Coffee House
What David Cameron’s decision to keep Sir George Young as chief whip tells us
Tory MPs have long assumed that Sir George Young would be shuffled out of the job of chief whip at the next reshuffle. The 71 year old had, after all,… Continue reading
Blogs
Fathers, sons and the beauty of a “borrowed” book
I spent the weekend in Dublin; consequently, I am suffering from what Apthorpe would have called ‘Bechuana tummy’. For the uninitiated, Apthorpe is the premier fool in Men at Arms,… Continue reading
Magazine
Why Michael Gove is the best leader Labour never had
Michael Gove received a surprising amount of support from the opposition benches when he unveiled his GCSE reforms in the Commons on Monday. Among those Labour MPs saying they welcomed… Read more
The Reluctant Natives
Fate landed us here by mistake, set us to walk Welsh hillsides with a plodding heart or paddle Essex estuaries under duress, our talk always of somewhere else (tacked to… Read more
To transform schools, sack bad teachers and hire great ones. It'll transform education - and the economy
The Labour years can, in retrospect, be seen as a massive experiment into the link between cash and school quality. Gordon Brown almost doubled spending per pupil over the past… Read more
Recycled graves – coming soon to a cemetery near you
Two marble graves are side by side. One is grey and encrusted, with moss growing over the top. The other is smooth and shiny white. It looks new but, in… Read more
Chief Rabbi: atheism has failed. Only religion can defeat the new barbarians
I love the remark made by one Oxford don about another: ‘On the surface, he’s profound, but deep down, he’s superficial.’ That sentence has more than once come to mind… Read more
Turkey’s agony – how Erdogan turned a peaceful protest into a violent nightmare
Istanbul By now, everyone has heard of the brutal suppression of protests all over Turkey, which began with a peaceful sit-in in Istanbul to protect a hapless apology for… Read more
My last chance to follow in Napoleon’s footsteps
St Helena, the island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on which Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled and died, is so far away from anywhere else that even pirates never… Read more
Energy special: Get ready for the ‘fire ice’ revolution
On Saturday, 8 June, the research vessel Kaiyo Maru No. 7 left the port of Joetsu, in western Japan, to begin a three-year survey of the Sea of Japan —… Read more
