The end of the party

Leader: The closing of the Conservative mind

Nadine Dorries’ crude assault on the BBC is symptomatic of the Tory party’s degeneration.

Letter of the week: What leadership looks like

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Punitive healthcare restrictions for the unvaccinated is a slippery slope

If we start to fine the unjabbed, should alcoholics and smokers be forced to pay for their NHS care…

Caroline Nokes’s Diary: The challenges of Dry January and why I called on Boris Johnson to resign

My voters are angry, but above all they’re sad that a Prime Minister they had invested so much hope…

Michel Houellebecq and the soul of France

Sex, death, politics and terrorism – and the return of the great writer.

Boris Johnson hangs on because there is no compelling leader-in-waiting

Neither Rishi Sunak, nor Liz Truss, have yet constructed a formidable machine in parliament.

Events have conspired to give Labour another chance. Will Keir Starmer seize it?

As we witness the grand unravelling of the cult of Boris Johnson, complacency will not cut it: Labour needs…

Childcare costs put mothers in a bind, but free daycare may not be the best way out of it

Getting mothers of preschoolers back to work as soon as possible does not seem to me an unambiguously feminist…

Caricatures of Westminster insiders are false. They’re even worse than we thought

They really do drink while strategising tax tapers. They really do snog under a portrait of Henry Campbell-Bannerman. They…

The brain delusion: Why order does not lead to excellence

Ian McGilchrist‘s The Matter With Things shows that success is the result of creative thinking and intuition, not scientific…

The NS Poem: Januaries

A new poem by Paula Bohince.

Reviewed in short: New books by Timothy Tackett, Andrew Adonis, Helena Lee and Isabel Allende

The Glory and the Sorrow by Tackett, It’s the Leader, Stupid, by Adonis, East Side Voices edited by Lee,…

The liberal platitudes of Michael Ignatieff

On Consolation promises to show how writers and artists found solace in suffering – but delivers only bland pieties.

How to lead Leeds United

The club had one triumphant streak under the ruthless Don Revie. Can the purist Marcelo Bielsa sustain another?

How Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes confounded the music press of the 1990s

Her debut album, released 30 years ago, is a simmering ball of explosive confessional material.

The flickering landscapes of Alessandro Magnasco

The Italian painter used skittish brushwork to create mysterious scenes of religiosity and menace.

Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast is a nostalgic portrait of youth interrupted

In the British director’s romanticised depiction of his childhood during the Troubles, every word is calculated for maximum effect.

The edgy teen TV series Euphoria is nasty, tedious and pornographic

The Bafta-nominated series about a group of young people is as unrelenting as a bulldozer when it comes to…

The BBC’s The Coming Storm uncovers the origins of QAnon

Part history and part technological quest, Gabriel Gatehouse conducts a chilling investigation into the “plot to break reality”.

Confined to my house, I am giddy with excitement for the world beyond it

I’ve spent the endless hours of self-isolation gazing at the paperwhites on my mantlepiece, watching their silhouettes shift and…

Coercing healthcare workers into being vaccinated is wrong in every way

Compulsion and discrimination – whether against doctors, nurses, or indeed tennis players – feeds anti-vaxx paranoia, and generates huge…

I buy a thermometer and suddenly find that I’m living in the past

I have been scared to use the heating lately for fear of being cut off, so I attempted to…

I have just turned 30 and am rather surprised to find I am still so young

I do not know who I will be by the end of this next decade, but I hope they…

This England: Age is no limit

This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain…

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Alan Davies Q&A: “What would make my life better? Not needing a wee in the middle of the night”

The comedian and actor on Arsenal, Suzuki rides, and watching the Euros at Neil Kinnock’s house.