Foreign influence in British politics is no longer theoretical. Last month I wrote about some unusual patterns of political funding flowing into Reform. British electoral law doesn’t allow foreign donations, but Reform appeared to have found a way around this—using UK-registered companies as a kind of front. It turns out I may have been too … Read more
No. One of the more eye-catching claims doing the rounds this week comes from a Fortune article arguing that the U.S. government is “insolvent”. The evidence? The Treasury’s own financial statements for 2025 show roughly $6 trillion in assets against nearly $48 trillion in liabilities. Add in long-term “unfunded” obligations for Social Security and Medicare … Read more
Why People Get History So Wrong “History is the biography of great men,” once said a very famous idiot. It’s a terrible way to understand the past — academically, intellectually, and frankly, morally — and yet people still believe it. Loudly. You can see it in the endless culture war skirmishes over symbols. The recent … Read more
Are Parts of Britain Under Sharia Law? The easy answer is: no. So if no part of the UK is under Sharia law, why are people so angry about it? To understand that, you need to start with how the British legal system actually works — which is already more complicated, and more unusual, than … Read more
A decade ago, the United States looked like it owned the future of electric vehicles. Tesla had redefined what an electric car could be. The technology, the brand, the cultural momentum—all American. With early policy support under Barack Obama, the US had both the innovation and the initial market lead. And yet, today, the centre … Read more
Durham is an odd place. Not odd in an exciting way — my kids always called it Dullham. But odd nonetheless. The city was shaped by two very different forces. The first is intellectual and religious. Durham is the shrine of Saint Cuthbert and the burial place of the Venerable Bede, home to an ancient … Read more
The Sun has published a list of award winning restaurant closures . This has become a bit of an obesssion with the Sun which has run similar stories over the last few weeks. It immediately caught my eye because of a mistake. It listed 1 Michelin starred Hjem in Northumberland as closed. Hjem isn’t closed, … Read more
At long last, the student loan system is being debated seriously. It should be. Few policies impose marginal tax rates that politicians would tolerate anywhere else: 37% on incomes over £25,000, 51% over £50,270, and 71% over £100,000, before you even factor in interest and postgraduate add-ons. The Conservatives have proposed scrapping interest rates of … Read more
I was working in Leeds when I first started seeing adverts for WKD. Billboards, TV spots—loud, garish, and oddly confrontational. They didn’t look like advertising as we understood it. Traditionally, advertising sold aspiration. Buy this and you’ll be better, cooler, more successful—more attractive, even. WKD did the opposite. Its campaign—“Have you got a WKD side?”—didn’t … Read more
Immigration has fallen sharply in both Britain and the United States over the past year. In Britain the change has been dramatic. Net migration fell from 649,000 to 204,000 in the year to June 2025 — a drop of roughly two-thirds. In the United States border encounters have collapsed from around 1.5 million to roughly … Read more