When the Brit Awards first announced towards the end of 2021 that they would be making their prize categories gender neutral the response could be kindly described as cautiously optimistic – with a dose of scepticism. And yesterday (12 January), when the nominations for Artist of the Year were announced as Central Cee, Fred Again, George Ezra, Harry Styles and Stormzy the total lack of female or non-binary representation was taken as confirmation that the well-meaning experiment was an abject failure. What was intended to eliminate prejudice and increase equality had become its own punch line; inclusion was now something industry executives didn’t have to think of at all. Already, amid the justified backlash from artists and fans, the argument has ...

Since December 2019 the number of people aged 50-64 who are out of work and not seeking it has gone up by just over 300,000. The Treasury is alarmed enough by this that it is reported to have told the Times it was considering trying to tempt over-50s back into work with higher tax allowances or even an exemption from income tax. It’s possible to make an economic and political case for doing this. Economically, we all benefit if labour becomes less scarce. There are more people to provide the things we want. Output would grow, which the government desperately wants to happen to improve its chances at the next general election. Older people are more likely to vote Tory as well, so tax ...

In February 2019 Elon Musk took out a mortgage. Actually, he took out five mortgages, and while he borrowed a decent chunk of money ($61m to buy five houses in California) it represented a fraction of a percentage point of his net worth, then put at more than $20bn (enough to buy 77,500 houses at the 2019 US median price). The conditions – reportedly a 3.5 per cent initial rate and a 30-year term – weren’t much different to the loans then available to the average homebuyer in the US or Europe. It’s not unheard of for a billionaire to borrow money to buy their house. Mark Zuckerberg used one to finance his house in 2012, despite being worth $58bn at ...

The Conservative Party is traditionally the party of the establishment – that’s practically its raison d’être. But something strange is happening to some of its members and even MPs: they’re starting to believe and promote the kind of conspiracies usually believed only by those on the fringes of society. The most obvious victim of this new wave of delusion is Andrew Bridgen, who had the whip suspended this week when he said that vaccine deaths were the biggest covered-up atrocity since the Holocaust. It was just the latest – if also the most offensive – of the veteran backbencher's wildly misinformed tweets about Covid-19. Pushing out Covid conspiracy theories would be a strange and worrying development from any politician, but is ...

BERLIN – When Sergei Surovikin was appointed to lead the Russian invasion of Ukraine in October, the general was tasked with improving president Vladimir Putin’s flailing war effort. Instead, since then, Russian forces have lost control of Kherson, the only regional capital captured since the beginning of the invasion in February 2022. A huge conscription drive has failed to stem the losses, as many draftees were not provided with basic equipment and complained of significant losses on the battlefield. A campaign of strikes against civilian infrastructure caused misery for millions of Ukrainians throughout the winter months but has so far not provided Russia with much of an advantage on the battlefield. The decision to replace Surovikin may have been made after the devastating ...

Many from the centre to the left were shocked when Katharine Birbalsingh, headmistress of Michaela Community School, was appointed chairwoman of the government's Social Mobility Commission (SMC) in 2021. Dubbed "Britain’s strictest headmistress" by an ITV documentary of the same name, she appears frequently in the media for her political views and uncompromising approach to education. So it was no surprise that her resignation from the SMC on Friday (6 January) was met by a sigh of relief from many of her detractors. This is despite Michaela Community School’s impressive academic accolades, achieving Britain’s highest score in 2021-2 for Progress 8, a measure of a school’s academic improvement from SATs to GCSEs which attempts to account for socioeconomic factors. If that’s ...

Where is Keir Starmer’s book? The Labour leader said he would spell out his “vision for Britain” in print last spring, but it seems his allies were being optimistic when they told journalists the book would be out by the end of the year. Instead, Father Christmas filled the stockings of expectant hacks with biographies of Liz Truss. Here we are in the new year without so much as a title.  Labour insiders say Starmer is still scribbling away. Harper Collins, his publisher, insists the project is progressing though they won’t even give an estimate of the publication date. When I asked them when Starmer last met his editor, they would not comment. Harper paid Starmer a considerable advance – £18,000, which ...

VIENNA – In Austria, the far right is a stubborn wart that sprouts and recedes but refuses to go away. In 2019, the Freedom Party (FPÖ)’s coalition with the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) collapsed after the then-FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache was caught offering government contracts to someone he believed was the niece of a Russian oligarch in exchange for campaign support. The FPÖ’s vote share fell ten points to 16.2 per cent in parliamentary elections, before the party split in two. Four years later, however, reliable opinion polling shows that 26 per cent of Austrian voters would opt for the far right, offering the horrifying prospect of the FPÖ becoming the largest party in parliament.  The FPÖ is lucky. Despite its ...