Declines in human fertility have been attributed to ‘moral and cultural relativism, multiculturalism and political correctness’, but in fact political, social and cultural attitudes seem to play very little role, fertility decisions being both decentralised and private.

In previous ages, the apocalypse was envisaged as a great, singular occurrence. What marks our age out more than previous ones may be the realisation that what we had thought of as one apocalyptically levelling event might rather come for…

The business corporation has been in existence for centuries, but it was only in the last fifty years that the primacy of maximising shareholder return as its sole purpose was established as dogma. But now that dogma is being challenged,…

For trolls, politics is insuperably Manichaean. It is governed by enmity and the notion that things could be otherwise is a saccharine fiction that should be derided. In this regard they share something of the worldview of Nazi jurist and…

First create a movement – not a party – which speaks up for ‘the real people’ and promises to punish their oppressors. Then proceed to the infantilisation of political language ‑ outrageous statements help ‑ and turn up the level…

There was a time when the American Dream was taken to mean the integration of immigrants and a reasonable level of prosperity for all. Yet it is reasonable to point out the term’s elasticity of meaning, and that today some…

In 2015 Germany and Austria agreed on a policy which resulted in the resettling in Europe of more than a million Syrian refugees ‑ a far less daunting business than dealing with 30 million displaced people in the aftermath of…

Robert Macfarlane’s latest exploration of the natural world leaves one with the impression of the world as a hollowed-out vessel, infinitely fragile and perilously finite, a honeycomb packed with toxic waste which will ultimately disintegrate like an aged wasps’ nest.

Your race is run: the last days of Margaret Thatcher