Did MAGA create the Ceuta crisis?
Sixty-thousand people — roughly the population of Loughborough. That is how many migrants just forced their way into the Spanish town of Ceuta, a coastal…
How Cuban politics infiltrated America
Last week, the US Department of State issued a 100-page report titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism”. In the days since, many in the press have interpreted the…
The political problem with cousin marriage
On 1 July, the Swedish government formally outlawed first-cousin marriage, presenting the ban not simply as a measure to reduce inherited disorders but as protection against coercion, honor-based oppression and…
Charli xcx’s death drive
Charli xcx is having a death summer. Music, Fashion, Film — her first proper album since 2024’s season-defining Brat, and her second if you include her soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s…
Trump’s tariff addiction
In the 2002 movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the father of the bride claims that Windex, a US glass cleaning product, can cure all known medical conditions. I was…
The poet who invented Burnham’s North
On Monday we said hello to Britain’s first born-and-bred Northern prime minister since Harold Wilson. It would be fair to say that Andy Burnham has not been shy in heralding…
Why we can’t outrun the Neanderthals
To become a father is to be plunged into a world of stories. Dragons, tigers, talking bears — some of them half-remembered, from when they were read to me —…
The American disaster
In 1831, at the dawn of American democracy, the French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville spent the best part of a year in the United States. His book Democracy in…
Escape from Trad-Land
In the town of St. Mary’s, Kan., a blanket party wasn’t as exciting as it might sound. St. Mary’s is the de facto US headquarters of the Society of Saint…
The great Net Zero showdown
At first glance, the new Prime Minister’s choice of Miatta Fahnbulleh as energy secretary would appear to suggest more of the same: more Net Zero, less oil and gas. Fahnbulleh…
The Democrats’ soul-healer
“We’ve become such a technocratic party that we’ve stopped spending time truly analyzing the way people are feeling,” Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democratic senator and (suspected) presidential contender, tells me…