Israel can’t kill the Hezbollah hydra
For 900 years, Beaufort Castle has dominated the villages and olive groves of South Lebanon. Yet even before its recent capture by the IDF, this crusader stronghold was far more…
Can Putin live to 1,000?
In Sabaudia, a Rationalist town newly built on the reclaimed swamps of the Pontine Marshes, Benito Mussolini emerged from his Alfa Romeo. It was 1934, and Italy was in the…
Welcome to ‘the silent society’
“It’s really bad for you … we know better than to drink all night.” “I just like to go home after class, relax, maybe go on Twitch or Stream.” “Cost…
How Reform ate Labour’s lunch
Mainstream progressives win a landslide General Election against a backdrop of anti-Conservative disaffection. In that election, a lower-class party formed just a few years before stands candidates for the first…
Mike Pence should go away already
It’s 2001, and a young Mike Pence is listening to George W. Bush deliver his first major speech to Congress. The Indiana representative has waited a long time for a…
Boutique boxing punches down
I must admit I was skeptical walking into BoxCentric, a boxing club on a leafy street in Knightsbridge. I half expected clients in expensive Hermès boxing gloves and Lululemon yoga…
Spencer Pratt: Hollywood troll
Spencer Pratt first appeared on reality television in 2005, when the precocious 20-year-old executive producer stepped out from behind the cameras of The Princes of Malibu to become a permanent…
My night with the young gay Tories
Sir Michael Fabricant assures me that he isn’t “a teddy bear fetishist”. I glance around the former Conservative MP’s living room at the multiplicity of ursine plushies, each comatosely slouched…
Why people hate humanoid robots
At Cooper’s Brewery in Adelaide, the largest family-owned brewing business in Australia, forklifts glide around the sizable factory floor. With ease, they shelve boxes of lagers and ales. But nobody…
Tony Blair’s comeback will fail
Once political ideas fail, they don’t get second chances. Communism has been tried. It won’t come back. Nor will Tony Blair’s idea of a “radical center”. It was the great…