On that at least, Ukip’s leader Nigel Farage, is right. This wasn’t a speech to open up the great debate but to close it down. How could it be otherwise? There is no debate about Europe in Britain at the moment.Tory backbenchers hate it and that is s...

What troubled me was the replacement of proper, professional support and assessment by an all-purpose questionnaire. As the writer Nassim Taleb recently put it: “If you give a pilot an altimeter that is sometimes defective, he will crash the plane. G...

It was no fun at all. At school, I was taunted as a Jerry (I was born in Germany) and reviled as a Russki. (The Cold War was hotting up, and no one knew the difference between Russians and Ukrainians.) I tried to keep my head down and be English like...

No. British people recognise the reality that, especially in a globalised economy and in politically insecure times, our country’s best interests are served by being fully and influentially in the EU. The possibility of exit arises now only because D...

A police guard was yesterday placed on the compound where 66 rescued child soldiers are being given safe haven in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, amid fears that they may be seen as enemy combatants and targeted by local resident...

It isn’t so much the breathy footage and glabrous orange hides that Abbott has a problem with (that’s a whole other argument) as the diffusion effect that means the sex industry now permeates the rest of popular culture, modern communication and, dep...

Apparently, it doesn’t take a village to raise a child to the age of 21. It takes £220,000; this is according to a report by the Centre for Economic and Business Research. And we’re supposed to count ourselves lucky because it’s only going to get wor...

Over at the other end of the paddock, though, the stewards have just escorted another word out. And though they did it without fuss some people have  noticed and are making a fuss anyway. The fact that racial epithets have been edited out of an old e...

Thom Yorke, the band’s frontman, has warned the PM in forthright rock-star style that, if he used any of the band’s music during the campaign, “I’d sue the living shit out of him.” In an interview in the current Dazed & Confused, Yorke says: “I c...

Naturally we'll leave you to discover those four reasons for yourself. But it's worth drawing your attention to a particularly strong bit of ire that Krugman reserves for Britain's economy. Remember that he wrote his column before this morning's wors...

In the briefing from this week's print edition, the newspaper (as it still likes to call itself), is very on the front foot - but sceptical about over-reach. Here's their pay-off: "Should radicalised and militant forms of Islam spread farther, curren...

Abrams finds himself responsible for approximately 63 per cent of all American childhood memories, after Hollywood trade outlets Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter published the news of his new job.The director's next film, Star Trek: Into Darkness,...

Anna Soubry's slow decline was rather good fun...If I'm having a really bad day and feel a little down in the mouth, I often like to cheer myself up by imagining what it's like to be a Spad for Anne Soubry. Think about it for a second: As tasks go, e...

The same is true of climate research. If an organisation such as Greenpeace commissioned a climate study that was then published in a journal, we would expect the scientists involved to make it clear who funded the work. That, indeed, is the definit...

Yet there they were, sharing the stage at Davos yesterday. She spoke about competitiveness, how Germany had achieved it and what difficulties lay ahead. He, the genial interrogator, sought generalities and prescriptions. But as the banter went to and...

There’s nothing like being told that you are living in the ideal home. Except the whole debate is wrong-footed. Policy Exchange, which has been set up by planning minister Nick Boles, has unsurprisingly come up with research toeing the Government lin...

This point was made with customary force by Steve Richards yesterday. As Steve – typically well briefed – put it: “Because of Cameron’s position on Europe, I do not believe the Lib Dems could form another coalition with the Conservatives”. Remember t...

How to handle the presence of registered sex offenders online has long posed a problem for lawmakers, but American states will now no longer be allowed to outright ban them from using social media - access that many fear provides opportunities for gr...

“When I was about six years old, after my father’s death,” she says, “I was sent to work in his friend’s house in return for education. My family were not able to pay my school fees. I stayed with this family for about 12 years. I worked for the fami...

It wasn’t the absurd instruction that bothered me most (how exactly is one supposed to watch out for a bullet fired from the darkness?) but that fact that we were deep inside rebel-held territory, travelling with the Free Syrian Army. Who would be sh...

Reactions are mixed, but anger is mainly being directed towards the footballer for his violence towards ball boy Charlie Morgan.Chelsea FC's official Twitter account originally tweeted:'Has football gone mad? Hazard is sent off for kicking the ball u...

Opposition to this change has come primarily in two forms. One fear, as expressed by Rick Santorum, is that women lack the necessary stamina and strength to serve in high stress combat zones. There are also less Victorian concerns that the American p...

In Russia, the approach from the authorities over the Magnitsky case has been twofold. Firstly, there has been no real investigation into the claims put forward by Bill Browder and Hermitage Capital about the massive fraud that was perpetrated. The s...