Essays
How did a prime minister who won a landslide become the most unpopular in modern times?
Vote Burnham, Get Starmer Out: all roads lead to Wigan
Supporting a football team, if you are a true fan, is a deep, emotional commitment and unbreakable, enduring for better or worse through the decades, an invisible chain connecting who you are today with the child you used to be
An appreciation of the elusive Talk Talk frontman; originally published following news of his death in February 2019. (I will publish the transcript from my conversation with Hollis soon once I have digitised the tape.) See also: Mark Hollis: Inside the Walled Garden https://www.jasoncowley.net/ar...
Once outliers on the centre-left, the Social Democrats are now a model for defeating the hard right with Europe’s toughest immigration system
An essay from the archive: Male rivalry, literary ambition and the terror that comes in the night
The prime minister may think he is misunderstood but he represents the politics of a dying era. He has only his own judgement to blame over Peter Mandelson
The long shadow of the Conservatives' greatest post-war prime minister
“All that matters are my records. I can’t live up to them, I can’t be as succinct and clear as they are.”
How terror made the new future possible
All political parties are coalitions, but Keir Starmer leads a party that at some deep, fundamental level is broken
Even Labour veterans are calling it the worst start by a government in their lifetime
Keir Starmer was compelled to use the full force of the Hobbesian state to quash anarchy and reimpose public order. But the riots revealed something dark and shocking: an England atomised, an England in pieces
The plan for Labour’s return to power following its abject defeat in 2019 pre-existed Keir Starmer but only he could have implemented it
The Labour leader - and the UK’s next prime minister - is driven by self-belief not ideology or political ideas
Why does the secular mind seek out the sacred, often at moments of heightened stress or torment?
The era of the Big Four - Federer, Nadal, Novak and Murray - is ending. What comes next? And will tennis sell out to Saudi Arabia?
Mourning the fallen soldiers of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
The parable of the Chinese cocklepickers
In the end, the great spy novelist remained an enigma even to himself.