Innovation
John McDonnell offers an ambitious alternative economic policy
SO FAR the Labour Party’s annual conference has very much been John McDonnell’s. The shadow chancellor not only delivered today’s keynote address in the main hall. He’s been ubiquitous...
Americans are doing a good job of misunderstanding Britain
A RESTAURANT critic for the New York Times informs us that, on returning to London after a ten-year absence, he was astonished to discover that the local restaurants have...
Labour is no longer the party of the traditional working class
ON JULY 3RD Jeremy Corbyn told Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union, that “Labour is back as the political voice of the working class”. This would be nice if it...
Some thoughts on the crisis of liberalism—and how to fix it
BREXIT is such an all-consuming process for the British—at once a drama, a muddle and a mess—that it is easy to forget that it is part of something bigger:...
Sounding the death knell for Corbynmania
THIS was a bad night for Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s hard-left leader. It would be too much to say that the wheels have come off the Jeremy bus or that...
Amber Rudd’s resignation throws Theresa May’s government into crisis
IN THIS week’s Bagehot column I ventured that Amber Rudd, Britain’s home secretary, was probably not fatally wounded by recent events, “unless there is another scandal festering in the...
Coming face to neck with Vladimir Putin
T.H. MARSHALL, one of the founders of modern economics, and one of the most brilliant analysts of the economics of place, argued that “there was something in the air”...
Some thoughts on the open v closed divide
ONE of the most popular interpretations of modern politics is that it is increasingly defined by the difference between open and closed rather than left and right. Openness means...
