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The Guardian |
‘It underscores why you need a deterrent.” So claimed Rishi Sunak in response to the Channel tragedy last week that led to the deaths of five...
Climbing Everest used to be an even more dangerous pursuit than it is today, requiring huge bravery, endurance and skill. Even then the mountain...
It’s important to start strong. That’s true of a lot of things in life, but doubly so when you’re an archaeologist starting off a conversation...
Here’s a cast-iron rule of politics: authenticity matters. It is almost all that matters. If you have it, you’re made. If you don’t, no team of...
I’m not certain who minted the phrase, but it is an excellent one to describe the decade or so that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the...
Life is a game of chance. Or that’s what I tell myself when I’m losing at my newest hobby, poker. Of course it’s a different story when I win...
‘Tonight I’ll be asking the most important question of all – who was St George and why do we celebrate him?” Supposing a UK channel wanted to...
The terrible massacre of innocent Israelis by sadistic Hamas agents on 7 October last year has set in motion a dreadful chain of events, exploited...
In the hourly deluge of outrage and nonsense that passes for the national conversation, it was only another fleeting moment. But last Tuesday, as...
Is woke dead? Is it over? Has it “peaked”, run its course before we’ve even properly agreed on what this endlessly controversial but somehow...
There is a morose mood in the Conservative party. It isn’t just that the Tories expect to lose the next election – they fear that the coming...
Way back in the mid-1990s, when the web was young and the online world was buzzing with blogs, a worrying problem loomed. If you were an ISP that...
A month ago Josh Barro (a man) at the Atlantic wrote a piece headlined Sonia Sotomayor Should Retire Now. Around the same time the Guardian’s...
He was spoken of as an extraordinary talent. A rising star with a million followers on Instagram, who made politics relevant for younger...
Alongside serving my constituents as their MP, during the junior doctors’ strike I have spent more than 20 night shifts over the past year or so...
Usually, rape isn’t reported. When it is reported, it is often not charged. And when it is charged, it rarely leads to a conviction. These facts...
The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act is 10 years old. In the UK, any couple can marry. Likewise, thanks to this courageous pair, any couple can now...
Director, cast and critics all agree: Civil War, the movie depicting America tearing itself to bloody bits while a cowardly, authoritarian...
The US is just months away from the 2024 election, and the prospect of a second Trump presidency grows each day as he evades repercussions for the...
The land of restaurants is increasingly paradoxical. Every day, good ones close. Running costs are punitive and broke customers are eating at home...
Woah there, cried the nation. Easy, boy. This week’s most arresting visuals came on Wednesday morning when runaway horses brought central London to...
Here we go again: Britannia will continue to rule at the Last Night of the Proms. Unveiling a wide-ranging programme for this year’s festival,...
There’s much talk of “fiscal pinch points” driving economic policy decisions. But there are moral pinch points, too. Not least when it comes to...
This week, voters across England and Wales will go to the polls in the last set of local elections before the next general election. But one...
The Bondi Junction attacker and the teen who allegedly stabbed the bishop used knives, but judging from the online reaction to both events, many of...
Connor Hubbard might be the most boring man on the internet. The 29-year-old dresses like a generic white guy, lives in a nice but unremarkable...
It’s happening again. Another run of alleged domestic violence homicides has horrified the nation, and the media is again searching for answers....
Under capitalism, prices are supposed to be the centre of everything. They are the key agreement between buyer and seller. They are the one clear...
As the dust settles around Hilary Cass’s report – the most extensive and thoroughgoing evidence-based review of treatment for children...
So that’s how they do it. I’d been wondering how, when more sewage has been entering our rivers than ever before, some of the water companies...
For almost a decade, the Australian has been running “climate science denial” ads from the Climate Study Group (CSG) that claim burning fossil...
There are once again calls for the government to Do Something about misinformation online, following the recent stabbings at Bondi Junction and the...
Is there any hope for Britain’s beleaguered rail passengers? We have some of the highest fares in Europe, industrial relations are at an all-time...
A culture change is on the way when this moribund government of the living dead is gone. Clock-watching, we wait for that witching hour on election...
When Asna Tabassum, a hijab-wearing Muslim, was announced as the valedictorian for the University of Southern California class of 2024, my initial...
The Bute House agreement (BHA) was supposed to stabilise the SNP. Brokered by Nicola Sturgeon in August 2021, the coalition with the Greens at...
According to his representatives, former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein is still digesting the overturning of his rape conviction by a New York...
Avian flu, or H5N1, is making headlines in the United States. The past few years have seen concerning signs of it spreading across the world –...
“Nazis eat döner kebabs in secret,” must be one of the dumbest slogans I have seen at German protests against the far right. Yes, the popularity...
Beware the friend who is only trying to help. Not, perhaps, as a rule for life but certainly when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict and the...
Almost everyone has a reusable cup (or three) in their kitchen cupboard, but the convenience of disposable cups often triumphs on the morning...
Morehouse College is a special place. The only all-male historically Black college in the world, it has alumni ranging from Dr Martin Luther King...
David Marquand and Frank Field, both of whom died this week, never sat on the Labour benches together. The professor of politics and the...
‘I know the name,” texts a friend when I ask if she knows who Liz Truss is, but like most Americans can’t quite put her finger on why. “Like...
In reporting on the encampments springing up on college campuses across the US, the media seem to have convened a terminology confab and agreed on...
I have been reading about the most abysmal place. It is a land where children, red-faced with their own radicalism, march alongside bearded...
When a child is scared of their parents, they can spend a long time plucking up the courage to talk. I learned this during a decade of volunteering...
If your husband was a legally adjudicated sexual predator who cheated on you with an adult film star shortly after you gave birth to his son, and...
What is the role of AI in democracy? Is it just a volcano of deepfakes and disinformation? Or can it – as many activists and even AI labs are...
Fifty years ago, on 25 April 1974, a military-led movement in Portugal took down the rightwing authoritarian regime that had governed the country...
We must not be the last generation to have the opportunity to marvel at nature. When I was growing up, I took for granted the excitement of...
All the bigger British political parties are in favour of devolution, yet it proves oddly difficult to deliver. England is a remarkably centralised...
Venice has had enough. It is sinking beneath the twin assaults of tourism and the sea and believes the answer lies in fending off visitors by...
A year has passed since my beautiful boy Ali Julood died. Not a day goes by when I do not think of him smiling and playing football with his...
I’ve used heroin off and on for decades now. I still do. Throughout my twenties, I had used drugs in ways that were often destructive to me. Back...
With every advance in human technology comes an advance in weird new emotional situations. For example, the Germans should invent a word for the...
The government’s current position on the Rwanda scheme is unlikely to boost its electoral hopes – and to understand why, we should look to...
A couple of years ago, I received an invitation from a German cultural institution to present my debut short story collection, which was translated...
There’s something I heard that I can’t get out of my mind. It’s one line in a very long book full of other very good lines. This was the...
I was elected a member of parliament in December 2019, just months before the Covid pandemic changed all of our lives. As Britain’s first MP of...
I’ve been thinking about Moses, and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. The ecofeminist in...
There was a time in the UK when “culture war” conjured up a certain ugliness that disfigures political discourse across the Atlantic. Particular...
I wonder if I should award myself an honour, something grand-sounding. How about Most Excellent Keeper of the Belfry? It has a nice ring about it,...
Donald Trump, who once bragged that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, has gotten away for years with unimaginable...
A couple of weeks ago I went to go see a woman about a cat. The woman was my neighbour (we’ll call her L) and she had lost her tabby, Karma....
Despite what the fearmongers would have you believe, the latest inflation figures showed that inflation remains well under control. Not only is...
I have seen horses soothe even the most troubled of souls, with cognitive and neurological issues, to be able to be completely still for the first...
I gave up hugging people just before Christmas; I thought it was for the best. I’m in my mid-50s, possibly a bit smelly and live in fear of...
Commemoration, and what has increasingly become an almost ecclesiastic celebration of Australia’s short martial history, on Anzac Day relies on a...
“Look, if people don’t like the mug, they don’t have to get the mug,” Ed Miliband said, exasperated. We were on a train to Manchester for a...