A grim future Britain, some two decades hence. The country is ruled by a fascist dictatorship which relies on demagogic demonisation of the Other to maintain control. Sedition is in the air. Our protagonist must navigate between the repressive state and the violent rebels, whose motives may be suspect. Historical...

Much unkind comment has been passed on George Galloway, MP for Bradford West. He is accused of being a "pimp for fascism", of operating an unregistered charity for personal gain, of sucking up to Saddam Hussein and, perhaps most damningly, of killing...

What is the opposite of comedy?

Tragedy, the imaginary Greek chorus might say (it's a specialist subject of theirs), but I think not. The two modes are highly complementary. In high tragedy, the protagonist's own flawed character contains the seed of their ultimate downfall - in fact,...

It all used to be so simple.

There I was, an angry, idealistic and (therefore) insufferable 15-year-old, on the train to my first proper protest march with my ex-Trotskyist, Blairphobic father. The political cosmology of those days was blinding in its clarity and completely unalterable; a steady-state universe....

Some words are probably irretrievable. It would be a brave blogger who mounted a campaign for acceptable fascism or a kinder eugenics.

"Propaganda" appears to be one of those words. It is now universally used as an insult - "that's just propaganda"; "typical lefty/right-wing propaganda"; "he/she is little more than...

TRIGGER WARNING: this article contains references to and information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors.

Sexual assault is justly considered one of the most serious crimes a person can be accused of. This makes it all the more critical to dispel any ambiguity over what...

If the name David Frum is at all familiar to British ears, it is generally closely accompanied by "the man who coined the phrase 'Axis of Evil'". This may be enough for some readers to dismiss anything he has to say as the work of a...

The 1960s are the youthful love affair our culture has never quite moved on from. "If you remember it, you weren't there", say tedious people, tediously. Yes, we wish we'd been there. Yes, we wish we could've heard Revolver when it first came out. Mostly, we wish you'd shut up...

Those of us on the left who were sceptical of the coalition must concede at least one thing: they are certainly efficient. It took New Labour a good decade or more to devolve into all-consuming, omnishambolic panic over their leadership. This lot have managed it in barely two....

I like to consider myself a bone-deep cynic in the finest traditions of this nation. Grumbling is the badge of all my tribe; a positive, life-affirming species of grumble, rich with undertones of bloody-minded satisfaction.

On the day-to-day level, this attitude to life is Britain's primary social glue. When...