Why boxing is a beautiful sickness

​Donald McRae’s The Last Bell: a study in obsession and a sad farewell to the fight game

March 16 2025 / The Sunday Times

The runaway state

The world is in a Seventies-style flux, but can Labour “think the unthinkable” as the Thatcherites did?

March 15 2025 / The Sunday Times

Letter from Poland: Is the UK so poor that it cannot afford the British Council?

CEO Scott McDonald on soft power and an imperilled institution

March 12 2025 / The New Statesman

The New Realism: rearmanent in an age of raw power

​The era of progressive hegemony is over

March 2 2025 / The Sunday Times

Angela Rayner: Out of nowhere

​The deputy prime minister is, unlike many of her senior colleagues, not a working class Oxbridge meritocrat. Her rise is much more interesting than that

February 16 2025 / The Sunday Times

Power play: Cummings, McSweeney and the Wizard of the Kremlin

​Has Labour arrived in power at exactly the wrong time for its brand of progressive centre-left politics?

February 10 2025 / The New Statesman

Keir Starmer: The anti-politics politician

​The Labour leader is utterly ruthless but what does he want to do with power?

February 9 2025 / The Sunday Times

Dan Carden: The return of Blue Labour

​Moving “from left to left”: How the grooming gangs scandal prompted one MP to act

February 8 2025 / The Sunday Times

Robert Kaplan: A pessimist's guide to the future

​The American journalist supported the Iraq war - until he watched the carnage unfold. Now he advocates a policy of “tragic realism” for our chaotic era

January 19 2025 / The Sunday Times

Labour's Trump problem

​The energy in western politics is with the populist right

December 29 2024 / The Sunday Times

The first 100 days

Even Labour veterans are calling it the worst start by a government in their lifetime

December 22 2024 / The Sunday Times

Signing Off: Lives and Letters

​For one more time, for one last time: 10 memorable pieces from my editorship, 2008-2024, essays, commentary, poetry, fiction, interviews

December 21 2024 / The Saturday Read