If there is a hallmark of Keir Starmer’s leadership, it is a willingness to bash the left. For five years, he has repeatedly sided with his moderate factions to make Labour electable. Corbynites have been purged from parliament and the party machine. Principles and policies have been changed to meet the electorate’s approval. Last summer’s
As a snapshot of our country, you’ll be pressed to find anything quite so resonant as the one which depicts a leading member of our Skankerati sitting in an inflatable off the southern coast of the UK with tattoo and vape in attendance. There has been much debate of late about the very large numbers
At the end of Sky News’s coverage of last year’s Notting Hill Carnival, its correspondent recited the usual list of arrests, stabbings and so on before concluding her piece to camera by saying: ‘But overall it’s been a really peaceful and enjoyable day.’ This year the honour of summing up the beauty of the event
In 1620, in the Staffordshire market town of Bilston, a teenage boy decided he didn’t much fancy going to school. Rather than resort to conventional methods, 13-year-old William Perry claimed that he was possessed by a demon. His symptoms included reacting with spasms to the reading of the first verse of St John’s Gospel and
The theme of my holiday reading has been the insidious ways in which the vanities and fetishes of rulers harm the interests of citizens. I started with 1929, Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new history of the Wall Street crash, which I’ll be reviewing elsewhere ahead of its release in October –my point here being not about
