A few weeks ago I piled onto a bus in Brixton with ten other young, drunk people at 2am. I had been waiting for thirty minutes, alone, for an Uber which had cancelled on me three times before the price inexplicably doubled. On the bus the man next to me gently drooled onto my shoulder and no amount of shoulder-jerking would displace him. Forty-five minutes later I arrived home, having spent almost one hundred pounds on this night. Filled with regret, I realised: this just isn’t fun anymore. The days of a good night out are over. Bars and clubs frequented pre-2020 are beyond recognition. One in five nightclubs have closed since the pandemic and those that remain have become busier ...

“What I say to you now, as your Queen and as a grandmother, I say from my heart…”  This line, from the live TV broadcast of Princess Diana’s funeral – Diana died 25 years ago today – still shocks. It was a very public display of feelings from the person who most embodied a fundamentally “British” way of dealing with them: to keep that upper lip stiff and the rest of your mouth closed. That line: unthinkable then, and unthinkable still.  Last night I watched The Queen, Stephen Frears’s cinematic take on those dark days for the Crown: when the rolling silence from the monarch saw her branded cold and out of touch, a reaction that ultimately prompted the address and that line. The ...

Polling over the weekend showed, yet again, that the public ownership of essential resources remains hugely popular, across the political divide. Half of Tory voters want Britain’s energy companies brought back into public hands, according to a YouGov poll for the Times. This shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone. While the Westminster bubble deny it, substantial, consistent majorities for the public ownership of energy, water, railways and the post have been found for over a decade. Often this was a simple, understandable gut feeling that many voters had: that the essentials of modern life, whether water or heating for a home, shouldn’t be open to grubby profiteering. The “moral economy” of the crowd – of fixed prices for goods, and fair ...

If social media is usually a den of vipers, it can sometimes serve as a litmus test for human decency. A noteworthy example of the latter occurred last week, when the journalist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett shared her horror at a hospital’s policy regarding mothers, sick babies and food. “Shocked to learn that the baby unit at Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children will only give breakfast to mothers who are breastfeeding. Shaming and cruel,” she tweeted. “I know funds are tight but refusing the mother of an extremely sick baby two slices of toast and some juice because she is formula feeding is just unpleasant. Especially when extremely sick babies are often fed through tubes and their mums don’t want to leave them. I honestly think ...

"President Macron, friend or foe?" the presenter asked Liz Truss. Before she could answer, a xenophobic snigger rippled through the Tory audience in Norwich. A gleeful smile crossed her face as she semi-shouted "the jury's out" – a smile that broadened as the crowd applauded. Had she been a junior minister in the trade department, which is the actual level commensurate with Truss's talents, this would still have been a major diplomatic mistake. But Truss is the serving Foreign Secretary and likely to be prime minister by the end of next week. Macron is not the French prime minister: he is the head of state. He's the living embodiment of the French Republic's sovereignty. A uniformed general carries the nuclear codes around ...

The energy price cap has risen by 80 per cent from £1,971 to a staggering £3,549 today. Britain is in a state of panic. The consumer champion Martin Lewis, who arguably has shown more leadership than Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson combined this summer, has warned that more help for the poorest is needed or "people will die this winter". And without grants, businesses – which have no cap on their energy bills – face bankruptcy. No cabinet minister was available to answer questions on radio and television this morning because, while the Tory leadership contest continues, Johnson remains in place as a lame duck PM and no one has a mandate to lead. Put simply, no one is ...

Private renters across the UK have had a wild ride in the 2020s. The onset of Covid-19 and mandated social isolation prompted media outlets to herald a mass exodus from the hubs of London, Manchester and Edinburgh and the end of cities altogether. Many middle-class residents vowed never to return after finally becoming free from their exhausting commutes to enjoy the perks of working from home. Rents plummeted by up to 15 per cent across all major cities, and those who stayed put swooped to claim the unprecedented deals available on the rental market. Two years on the future predicted in 2020 could not be further from our present reality. People returned to cities and private rents now vastly outstrip pre-pandemic ...

Back in August 2020, my colleagues on the New Statesman Podcast and I noted a phenomenon we had never come across before: hearing the chancellor’s name in restaurants. Everywhere you went for dinner, you could overhear people saying “thanks Rishi!” or read his name on posters and menus. These were the days of “Eat Out to Help Out”: a summer subsidy from the Treasury to pay half of our bill when eating out. The then-chancellor Rishi Sunak was trying to reinvigorate the UK’s economy after the first Covid-19 lockdown. While it made for a thrillingly cheap summer for some of us, it was a policy that resulted in more Covid infections, according to research by the University of Warwick. A four-week second lockdown ...