Ideology v politics from the gut: why you have to choose sides

I’m not going to lie: it did disappoint me when David Mitchell wrote that politics shouldn’t be about ideas but about money. Maybe because I admire him so much, both as a writer and as a political commentator, and I didn’t want him to eliminate every bit of hope I’ve ever had for the world. Maybe because the truth hurts. Or maybe it was because I’ve been wanting to write about the...

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What Clarke and Strauss-Kahn tell us about our leaders

It’s happened again. One of our key politicians has spoken without censoring himself, and everyone’s in shock. But should we be? How much more do we need to hear to realise that this is the reality of politics in the western world? Kenneth Clarke talked about a distinction between “serious rape” and “date rapes”, referring to the latter as “17-year-olds having intercourse with...

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