Nigel Jones is a historian and journalist
No two politicians could be less alike than Sir Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage. But it looks as though the Prime Minister is transitioning into the Reform party’s rumbustuous leader – or at least stealing his velvet collared clothes. Consider the evidence. Over the past few days and weeks, Labour has adopted a raft of
Somewhat unfairly (the actual median age of residents is 45) the East Sussex coastal resort of Eastbourne is known as ‘God’s waiting room’ because of the high number of old people who live in Britain’s sunniest town. Although Eastbourne’s reputation as a paradise for retirees may be overblown, it can’t be denied that the town
Nigel Farage is a curate’s egg of a politician: good in parts. The good part, at least for a Brexiteer like me, is that it was his tireless campaigning, more than any other’s, that freed Britain from the clammy grasp of the EU. No one else in politics can match his ability to fire up
One aspect of the furious row that has split Reform UK which has yet to receive the attention it deserves is the part the good old British subjects of class and snobbery have played. The row erupted last week after Reform MP Rupert Lowe voiced mild criticism of party leader Nigel Farage in a Daily Mail
It was so predictable as to be almost inevitable: a massive row has erupted within the leadership of Reform UK. Rupert Lowe, one of Reform’s five MPs and the Member for Great Yarmouth – an outspoken keyboard warrior on social media and popular with many grassroots party members for his outspoken online comments – kicked off
A notable recent trend in popular history is the revival of interest in the ancient world. Mary Beard, Tom Holland, Bettany Hughes and Peter Stothard are just some of the historians whose books and television series have cashed in on our thirst for knowledge of distant forebears and their civilisations. Now Owen Rees joins the
The jaw-dropping contempt dripping from the reply suggested by Labour’s sacked health minister Andrew Gwynne to a 72-year-old lady in Manchester who had complained about her bin collections may seem shocking but is scarcely surprising. In a WhatsApp chat with Labour councillors, Gwynne proposed to respond with: ‘Dear resident, F*** your bins. I’m re-elected and
These are dramatic days in the usually dull world of German politics. Last Wednesday, midway through a fiercely fought federal election campaign, the Bundestag Parliament narrowly voted to close the nation’s borders and curb the legal rights of immigrants. Two days later, the same assembly reversed ferret and voted a similar measure down. So what
My late mother proudly possessed a curious object: a tea cosy decorated with the image of a Sputnik. In 1957, when Russia launched the world’s first satellite, this item would have been a charmingly incongruous mix of old and new technology. But today, younger readers might struggle to identify the functions of both a tea
Anyone of a certain age is aware of the urban legend that links Marianne Faithfull, a Mars bar and Mick Jagger. But Marianne’s death yesterday at the grand age of 78 (given her lifestyle, how did she get that old?) really does remove one of the last living links with the golden age of rock
During Sir Keir Starmer’s first phone call with Donald Trump since the President’s inauguration, the two leaders discussed the ceasefire in Gaza and the economy. We don’t know if Starmer and Trump touched on the topic of illegal migration during their conversation late last night, but, if not, Starmer missed a trick. He has much
The Daily Mail has got a world exclusive on its hands. In great excitement it is publishing the secret diary of Unity Valkyrie Mitford, the star-struck young aristo who made a splash in the 1930s tabloids with her pursuit of her famous love interest. The thing was that the star she was struck with was
Next month’s German federal election on 23 February revolves around the disputed meaning of a single toxic word: ‘remigration’. Until the current fiercely fought campaign began, the word was an unmentionable taboo in German politics for obvious historical reasons, since, according to left-wing linguists, it suggested comparison between the deadly forced deportation of Jews by the
Ten Reform party councillors in Derbyshire have resigned in protest at Nigel Farage’s ‘autocratic’ control of the rising party and its direction of travel. Farage has dismissed the revolt as the action of what he calls a ‘rogue branch’ of Reform, but there are stirrings of discontent in the grassroots of the fast-growing party that
I spent New Year’s Eve in the company of a former Anglican vicar who lost his faith and had the honesty to resign from the Church as a result. He said what I have long suspected; that almost none of those in the hierarchy of the Church today believe in the central tenets of their
Fresh from explosively disrupting the politics of the US and Britain, Elon Musk has now turned his attention to Germany. The world’s richest man has written an op-ed in the newspaper Die Welt, endorsing the hard-right populist AfD party, which he has called ‘Germany’s last faint hope’. By doing so, Musk has smashed the carefully constructed
There were two scenes from Syria last night screened by the BBC and Channel 4 News that should give the Panglossian optimists hailing the birth of a ‘new Syria’ a pause for thought. In one, filmed at the Assad family mausoleum in Qardaha, near the port of Latakia, armed members of the Islamist HTS who
The late Henry Kissinger said of the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s that it was a shame that both sides couldn’t lose. Much the same is true of the current situation in Syria, where the long established regime of the brutal but secular Assad dynasty looks increasingly likely to fall to a sudden Islamist rebel
In 1986 the late Martin Amis published a book of essays called The Moronic Inferno – a title he had borrowed from the writers Saul Bellow and Wyndham Lewis. The essays focused on Amis’s dim view of culture in the USA. These aspects of American life have long since crossed the pond, and we are
Anyone watching The Mirror and the Light – the BBC adaptation of the final part of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy – can admire the performances of Damian Lewis as Henry VIII, and Mark Rylance as Mantel’s hero Thomas Cromwell. But no one should confuse them with real history. The late Dame Hilary was a
