The party conference season has showcased two very different visions of Britain. Jeremy Corbyn speaks of the country as one giant Victorian-style workhouse. We are living in zero-hours Britain, apparently — a land where workers subsist on starvation wages and cannot even rely on those. So this is why Labour proposes a great upheaval, mass
Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, presented the EU with a proposed withdrawal agreement. It entailed Northern Ireland remaining for a large part in the EU single market, along with Ireland, until January 2025, with the European Court retaining jurisdiction during that time. After that, the Northern Ireland Assembly would be able to choose whether
On a book tour to promote Outgrowing God, travelling from London’s Festival Hall to Birmingham and then Manchester, I have plenty of time to listen to audio books, my new enthusiasm. This week it’s Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds. The title is a well-chosen echo from Charles Mackay’s 1852 classic. Well chosen because our
Who speaks what The Chancellor, Sajid Javid, included a little Punjabi in his speech to the Tory conference. How many people in Britain would have understood him? In the 2011 census the ONS counted 273,000 Punjabi speakers in Britain. The other most common languages, besides English and Welsh, were: Polish 546,000 Urdu 269,000 Bengali 221,000
Judges of experience Sir: In the midst of the furore about the Supreme Court judgment, many people are now questioning how the senior judiciary are appointed (‘Imbalance of power’, 28 September). Lady Hale is undoubtedly extremely clever. But perhaps that is at the heart of the problem. It is well established that the ranks of
