The Two Jacobs: The Faragist Future

James Meek, 1 August 2019

The new prime minister will live in a nice house in the middle of London, but it won’t be his house. Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Arron Banks bought it for him. They own 10 Downing Street, and...

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Broad-shouldered, intense and handsome, he looks like a statesman – the antithesis, purposefully so, of the stock image of the degraded slave.

Read more about Leave them weeping: Frederick Douglass

Short Cuts: Reasons to be Cheerful

William Davies, 18 July 2019

Politics​ has never been a pursuit that requires total honesty. Nor, historically, has it been a vocation that scientists or other kinds of expert are drawn to. The New Labour era, which...

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Before dawn​ on 21 February 1803, the day of Colonel Edward Marcus Despard’s execution, London’s entire armed forces were on full alert. Every member of the Bow Street, Queen Street...

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Good New Idea: Universal Basic Income

John Lanchester, 18 July 2019

Will we succumb to what’s now being called ‘climate apartheid’, with the rich world cutting itself off from the poor and entrenching itself behind barriers and walls, and letting the poor world...

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Which is worse? Germany Divided

Adam Tooze, 18 July 2019

It is possible that a reconfiguration of politics in Berlin will eventually produce a more decisive, more pro-European government. But in the meantime Europe is left with a government in Berlin that is...

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One Screw Short: Pakistan’s Bomb

Owen Bennett-Jones, 18 July 2019

How​ did Pakistan become the world’s leading nuclear proliferator? North Korea, Libya, Iran: none of them would have worked on building a bomb if it hadn’t been for A.Q. Khan,...

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The​ definition of Conservative policy, according to Lord Salisbury, was the preaching of ‘confidence’: the ‘provision of work … will only exist where confidence...

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Macron’s War

Didier Fassin, 4 July 2019

The key to Macron’s poor performance in May is that two years after his election, many in France – and increasingly in Europe – consider his self-styled progressive identity to be at odds with his...

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The Brexit Party is a mixture of business startup and social movement; it serves as a pressure valve, releasing pent-up frustration with traditional politics into the electoral system.

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Wanting to be Margaret Thatcher is tempting some prime ministerial hopefuls to flirt with being Donald Trump. Trying to be Trump is likely to mean that they end up as Theresa May: full of purpose, empty...

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How to Run a Caliphate

Tom Stevenson, 20 June 2019

The horrors of IS rule are well known: the killings of Shia; the choice offered to the Christians of Mosul (conversion, ruinous taxation or expulsion); the slaughter of polytheists; the revival of slavery;...

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Who​ today remembers the Helsinki conference? Unlike other major international gatherings like the Congress of Vienna or the Paris Peace Conference, Helsinki, which concluded in 1975 after...

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Modi does it again

Tariq Ali, 6 June 2019

That​ Narendra Modi’s party would win again was never really in dispute. The only question was whether the BJP (the Bharatiya Janata, or Indian Peoples’ Party), would emerge merely...

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Why we go to war

Ferdinand Mount, 6 June 2019

You can see​ the twin slagheaps from almost every corner of the battlefield. If there is one memorable emblem of the Battle of Loos, it is these double crassiers, a little altered in outline...

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How to Get Screwed

David Runciman, 6 June 2019

Perhaps the deepest irony of all is that in clearing Trump of conspiracy the Mueller report poses a direct challenge to his worldview.

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Haughty Dirigistes: France

Sudhir Hazareesingh, 23 May 2019

‘There is​ a France only thanks to the state,’ Charles de Gaulle declared in 1960, ‘and only by the state can France be maintained.’ He spoke these words during the...

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Populism and the People

Jan-Werner Müller, 23 May 2019

They do not​ all look the same. But group them together and they clearly form a political family: Orbán, Erdoğan, Kaczyński, Trump, Modi, perhaps Netanyahu, Bolsonaro for sure. It...

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