This week I was talking to a friend about my godson’s business as a private mixologist. …

The EU and the western Balkans History is in large part about the stories we choose to tell ourselves. In Britain, we remember the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo as the start of the unravelling of the twentieth century. That is one story. In Sarajevo itself, they tell a different story. To many…

Churchill is famous for his drinking. But he had strong views on food too. On being confronted with inadequate afters, he demanded: “Take this pudding away — it has no theme.” …

Democracy decays What is so special about democracy as a system? Unless you subscribe literally to the classical idea that vox populi vox dei, there’s nothing mystical about getting the general public to decide who governs Britain. A system of government needs to justify itself on grounds of efficacy and…

Why Boris Johnson’s fate should not have been remotely surprising I suppose this is what they call a teachable moment. Over the last year or so the commentariat has been consistently lagging behind, failing to see Boris Johnson’s inevitable comeuppance come up. The consensus was first that the Privileges Committee…

Britain isn’t working. The rivers are full of shit, the NHS is falling apart at the seams and the trains seem barely to run, never mind on time. The government claims it is being undermined by a woke blob. The very structure of administration is found wanting. So there’s an…

This week, in a characteristically elegantly written and argued piece, Janan Ganesh set out the case in the FT that while the public may be concluding that Brexit was a mistake, the time was unripe for politicians to say so and would not be ripe for some years to come…

If they weren’t so unpleasant, I’d feel sorry for them. The Tories evidently haven’t got a clue what’s coming for them next. The evidence of what’s coming is there for anyone with eyes to see it. The long run of dire polls: since 1 March, they have topped 30% just…

How Rishi Sunak is dealing with Boris Johnson I’m going to make what you might consider to be a rash assumption. I’m going to assume that Rishi Sunak can read. …