Sweden has long sought to nurture an international reputation as a “moral superpower”. In the 1970s and 1980s, its prime minister Olaf Palme distanced himself from both superpowers of the Cold War, criticising both the Vietnam War and the crushing of the Prague Spring. The country is, after Turkey, the most generous recipient of asylum seekers per capita in the OECD group of countries, with refugees making 2.6 per cent of its population. In 2014, the country became the first in the world to declare that it would pursue a “feminist foreign policy”, with gender equality declared a core goal of the country’s diplomacy. Accordingly, for decades Sweden has served as a byword for tolerance and openness. Though not always justified – Sweden ...

Of all the things the government could be doing to improve the economy right now, scrapping the cap on bankers’ bonuses seems like the most brazenly tone-deaf. Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor, is said to be planning to do just that, abandoning the regulation that limits bonus payments to 100 per cent of bankers’ salaries, or 200 per cent if shareholders vote for it. The rules on bonuses were introduced by the European Union in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, when it was found that shameless risk-taking by bankers whose astronomical bonuses depended on similarly astronomical returns had led to a situation in which some of the continent’s largest lenders (including, in this country, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds ...

Over the weekend a photo purporting to be taken in a gents toilets in a Wetherspoons pub went viral. It featured a sign declaring that, as a mark of respect for the Queen's death, “no sheaths will be dispensed until Wednesday, September 21st”. The story was debunked fairly quickly, and frankly, the Alan Partridge-esque “sheaths” should have given the game away. But such is the level of weirdness in this strange mourning-after period that the general feeling was, well, it could have been true. And there are those who would probably approve. To put it mildly, this is an odd time to be British, living in the ubiquity of state-sanctioned grief on the one hand, and the anger of those who ...

So often Northern Ireland generates pessimism and bad news. In the 24 years since the Good Friday Agreement the province's politics have been bedevilled by bitter sectarian disputes. The Stormont Assembly is presently suspended yet again because of unionist opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol of the Brexit deal and the de facto border it created in the Irish Sea. Sinn Féin’s emergence as the province’s largest party in last May’s Stormont elections has propelled the incendiary issue of Irish reunification up the agenda. It often seems there is no real peace in Northern Ireland, just an absence of violence. And yet, viewed from a wider perspective, there is cause for great optimism. Consider that in 1979 the Provisional IRA blew ...

Bunches of bananas, loaves of bread, loo roll multi-packs, mineral water, flowers and milks semi, skimmed and whole are piled high in a long line of shopping trolleys. People wait, silent and resolute, in a queue that winds all the way back to the vegetable aisle. This is the Tesco Extra in Bradley Stoke, near Bristol in south Gloucestershire. And, according to footage pinging around social media today, it is the scene of a quiet revolution. The caption on the video, posted by a Twitter user with the handle @Shorty_88a, praises the shoppers for choosing to queue rather than using self-checkouts: “I want to applaud every soul who silently and quietly said NO in Bradley Stoke Tesco yesterday, who took the time ...

The weirdest moment for me, the day the Queen died, came a few moments after the news broke when I felt the sudden urge to check Wikipedia. There it was, near instantaneous evidence of the continuity of monarchy: an entry titled “Charles III”. For the first time since before my parents were born, Britain had a king. The weirdest thing about the days since is how quickly this has stopped feeling weird. Human beings can adapt to all sorts of horrors, to abuse and dictatorship and poverty, and it’s very easy for what once felt outlandish to become entirely normal: adapting to a new head of state is, comparatively, a doddle. A few days ago Prince Charles was still the guy ...

Unsurprisingly, the press scrutiny of Meghan Markle’s return to the UK has been rabid – if anything, it has become a national pastime. During a period of national mourning after the Queen’s death last week, what better way to commemorate the life of our longest-reigning monarch than squeezing out vitriolic non-stories about her grandson and his wife?  From poorly sourced rumours about Meghan grabbing all the juicy funereal action for the purposes of their Netflix reality series, to an online celebration of adults sniggering at Meghan as she shakes hands and greets members of the public, the British media has had a field day with taking pot-shots at mourning family members. Suddenly, we turn to body language experts who can somehow spot ...

Not everyone has participated in celebrating the life and mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Some have vocally dissented, and for this they have been punished. A young woman in Edinburgh was arrested for holding a sign that said “f*** imperialism abolish monarchy”. A protester in London holding a sign saying “Not my King” was led away by police. A man named Symon Hill was arrested (and then de-arrested) in Oxford after shouting “who elected him?” in a royal procession celebrating King Charles III. The former footballer Trevor Sinclair has been suspended by his employer TalkRadio for tweeting “Racism was outlawed in England in the 60s & it's been allowed to thrive so why should black & brown mourn!! ...