But many present will later struggle to explain exactly why they were there. Witnessing...
F or a week now, I’ve been bombarded with variations on the same question: “So what do you think about that cartoon?” The cartoon in question...
T wo pronouncements this week from the world of culture might appear to strike a melancholy note: the film director Ken Loach has declared that The...
A word of advice for anyone who has worked hard to acquire a reputation they cherish: if Boris Johnson approaches, if he comes anywhere near, run a...
I n Kansas City last week, an elderly white man who lives alone heard the doorbell ring. He didn’t need to open the glass front door to see that a...
P oliticians have been calling for a return to neighbourhood policing ever since Theresa May decimated the service. This week, Rishi Sunak put...
E ven before the freshly acquitted Gwyneth Paltrow gave us what we are obliged to call the Slalom Witch Trial, she had already made an enduring gift...
W here the Scottish National party goes after the departure of Nicola Sturgeon matters not just to Scotland but to the whole of Britain. Ms Sturgeon...
W hile many UK theatres are struggling to woo their audiences back following the pandemic’s impact and amid the cost of living crisis, two upcoming...
H ow do you kill off a strongman? How do you drain the political life from the brand of nationalist-populist leader that’s dominated politics...
I have spent the last week in the land of the second resolution, Hans Blix and 45 minutes. For much of the past seven days, I’ve been right back...
T he Edinburgh fringe is a shaggy old beast with many ailments. It’s too big, too white, too expensive, according to its critics. The Succession...
E ven to talk about it is a distraction, but let’s be clear: Gary Lineker is not the villain here. On the contrary, he deserves admiration for...
W hen it comes to on-screen charisma, Rishi Sunak is no Al Pacino, but after the week he’s had, he can authentically channel one of the Hollywood...
E veryone will have their own moment when they concluded that things were broken, but here’s mine. I was talking to the headteacher of an east...
T he healthy functioning of democracies depends on the quality of the information that frames debate within them. But digitalisation, the rise of...
I n the closing years of the cold war, as relations between the Soviet Union and US thawed, Ronald Reagan adopted a Russian proverb: trust, but...
N icola Sturgeon’s announcement of her resignation brought some lavish tributes, but perhaps the highest praise came from Donald Trump. “Good...