Yes, time feels weird right now. But it always has been. — As one year turns to another, the passage of time comes to the front of everyone’s mind. At the very end of Charlie Brooker’s latest Netflix original “Death to 2021”, a gag that lands with profound weight comes from Zero Fournine, an eerily realistic satire of a Silicone-Valley mogul ably…

The Government’s lack of a clear answer over the future of our industry is leaving thousands ill and scared for their future. — Remember “Freedom Day”? That bizarre, heady moment in July when all legal limits on social contact were removed and we realised just how unaccustomed we had become to the basic normality and freedom that characterised our lives before March 2020? On that historic day, myself and several colleagues ventured into…

On the strange drama of being Anglo-Italian on Sunday. — Fifteen years ago today, I sat in the back of my father’s black cab as we drove the streets of London in a kind of reverie. After the most stressful match to date in what was already then several years of my life spent obsessed with football, Italy had won…

A reminiscence, five years to the day. — Five years ago today I was doing what any normal 18-year-old with a thriving social life would do; running the polling day operation for my local branch of the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign. Reminiscing on it brings up mixed emotions. I couldn’t tell you why or how I managed…

Some on the British centre-left ought to stop shrinking the meaning of nationalism. Others need to stop pining after an as-yet uncreated progressive nationalism. If Joe Biden shows us anything — it’s that it’s already here. — An internal Labour report leaked this week confirmed the conscious logic of what we could have already inferred about Sir Kier Starmer — he wants to wrap his attempt at a Labour resurrection in the flag, talking in more explicit terms about “progressive nationalism”. In the Liberal Democrats there’s been…

Reflections on our collective unease. — I stand at the front door of a building that barely used to have one, and I explain rules to people. That is the plainest, and most deceptively harrowing, description of the job I have done since the hospitality sector reopened in July this year. At its root it is…

Dear Liberal Democrats, Our party is stuck. A decade has passed since Nick Clegg stood in the Rose Garden, and we are no closer to realising our vision for ourselves as a government-forming liberal, progressive force at Westminster. I mention this not to stir the tension over the contested legacy…

A vignette on trust, truth, and being terrified. — Today I watched as they dug a mass grave in New York. No matter how long I live, that is something that I cannot live to unsee. It carries a symbolism that the world had hoped it would never encounter again. …

A (brief) personal memoir of the Brexit years. — Brexit took my political innocence from me. It had to happen. Like many others, I didn’t mean for politics to become my thing. When teased or just characterised as “the political one” by friends or family I still, softly, unconvincingly, try to push back against the idea that it is…