How China made Manchesterism
Walk with me through a fragment of Manchester. Let’s start on Corporation Street, where the 19th-century pomp of Victoria Station abuts an outcrop of high rises. To be fair, I…
Iran has humiliated America’s military
Both those who criticize and those who loyally support Trump’s “deal” — it is hardly a sufficiently explicit agreement, indeed it remains vague on the key points — are carefully…
Why Andy Burnham won’t Rejoin
Perhaps it was the hand of God that plopped Andy Burnham down in Makerfield. Had he got his first choice of constituency, Gorton and Denton, his now-inevitable ascent would have…
Retiring the Nutty Professor
The movie The Nutty Professor, both the original 1963 version starring Jerry Lewis and the successful remake by Eddie Murphy in 1996, is about a genius professor, obese but kind,…
Is Burnham too Northern?
Like many post-industrial constituencies in Northern England — areas with predominantly white, working-class, Brexit-voting populations — received wisdom had Makerfield hurtling towards the Right. Britain, it has been repeated by…
The Cambridge Five: England’s Übermenschen
Who would have thought that Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch would find one of its most remarkable manifestations not among the “blond beasts” of Adolf Hitler’s Aryan fantasies, but…
How to end the Brexit shitshow
In European history, there is a pattern: every 50 or 75 years or so, the international order of its time, the institutions and the ideas, gradually drift out of alignment…
Andy Burnham: king of normie populism
What is the point of Andy Burnham? He’s a serial flip-flopper. A chameleon. And he’s a prime example of that most hated of people: a career politician. Take a look…
The man who got rich off affordable housing
The Design Center in London’s Chelsea Harbour is an unlikely base from which to operate a social housing empire. It’s an ultra high-end shopping mall for interior design, built in…
In defense of gossip
Women love hearing about other women’s misfortunes, and this week we were given a treat. “This story starts in a bathroom in Venice,” wrote the former TV presenter and author…