The scandal of two-tier degrees
As the academic year draws to a close, students up and down the country will be receiving their degrees. So, consider two different cases: Read…
Why Europe keeps losing
I often think about the EU as a confused football team. There are too many players on the field. Some of the players do not know which team they are…
Trump’s climate policy is class warfare
On his recent trip to Scotland, Donald Trump brought with him his ire about mass immigration, high taxes and — naturally — wind turbines. Sitting with Ursula von der Leyen…
How broken children became big business
It is hard to think of a more grotesque example of state failure. A 15-year-old girl is taken into protective care to escape sexual exploitation in south Wales. The local…
Should philosophers take drugs?
I have, for most of my adult life, considered that it would be good for everyone to have the opportunity to use legal psychedelic drugs at some point in their…
Estonian opioids are heading for Britain
Four or five times a day, in a quiet suburb of Tallinn, Rasmus mixes a powder with water, carefully fills his syringe with it, and scours his body for a…
Trump is snatching the deep sea’s riches
Like the howling ice shelves of Antarctica, or the searing depths of the Earth’s crust, the deep-sea floor is both of our world and alien. The abyssal plain is a…
How to save postliberalism
We are said to be living in an interregnum. An old way of doing politics and economics is dying, a new one is yet to be born. I’m not so…
How to end the Age of Slop
Strawberina and her husband Banannito are expecting. The baby is born, but — shock horror: it’s a zucchini. Banannito breaks down in tears as Strawberina’s twisted affair with the scheming…
Elegy for the Royal Navy
I do not think there has ever been a naval dictatorship. Hungary’s Admiral Horthy, though a sort of dictator, lacked an actual navy, or even any sea, by the time…
Can Burnham banish Maggie’s ghost?
In 2013, I attended a Margaret Thatcher death party in Brixton. At the age of 23, perhaps I should have known better. Politically, I was in an extended-adolescence phase of…