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James Forsyth

Ripe for reform

Any hopes that the parliamentary recess would help resolve the great Brexit impasse have been dashed. MPs have returned from their break more entrenched in their positions. The essential facts remain. Theresa May doesn’t have enough votes to pass the withdrawal agreement. Equally, no Brexit option from a second referendum to a customs union has

We’re in a terrible tangle over Islam

The carnage in Sri Lanka which left more than 300 dead may have been carried out by ‘Buddhists’, according to the BBC Today presenter Nick Robinson on the morning after those hideous bombings. We all grope slowly towards meaning, don’t we? We look for precedent, we search for clues. I did both when I heard

We are all self-haters now

As an American coming of age at the fag end of the 1960s, I celebrated self-loathing. Everything about the United States was shameful: its shallow consumerism, its environmental rapacity, its worship of money, its racism, its political assassinations, its catastrophic involvement in Vietnam. Everything about the American past was shameful, too: slavery, the massacre of

Do we need a Brexit inquiry?

How will future generations revisit the Brexit years? Through what glass will we be seen? This spring and, I suspect, for many seasons to come, we’re in too deep for any attempt to stand back and assess. There has been much talk (particularly by some of my fellow Remainers) of a review along the lines

Any other business

Bramson the corporate raider is not wrong about Barclays

If you know my personal history with Barclays, you may be wondering whether I’m for or against Edward Bramson. To recap, I’m a former second-generation employee of the bank as well as the custodian of a family shareholding that’s never likely to be sold — and nowadays, rather miraculously given everything that’s happened to me