There are some political battles that are more about symbolism than the practicalities. The proposed Labour policy to put VAT on private school fees is one of them. In fiscal terms, the money involved is relatively small, raising an estimated £1.7bn at best. But it is a row that plays to both parties’ optics. For Keir Starmer, it is an obvious way to differentiate his party from the Conservatives and to attack entrenched, generational privilege. Rishi Sunak’s riposte is to defend personal choice and the “hard-working aspirations of millions” – and to ultimately protect his voters from a tax hit. He should, however, be careful that the constituency he courts genuinely exists. As an Old Wykehamist, Sunak may think he knows the ...

"Where are you from?" is not necessarily a racist question, but for those of us with brown skin, it’s a loaded one. We answer it uneasily, unsure if the conversation is going to unravel into something more distressing, as the encounter between Lady Susan Hussey and Ngozi Fulani did on Tuesday at Buckingham Palace. Hussey, the late Queen's former lady-in-waiting, asked Fulani, chief executive of the domestic abuse charity Sistah Space, "What part of Africa are you from?" and refused to accept Fulani's answer that she is British and is from Hackney. She demanded: "No, but where do you really come from, where do your people come from? … Oh I can see I am going to have a challenge getting ...

People are hypocrites. That was already pretty clear. The World Cup has proven it yet again. All that anguish, all those tears, for over a decade. Many people said they’d boycott the tournament once it was given to Qatar. All those promises from commentators and fans not to watch a single match. How many of those have been kept? Very, very few, I’d be happy to bet.  This is not to castigate football fans who find themselves unable to live up to their promises. They’re mostly victims of human nature. Because the Qatar World Cup also proves something else, something more significant than private hypocrisy. It proves that what we must inelegantly call "sportswashing" works. It works fantastically well. As the tournament ...

Britain is becoming less religious and less white. These are two significant facts from the latest batch of 2021 census data. For many on the right, this is a big concern. But one of these facts seems to be attracting more attention than the other from the most prominent right-wing media voices: the ethnic changes over the past ten years. The number of people identifying as white has declined from 86 per cent in 2011 to 81.7 per cent. The number identifying as white British has declined from 80.5 per cent in 2011 to 74.4 per cent. The author and columnist Douglas Murray sees the decline in the white population as a vindication of his book The Strange Death of ...

The latest census data from the Office for National Statistics reveals that less than half of British people now identify as Christian. Only 46.2 per cent (27.5 million) claimed to be Christian in the 2021 survey, a decrease of 13.1 percentage points from 2011. This has led some church leaders to react with surprise and disappointment, and more levelheaded commentators to wonder why the decline isn’t greater. It’s interesting that a census report in Canada last month showed something extremely similar, and the pattern is replicated throughout most of Europe and North America. Where there is religious expansion it’s often in the growing Hindu and Muslim communities, and humanism and atheism – or sometimes sheer indifference – are flourishing. A factor that ...

Last Friday (25 November) the Wellcome Collection, a free medical museum and library, opened and closed a Twitter thread with the question: “What’s the point of museums?” Its own reflections on this question are in part why the museum decided to close its "Medicine Man" exhibition after 15 years. It argues that “the display still perpetuates a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language”, telling the story of a “man with enormous wealth, power and privilege”. Many have argued, rightly, against this decision: that this is yet another example of historical vandalism, empty moral posturing or a stab at trendy progressivism. Many have argued however, also rightly, that this is part of the ...

In a fit of what can only be described as frenzied desperation the Daily Mail has run two front pages in succession on a five-year-old Labour policy to remove charitable status from private schools and levy VAT on fees. It’s unclear why they’ve picked now to declare there is “fury” about “Keir Starmer’s class war”. I don’t recall the same fury when the radical socialist Michael Gove made the same suggestion in 2017. Presumably the paper has run out of other things to say. Nevertheless it’s worth examining its claims given this confected rage will no doubt be reproduced ad nauseam in the run-up to the next election campaign. There are two parts to the Labour policy, which are often conflated. ...

“I want us to have a grand national ambition of developing a network of RER trains in ten of the largest French cities.” The French president Emmanuel Macron’s announcement on 27 November that he wants to develop equivalents to Paris’s Réseau express régional (RER) suburban train networks in other cities has caused surprise in France. The RER network comprises five rail lines that run through the capital, connecting the centre with surrounding suburbs – a model that Macron wants to emulate elsewhere. The announcement – apparently not coordinated with regional leaders or rail bosses – was received generally positively, although critics were quick to note that Macron’s government has a mixed record on rail investment. Earlier this month, the executive refused an ...