Westminster has always been run more by convention than by rulebook. Prime ministers are seldom forced out: they are persuaded that their position is unsustainable and they walk. Margaret Thatcher quit before facing a final vote. Tony Blair chose resignation in preference to an uprising led by Gordon Brown. Theresa May was technically safe from
You know you’re getting old when your friends start going to sex parties. In our twenties, there were parties, and sometimes people would have sex at them. But they were never known as sex parties. Now we are firmly in our thirties, the phrase ‘sex party’ is creeping into everyday conversations alongside mortgage rates, nursery
If you had to take a guess on which American political party would produce the first Mexican-born Congresswoman, which one would it be? The Democrats? Or the party of Donald Trump? As though to prove that nothing in American politics today is predictable, it is indeed the latter. Two weeks ago Mayra Flores flipped a
When I awoke the other morning and switched on my radio, the airwaves were alive with the sound of furious, transgressed women. Nobody else got a look in. What have we done to get their goat this time, I wondered, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. Nothing, it transpired. It was all in the
Boris Johnson has always been a celebrity politician. It is one of the reasons why the normal rules of politics have so often not applied to him. This status has given him political reach and put him on first-name terms with the public. It makes it easier for him to command media attention than other
Check out these hyperventilating headlines from last week: ‘What the Fed’s largest interest rate hike in decades means for you’ (PBS.org). ‘Federal Reserve interest rate hike opens new era for economy’ (Washington Post). ‘The Fed delivers biggest rate hike in decades to fight inflation’ (National Public Radio). ‘Fed goes for inflation’s jugular with 75bps rate
In this most holy month of Pride I have been making my observances by thinking about shame. After all, shame is the reason that ‘Pride’ has taken on the meaning it has in recent years. If gay people were once made to feel shame for their sexuality then the counterbalance was apparently to encourage them
One of the favourite phrases of British political commentators is ‘oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them’. As with all clichés, there is a certain amount of truth to it. But both the Tories and Labour seem intent on testing the maxim to destruction: despite everything the Tories appear to be doing to ensure they
There’s a left-wing internet advocacy group called 38 Degrees which suggests to its followers that all they have to do is click a button and all the bad things in the world will be outlawed. It is a pleasant conceit. Its name derives from the angle at which snowflakes come together to form an avalanche,
One is not usually surprised by opinions volunteered to parliamentary hopefuls by voters on whose doors the candidate has knocked; but last week, dropping in on the Tiverton and Honiton by-election, I was taken aback by a subject that came up a number of times. It seemed so relatively unimportant. The door-knocker in this case
The former comedian Sir Lenny Henry has questioned why there seem to be so few black people at rock festivals such as Glastonbury. He might equally have asked why there are so few young people. Or just concluded that the festival was a convocation of smug airheaded middle-aged white liberal kidults and that black people
I keep reading that Tom Cruise is the Last Great Movie Star, as if he’s some noble but endangered animal. I think his people must be putting it about as part of the PR for Top Gun 2, though Lord knows what his peers make of it. Think of Tom Hanks, Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep,
Is it possible to hold two ideas in our heads at once? If so, I should like to put forward a case study. That Donald J. Trump did something that makes him ill-suited for public office, and that the current January 6 hearings in Washington are partisan political theatre. For anybody who was in outer
There is an uneasy truce in the Tory party. The 148 MPs who voted no confidence in Boris Johnson last week haven’t suddenly changed their minds, but some of them are prepared to give him a year’s grace to try to turn his premiership around. Others are looking for an earlier opportunity to strike, yet
‘Steady on, old chap. You’re a bit hard on the boy.’ The arm around my shoulder was that of Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley. I remember where we were standing – it was outside the entrance to the Birmingham International Convention Centre – and I remember the occasion: a Conservative party conference. But which one? All
When Conservative prime ministers face a problem of logistics – from ambulance-driver shortages to border-force failures – there is a solution they like to fall back on: send in the military. When Boris Johnson was London mayor, he welcomed David Cameron’s decision to invite the army to help with the Olympics after the security firm
‘Stop! Don’t fast-forward. I love this advert!’ How often do you say that? Considering that some commercial breaks run to five minutes, not often enough. How about, ‘Oh no, not again, I can’t stand this advert’? Mm… nightly? According to recent research by the Pull Agency, a brand consultancy, promotion that strains to impress consumers
As a general rule, you should never talk about a film you haven’t seen. But The Lady of Heaven is proving a tricky film to catch. Plus whole crowds of people are talking about it without having seen it, so perhaps my joining in won’t do too much harm. Although it sounds like it might
I may have broken the law this week, without having intended to, so great was my rush to return home. I forgot to put on my seat belt and may have exceeded the speed limit on more than one occasion. The cause of my intemperate haste was, of course, a desire to be back at
I was born in Nanjing five years after the Tiananmen Square protests. By then, records of the demonstrations and the Communist party’s brutal suppression had been scrubbed clean. So Tiananmen was not part of the national conversation when I was growing up. I only fully grasped what had happened when I visited Hong Kong in
