We had a long drive back from the north-east last weekend. Six hours or so, including a stop halfway, just past Britain’s most crepuscular town, Grantham. My wife does the driving because she thinks I’ll kill us all. My job is to feed album after album into the car’s admirably old-fashioned CD player. I rarely
Is it better to negotiate with a confident, optimistic European Union or a nervous, fretful one? Even Brexiteers are split on this question. Some take the view that the European Union’s difficulty is Britain’s opportunity and that bad news for Brussels is good news for Brexit. But most, and especially those in government, tend to
Buoyed by its huge popularity in the opinion polls and the fact that it is managing Brexit so well, the government has decided to further endear itself to the voters by shooting hundreds of thousands of badgers. Its cull of these creatures, previously limited to a few specific areas (where it has been staggeringly unsuccessful),
Comics aren’t what they used to be. In 1976 I was 11 — the perfect target audience for probably the most subversive, gory and entertaining comic series in British history, the now legendary Action. The strips, often rip-offs of movies we readers were too young legally to see, were quite outrageously violent. Hook Jaw was
Here’s something to bear in mind over the next few years. Be wary of taking advice on social justice from someone whose wedding dress cost 200,000 quid. Marks & Spencer does one for £69, off the peg. Meghan could have donated the remaining £199,931 to Generating Genius, the charity set up by the brilliant educationalist
Washington, DC It was a petulant Donald Trump who appeared at a White House press briefing on Tuesday with the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in. When a reporter asked if Trump had confidence in the deputy attorney-general, Rod Rosenstein, given the latest complicated twists in the investigation into collusion with Russia, Trump snapped that Moon
During a dozen years in Belfast I collected a number of political coffee mugs, hailing from both sides of the divide. Unionist designs including the heartbreakingly punctuated ‘Ulster Say’s No’ (not merely to the Anglo-Irish Agreement; no to everything) and the impressively witty ‘Reservoir Prods’: four toughs in shades identified as ‘Mr Orange’ and ‘Mr
I do not know whether the Speaker of the House of Commons called the present Leader of the House a ‘stupid woman’. It certainly wouldn’t have been a nice thing to say, but I’ve found it hard to decide whether MPs should boot him out. Many Tory friends seethe with dislike for the man; there
Amid all the argument in Westminster, everyone can agree on one thing: the country is bitterly divided. The 52:48 divisions of the Brexit referendum are still there, and possibly even more entrenched than during the campaign itself. The result hasn’t been followed by a period of national healing — quite the opposite. Even the cabinet
The worst entry for this year’s Euro-vision song contest was that vast cater-wauling aboriginal. I can’t remember her name, only that her performance convinced me still further that Australia might not, technically, be a part of Europe. But then I was a little worried by the winner too. The song ‘Toy’, sung by Israel’s Netta
When Winston Churchill was at the nadir of his career, he wrote a biography of his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough. In his wilderness years he needed to be reminded that even the greatest men of destiny go through periods when it all seems pretty hopeless. ‘Every taunt, however bitter; every tale, however petty; every
Hey, Londoners — been stabbed or shot yet this week? Just thought I’d check as the place seems to resemble, in its violence, downtown Mogadishu right now — and indeed is graced with many of the same kinds of people. That’s probably why you haven’t been stabbed or shot yet: the murdering has been committed
Theresa May’s Brexit dilemma is becoming more acute. Last week, she failed to garner the support of the Brexit inner cabinet for a so-called ‘new customs partnership’ with the European Union. Even so, May can’t and won’t drop the idea. She’s convinced that it is critical for solving the Irish border issue, and thus unlocking
Rosé wine is, I know, considered naff. Were you unaware of this you’d fast conclude as much from the incidence of lifestyle commentary informing us that rosé is newly smart. As with those columns advising that everyone is drinking sherry now, or that some prosecco is actually OK, or that men will be wearing skirts
In deference to public exhaustion, I’ve largely avoided Brexit in this slot. But a columnist’s output ought rightly to echo what she shouts at the television news. Big picture, the UK may have made an utter Horlicks of its putative withdrawal from the European Union because Britain should never have come to the EU with
Another new word, this time from the deranged far-right: incel. This means a chap who is involuntarily celibate because women won’t sleep with him. Instead, these besoms prefer to have sex with attractive men. There are links with the Toronto murderer Alek Minassian, who drove a van into a bunch of pedestrians because he couldn’t
As I get older, and particularly after having a child, I feel myself unexpectedly drawn back to the countryside I grew up in. I nose about, late at night, on the websites of estate agents specialising in the north-east, hopping down the coast from barn conversion to barn conversion, pausing sometimes to inspect the odd
Next time there’s a terrorist atrocity in Britain, here’s one of the things that will happen in the immediate aftermath: the mob will look for a scapegoat, someone wholly innocent of the actual crime but who must nonetheless bear the burden of its impotent rage. Perhaps it will be a politician, usually Nigel Farage, though
Another word which has gained a new meaning in the present decade, along with ‘vulnerable’ and ‘diverse’: survivor. Once it meant a person who had been transported to Auschwitz but somehow came out alive. Or a person who had been involved in a terrible car crash but had escaped with only a broken neck. Today
It is sometimes tempting to imagine that the Brexit negotiations will follow the course of a Sunday night TV drama: weeks of suspense, then everything is miraculously resolved with five minutes to go. Last December’s agreement was a case in point. Theresa May turned up to see Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission President, expecting to do