The siege is finally over. Yesterday it was reported that Dame Judi Dench and Siân Phillips had become the first women to be admitted to private members’ club the Garrick, the culmination of a campaign sparked by a series of Guardian articles. Most commentators and many members have welcomed the move as long overdue and called for other male-only clubs such as White’s and Boodle’s to follow suit. And at its root this is clearly a story of elemental questions of fairness and entrenched male dominance. But London clubland is more than an exclusive social zone; it is where a large proportion of British establishment politics is transacted. And admitting women will not only change its demographics: it will also ...

Neither the politicians nor the broadcasters have distinguished themselves in this election campaign. They proclaimed that the nation faces big decisions in a complicated world, but have spent their time obsessing about polls and process and the kind of trivia that alienates voters. Journalists working for traditional organisations scorned the anger and disinformation that dominates social media, and yet they played the game: Twitter too often set the agenda and tone for daily coverage. One former head of a major broadcaster puts it bluntly: “The election has been stupid because politicians and hacks connive in keeping it that way.” When the conventional media did have its breakthroughs it tended to be the kind of stuff that pushes the audience towards the ...

In eight days’ time, France could have its first hard-right government since the Second World War. President Emmanuel Macron’s gamble to call an early parliamentary election has not paid off. Yesterday’s first round vote saw Marine Le Pen’s National Rally move into first place, with the left-wing New Popular Front in second and Macron’s Ensemble trailing in third. If Macron and the left cannot agree to prioritise candidates with the best chance of beating the National Rally before the second round on Sunday, then Le Pen’s protégé Jordan Bardella could become Macron’s prime minister. The best Macron’s camp can hope for is to deprive the National Rally of an outright majority. France’s options look grim: gridlock or the hard right in ...

Why did England get booed so much and so often during those early Euro games? Players had missiles thrown at them, as did St Gareth. Friends and family members of players, even the lesser-known names confined to the bench, also had abuse and beer thrown at them by fans nearby who were watching games from the posh seats. Fans are meant to be supporters: loyal to the team, the players and their country. Why do this when they have travelled all that way and at such expense? Because England played shite. That’s the simple answer. I was more surprised when Belgium got booed off the pitch after a goalless draw with Ukraine. There were jeers and whistles aimed at Kevin De ...

In 2018, the Russian presidential election produced an entirely expected victory for the incumbent Vladimir Putin, who won 78 per cent of the vote. The process was widely condemned by observers and beset by allegations of fraud and ballot stuffing. In Liverpool Walton in 2017 and 2019, we saw an even more emphatic result – minus the vote-rigging and the Potemkin competition between regime-controlled candidates. Labour’s Dan Carden won around 85 per cent of the ballots cast; higher than even an autocratic Putin cares to muster for himself in the pantomime theatre of a managed democracy. On July 4 we’re likely to see a similar result again in a slightly redrawn Liverpool Walton, the safest seat in the country. “I don’t know anyone ...

Ahead of the first round of voting in the legislative elections this Sunday, the French left has united for only the second time in its recent history. The first was in 2022, when the competing parties fell in line behind Jean Luc Mélenchon’s left-populist vehicle La France Insoumise. Mélenchon’s presidential score of 22 per cent had almost put him through in the second round, whereas every other candidate failed to even gain the required 5 per cent to have their campaign costs reimbursed. The shock of this result forced the entirety of the left into the LFI-dominated alliance. The need to present a united front has only become more acute since. The left parties all ran separate lists in the European ...

The thing no one tells you about the stages of grief is that they are not, in fact, stages. Any serious bereavement is likely to produce periods of denial, anger, bargaining and depression – but there’s no pre-ordained order to them, and they don’t show up neatly, one after the other, but pile upon you at random or sometimes all at once. This exhausted government has not left this mortal plane quite yet – but already those who loved it are in open mourning for what they’ve lost. In the pages of the right-wing press, every stage of grief, almost, is already on show even now. Few are surely still in denial that the Tories are about to lose (though the failure ...

Regular readers of these columns will know that I am not a fan of Boris Johnson. He lacks any respect for the truth. He has few political principles. He was a hopeless administrator, resulting in his government being incoherent and directionless. He – more than any other Conservative – is responsible for Brexit. And by and large, he puts his own interests over any other consideration. Much of the responsibility for the current state of the Tory party is down to him. He does, however, have two attributes that can be viewed positively. The first is that he has consistently been a strong ally to Ukraine. He recognised that Vladimir Putin posed a threat not just to that country but to ...