When he was a teenager, Winston Churchill is thought to have told James Humes, a future Presidential speechwriter, to “study history” for in it “lies all the secrets of statecraft”. Unlike most of the quotations the internet attributes to the great man, this one seems to be genuine. Even if it isn’t, it has long been a boon for any history department desperate to attract a few ambitious students. Unfortunately for Britain, our politicians today seem all too often to have failed to have taken Churchill’s advice. Anthony Seldon, the self-styled chronicler of modern British history, whose latest volume on the Truss era is out this week, claims to have “never known more ignorance of history than among today’s politicians”. The ...

It takes a surprising amount of energy to walk up to a restaurant in a foreign city and ask for a table for one. Would the staff question my aloneness, I’d wonder? Would they feel I was taking up space? As I wandered the streets of Lisbon, I’d find myself mentally logging the location of any restaurant that looked like a good candidate: nice, but not too nice; busy, but not so busy the staff might resent me. Often – too often – I’d make the wrong choice; find myself somewhere disappointing, in sight of better options, or suspecting the waiter was under orders to get my table back as soon as physically possible. “I do have friends,” I’d want to ...

Kamala Harris’s first interview as a presidential candidate was exceedingly short. She appeared on CNN on Thursday night for a mere 25 minutes. And for big chunks of that, her running mate Tim Walz was answering the questions. She spoke for such a small amount of time that CNN had to pad out their 45-minute programme with four ad breaks and footage of Harris and Walz buying brisket on the campaign trail. Such a format does not ooze confidence. Indeed, her campaign so far has been tightly stage-managed, cautious and hidden from the media’s direct questions. Her advisers are obviously nervous about Harris facing questions. Before last night, her only interviews had been with social media influencers. Calling them “interviews” is ...

The Republican and Democratic parties both have some notable fresh recruits. Last week Robert F Kennedy Jr suspended his independent campaign for president and endorsed Donald Trump. The former president said that the Kennedy Democrats – the family members and followers of the late John F Kennedy – now belonged in the Maga movement. Then, on Monday 26 August, Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, joined Kennedy on the Trump train, offering her official endorsement at a Republican campaign event. Kennedy and Gabbard’s conversions are, perhaps, not that surprising. The son of Bobby Kennedy has long bought into beliefs prevalent on the Maga right. He rails against mass censorship, the corporate capture of ...

Increase borrowing or raise taxes. These were the choices facing Rachel Reeves as shadow chancellor when asked how Labour would fund better public services. Neither of these options, nor cuts to already stretched public services, were likely to go down well with the party’s “hero voters”, who want improved public services but without higher taxes – and are historically sceptical of Labour’s ability to manage the economy.  Reeves needed a solution to untie Labour’s perennial “Gordian knot”. This is how   economic growth became, in the words of Keir Starmer, “Labour’s defining mission”. The “growth fairy” would, like Alexander the Great’s sword, solve all of Reeves’ problems at once. Money for public services – without higher borrowing or taxation. Labour’s embrace of ...

In the foothills of Mount Teide on Tenerife, only the salamanders stir in the quivering midday glare. The peak, also the highest point on Spanish soil, is an apparently docile volcano; a neighbouring stack blew itself to pieces 170,000 years ago, leaving behind a range of rocks with eerie, jagged profiles and a lava field like a petrified peat bog. This extraterrestrial landscape is barely an hour by road from the island’s southern beaches. But you could be in another country, if not galaxy, from the pullulating resorts. This summer, a wave of protests against over-tourism, which has swept European destinations from Amsterdam to Barcelona, finally made landfall at this normally most forgiving of destinations. As the season nears its apex, ...

When Kamala Harris took to the stage on the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago after four days of incessant praise, it seemed as though she could have said anything and got rapturous applause. Where was the policy? The substance? That was unnecessary, her party replied. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, from Rhode Island, told me that detail is not what the public wants. “They want to hear vision, goals and energy and a new attitude about politics and campaigning,” he told me. “As long as she stays on what she's doing, she's going to be fine.” And she delivered. She promised to build the middle class, end the housing crisis, and put the country before party and self. Echoing ...

What on earth is the Scottish Conservative Party going to look like once this leadership contest is over? The way the candidates are behaving brings to mind the old joke about academic politics being so bitter because the stakes are so low. This is not a party in good shape, or with particularly great prospects, and yet the frenzied struggle for power suggests some enormous prize awaits the eventual winner. More likely, a smoking crater. There have been resignations, leaks, negative briefings, and a ganging up by a handful of the contenders against the frontrunner, Russell Findlay. From the outside at least, the “Stop Findlay” campaign appears confused, over the top and perhaps even unhinged. Did it have to be like this? Political ...