Society

All good things must come to an end, including summer holidays and bull markets. The bull run in US shares that began in the aftermath of the financial crisis in March 2009 has now officially passed the previous record of 3,452 more-up-than-down days from October 1990 to March 2000. This time round, the S&P500 index of US stocks has risen by more than 300 per cent — and that rise has continued throughout Donald Trump’s reign, despite his trade war threats and other follies. But it has not been reflected in major European markets, which have drifted sideways, and has been increasingly sustained by a small number of top tech

If you’re on the hunt for a mortgage, a fixed rate one will at least ensure that your repayments stay the same. Here are some of the best rates available for five-year fixed rate mortgages on the market at the moment, from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.

I didn’t much like John McCain’s politics. He never saw a military intervention he didn’t like. He was bi-partisan in all the wrong ways. He was a hothead, well-suited to hawkish Republican Washington, but not to 21st-century America. His admirers elevated his heroics as a war veteran to distract from his failings as a statesman. But McCain, who has just died after a long battle with brain cancer, had honour and grace. He stood against torture despite his instinctive ruthlessness in foreign policy. He could also be insightful and funny. Perhaps his greatest moment, for me, was his concession speech after losing to Barack Obama in 2008. His audience booed

No one on earth could fulfil the expectations that have been invested in the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland. He is meant to  respond to the crisis of clerical child abuse and institutional self preservation within the global church during his first official address at Dublin Castle in a fashion that appeases the church’s critics in Ireland, who are, frankly, in no mood to be appeased. What he did do in his speech was express once again perfectly decent sentiments of abhorrence at the violation of children by members of the clergy. It won’t, and couldn’t, satisfy those who wanted him to use this occasion to make quite explicit

This piece first appeared as the leading article in The Spectator.  Economies run on confidence — as Franklin D. Roosevelt observed when he told Americans, in his first inaugural address during the depths of the Great Depression in 1933, that they had ‘nothing to fear except fear itself’. If that confidence is lost, if people collectively start drawing in their horns, squirrelling money away because they fear turbulent economic times ahead, then recession can all too easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. No serious economist would dispute this theory. The puzzle is why the UK economy, riddled with Brexit anxieties, is in such good health. The Dutch prime minister said we