Rishi Sunak will start the year as he means to go on: spending more time in key marginal seats, telling ‘ordinary’ voters how he is helping them by cutting tax, taming inflation and curbing welfare. The accuracy of his claims is open to question (both tax and welfare numbers are still rising) but the idea
I have never been one of those late-middle-aged right-wing men who, at night, hunkers down over the computer to pleasure himself while staring at photographs of Vladimir Putin. He doesn’t do it for me – not even that picture of him riding a horse semi-naked through a river with a very resolute expression on his
Some people may have noticed the happy new guidance released between Christmas and New Year by the National Police Chief’s Council. This guidance to police in England and Wales was that police officers ought to try to go to properties that have been burgled. Even better, they should try to do so within an hour
‘Please accept coffee without payment. You are visitors.’ So said the manager of the retro-chic little Café Auber in downtown Algiers, where we’d paused on a stroll down to the harbour after Christmas. We’d considered the city just a stop on our way into the Sahara. Instead it proved a revelation. Were you to arrive
Over a leg of lamb, I joined five other expat Americans for Christmas. Our topic du jour was which faction in our homeland we were most afraid of. Revisiting that boisterous conversation appeals, because in this re-enactment, I’m the only one who gets to talk. With forbidding rapidity, one armchair assertion has gone from audacious
A giveaway Budget in March preceding a general election in May against an improving economic backdrop: that, we’re told, is Downing Street’s favoured scenario. But still the election is Keir Starmer’s to lose, so here’s my start-the-year advice to him. Don’t bang on about Rishi Sunak being too rich; don’t make immigration the issue, because
