Politics

Evgeny Lebedev is a man of many talents. Since taking up the reins as Evening Standard proprietor in 2009, he’s turned his hand to everything from newspapers and restaurants to philanthropy and property. Theatre buff, elephant lover, a man who collects famous friends like his Francis Bacon paintings: is there anything this Russian renaissance man can’t do?  For during his Gramscian waltz through the institutions of the British establishment, Lebedev became close to Boris Johnson, Mayor of London when he bought the Standard. The pair have enjoyed caviar parties and Italian soirees together, with Johnson famously being spotted dishevelled, alone and without his security detail at an airport after one such bash in

This is the time of year when economists and political scientists make their predictions for the upcoming 12 months. Will we finally see the back of Covid and economic recovery? Will Boris Johnson survive as Prime Minister? In Scotland, the politerati are speculating on what Nicola Sturgeon’s next move on the constitution will be. It seems likely the Scottish government will introduce a bill, without the agreement of Westminster, on a second independence referendum. This is expected to be challenged at the UK Supreme Court. The most likely outcome of that is the referendum bill failing on the grounds that it goes beyond the constitutional powers of the devolved parliament

In 2001, I spent part of a hard winter in a remote village near Bamiyan in the Afghan central highlands. The Taliban government had just fallen. The village was ringed with landmines. Neighbouring village had been razed to the ground by retreating militia, the roof-beams were charred, the buildings empty, and the survivors had fled to refugee camps in Iran. There was no electricity, no schooling for girls and little for boys. The nearest clinic was three days’ walk away and there were no medicines when you reached it. People made what little cash they had from archaeological looting and child labour. When I returned to the valley, at the

Does Sage have a pro-lockdown bias? Sir Patrick Valance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, wrote an article in the Times recently presenting Sage as a ruthlessly neutral force speaking ‘scientific truth to power’. He’s refuting the idea of Sage providing a range of gloomy factoids and scenarios which tend to make the case for lockdown. His description is rather different to what Prof Graham Medley, chairman of the Sage modelling committee, told me last weekend: that  ‘we generally model what we are asked to model.’ Asked by whom? I’d still love to know. Anyway, Sir Patrick puts all this to one side and stresses how Sage offers a breadth of advice on Omicron.

Hooray for Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who used the one day of the year when his pronouncements are amplified by the season to ‘sincerely appeal that [the government] do not again consider closing churches and places of worship.’ He said in a BBC interview he believed it had been demonstrated that the airiness of churches meant they are ‘not places where we spread the virus’. Mind you, Catholic churches weren’t as bad as the Church of England This is, of course, entirely sensible. It was nuts for churches to close at the start of lockdown, at least as spaces for prayer if not for communal worship. Pretty well any church is ‘Covid-safe’, in

When Vladimir Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union ‘a major geopolitical disaster of the century’ he wasn’t channelling his inner Marxist-Leninist. Russia’s leader is not interested in remaking the Soviet empire, which finally fell apart 30 years ago today, on Boxing Day 1991. But he does want to roll back the losses of the post Cold War era, expand Russia’s sphere of influence, and build a buffer zone around the homeland. It’s this that explains Russian aggression on the borders of Ukraine. While western observers might like to paint this as mindless sabre-rattling, the reality is that this massing of troops is driven by fear – and the

You might find it difficult, not to mention dangerous, to get to see a real meeting between an irresistible force and an immovable object. But if you’re looking for the next best experience over Christmas, you could well take a look at the ballooning legal spat between Poland and the EU. To remind you of the background, it is part of Brussels’s catechism that its law must at all times and in all places trump the law of a member State. True, the principle doesn’t appear in the treaties; but the Court of Justice, from which there is no appeal, has said so since 1963. And the rule is unyielding:

Merseyside – the home of Roger McGough, Willy Russell and the Beatles. But it seems that despite the area’s reputation as a hotbed of the arts, not all Liverpool’s institutions of higher learning are too keen on resisting the tide of iconoclasm sweeping through Britain’s universities.  For in the aftermath of the protests which followed George Floyd’s murder last year, institutes across the UK faced demands to remove busts, paintings and statues accused of glorifying imperialism or slavery. Works withdrawn include a monument to Sir John Cass at the University of East London while at Oxford there have been renewed efforts to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College. And it appears that Liverpool University is not

Merry Christmas – but not for those who have earned a place on my naughty list. From Jacinda Ardern to Carrie’s critics, here’s a catalogue of all those who must do better in 2022: Ant and Dec. Nope. Still don’t know which is which. Each needs to follow normal practice and use a Christian name/surname combination that eliminates all confusion, e.g, Brian Cox. Nigel Farage’s broadcast career. His GB News show is popular but it’s a waste of his unique power, namely the ability to inflict near-fatal damage on an institution from within. Give him a peerage. Jacinda Ardern. The toothsome fear-monger seems hellbent on turning her country into a