Society

Byng was the name of the unfortunate admiral executed in 1757, in the words of Voltaire, “pour encourager les autres” after the fall of Minorca. I fear that poor old Michael Byng might be about to go the same way. Having put out a report estimating that the first phase of HS2 could cost £48 billion and the full scheme £104 billion, twice official estimates – will have woken up this morning to hear transport secretary Chris Grayling rubbishing his work, saying that he couldn’t possibly know about HS2 because he hasn’t been working on it. He did, however, devise the system which Network Rail use for estimating costs, which

You know, the quality on which the British pride themselves, pragmatism, has its limits. There’s a case for abstract moral thinking and it’s especially true when it comes to the fraught moral question of euthanasia, assisted suicide, right-to-die, whatever. And essentially the distinction is between actively killing someone, or allowing them to die – of doing something, as opposed to not doing something, of commission rather than omission. The little ditty by Arthur Hugh Clough, ‘thou shalt not kill but needst not strive/ officiously to keep alive’ sort of sums it up. The latest right-to-die case comes before the court today, that of Noel Conway, a retired lecturer who has

Although an MP is supposed to act in the best interests of their constituents, Emma Dent Coad appears to have missed the memo. The new MP for Kensington appeared at an anti-monarchist Republic event over the weekend – where she wasted no time in laying into the residents of Kensington Palace. The Labour politician said she despised the money spent on the royal family before comparing the Middleton family to the Kardashians. She said she would prefer the Beckhams to make up the royal family as at least that family has earned its own money: ‘I would say if we are going to have princes and princesses then I would

After an agonising year-and-a-bit wait, Game of Thrones, the biggest TV show on earth bar none, returns in the early hours of tomorrow. Given the prolonged gap between the seasons – necessitated by storylines that have now outrun George R. R. Martin’s source material – here’s a pre-release primer on the situation around Westeros, now that Winter has truly arrived. In the North: The start of last season saw the resurrection of Jon Snow – a will-they-won’t-they event that HBO had spent the best part of a year teasing – who was returned to life by Melisandre, one of Westeros’s biggest wildcards. Upon returning to life, Jon proceeds to quit

‘We need to talk about why the internet is falling in love with Jacob Rees-Mogg, because it’s not OK,’ warns a recent post on the Corbynista website The Canary. Its anxiety is not misplaced. Polite, eloquent, witty, well-informed, coherent, principled — Jacob Rees-Mogg is the antithesis of almost every-thing the Labour party stands for under its current populist leadership. And far from putting off voters, it seems to be a winning formula. Even sections of the elusive and generally very left-wing youth vote appear to be warming to the idea that our next prime minister shouldn’t be (alleged) man-of-the-people Corbyn but yet another plummy, Old Etonian millionaire… This ought to

Be fair. Theresa May’s plan actually half-worked. No, there was a plan. I know the consensus now seems to be that the entire election was motivated by little more a succession of senior Tories saying ‘Gosh yes, everybody loves you!’ to the Prime Minister while Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy stood behind her chair, slapping truncheons into their palms. Only that’s not how it was. Once, there was philosophy here. There was a plan to cut loose the liberal, urban, Remainiac middle classes, and draw in a new working-class Tory vote instead. And, like I said, it half-worked. As in, the working classes might not have got the message that