Harry Phibbs
Age discrimination
When I was a precocious Young Conservative, people were most willing to tell me they disagreed with me and I thrived on it. But how much of a challenge does Greta Thunberg have from her classmates or teachers?
Underrated: William Brown
The hero of the Just William books promotes free speech and debunks communism
Tory home truth
The decline in the proportion of owner-occupiers means a decline in the number of Conservative voters
Demolish the Relics of Yesterday’s Future
People want homes, not the “housing units” offered by tower blocks, yet planners continue to sanction these unloved monstrosities
Overdone Stakes
Stakeholding emerged as New Labour’s big idea in the 1990s. Its 1997 manifesto called for “a stakeholder economy — where everyone has a stake in society and owes responsibilities to it”. Labour was seeking to repackage itself, ceasing to be purely about representing trade union and public-sector interests while attacking the unfettered free market: the “third way”.
Diddly Squat
The Conservative’s success in making squatting a criminal offence needs to go further — all buildings, not just residences, must be protected
Boris’s 2020 Vision
By 2018 David Cameron will be ready to step down leaving the way clear for the London Mayor to swap City Hall for Number 10
London Needs a Real Cultural Revolution
Boris Johnson should spend his second mayoral term reversing Ken Livingstone’s legacy of inverse snobbery and interest group politics
Must Adoption be Such an Ordeal?
Good people are being prevented from adopting not only because of who they are but because of what they think
Buzzing Off
The collapsing honey bee population and its impact on the planet
Will the green agenda be killed off by the pandemic?
‘Will the green agenda be killed off by the longer-term coronavirus recovery? Or might the closure of so much business, and the cleaner air that results from planes not flying and factories not working, give us extra years to gain control of our environment?’
Why T.S. Eliot still matters
His contemporaries’ reputations have diminished. But Eliot’s has grown: he is the poet who shows us what can be saved from the ruins
Music’s in the house
Rappers have found a role in lockdown: chronicling coronavirus with topical tunes. Most people, though, are rushing to the safety of the past