2025: The Year the Movies Got Interesting Again 2025 was a very good year for cinema — partly because of what didn’t happen. There was an almost complete absence of traditional mega-blockbusters. The biggest film of the year was, improbably, The Minecraft Movie. With the usual franchise machinery stalled, space opened up for smaller, stranger, … Read more
America in 2025: When the Cosplay Became Real For years, America’s slide toward authoritarian politics could be dismissed as performance: ironic fascism, meme politics, men in red hats playing at being strongmen. Loud, ugly, but unserious. In 2025, that alibi no longer works. The Republican Party is no longer flirting with extremism — it is … Read more
UK Politics 2025 British politics in 2025 has been described as chaotic, unstable and on the brink. That description is everywhere — in headlines, in think-tank briefings, and in the permanent background noise of grievance that now passes for commentary. It is also mostly wrong. What 2025 actually shows is something more unsettling: a government … Read more
The United States has published its new National Security Strategy. It is a strange document: steeped in conspiratorial thinking, openly ideological, and almost unrecognisable as a traditional American foreign policy text. It is so odd, in fact, that the temptation is to dismiss it as unserious — roughly as plausible as Donald Trump’s repeated plans … Read more
The Family Feud Inside Your Party There is more trouble in Your Party, the new left-wing movement led by former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Their first annual conference is due to begin in a few weeks, to decide policy and elect the ruling politburo. The party’s foundational documents sketch out a familiar picture … Read more
A year after Donald Trump clawed his way back into the White House, America looks less like a republic and more like a family business — and not a very well-run one. The wealth and security of the United States no longer matter. What matters is the wealth and power of Donald Trump and the … Read more
The American right are freaking out about autism. I’m neurologically diverse, and most people who know me won’t be shocked by that revelation. I first found out when I was in hospital and the neurosurgeon showed me a scan of my brain. Robert F. Kennedy Jr — the conspiracy-minded Secretary for Health and Human Affairs … Read more
Nathan Gill, the former leader of Reform in Wales, has pleaded guilty to eight counts of accepting bribes from Russian sources in exchange for making pro-Russian statements in the press and in the European Parliament. It’s not the first time that Reform UK — and its predecessor parties — have been linked to Moscow’s orbit. … Read more
One of the defining principles of old-school Conservatives in the UK and the US was “sound money”: maintaining the value of the currency, keeping inflation in check, and controlling the money supply. Under Thatcher, this was elevated into the main tool of economic policy—with disastrous consequences. Modern right-wingers on both sides of the Atlantic have … Read more
America is in the middle of its third great era of political violence. The first came after the Civil War, when thousands of Black Americans were lynched and murdered. The second was the 1960s, marked by political assassinations and the murders of civil rights activists. Both of these eras had racial animosity at their heart. … Read more