The Critic

05/07/2024

Three very sleepy men discuss the election result. In a heroic bit of Critic broadcasting, Richard Johnson, a senior lecturer in politics at Queen Mary University and Sam Bidwell, a Parliamentary researcher and freelance writer join executive editor Sebastian Milbank to talk R...

28/06/2024

In our latest Critic podcast, we peer over the pond to the American elections. Last night saw the first (and perhaps last) debate between Trump and Biden. Executive Editor Sebastian Milbank was joined by Will Upton, a former US Treasury official and an editor of the National P...

18/06/2024

The publication of the Cass Review validated many of the concerns that “gender-critical” commentators and activists had expressed about transgenderism and transitioning. In this series, Jo Bartosch will explore how we got here — interviewing some of the people who helped to ma...

17/06/2024

Women will continue to battle for our rights, argues Jean Hatchet

Last week saw the release of the Labour Party manifesto. Many women had anticipated this with a growing sense of dread. It delivered on that anticipation of doom most effectively.

17/06/2024

Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene may have been unlike as possible, writes Jeffrey Meyers, but they remained the closest of friends for four decades

Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene may have been unlike in politics, religion and personality, but they remained the closest of friends for four decades.

17/06/2024

The British aversion to seeming rude exposes us to ideological scolds, writes Simone Hanna

We British pride ourselves on our politeness. When the tedious conversation about British values rears its head, it’s one of the few things people can agree on. Not for nothing did Orwell remark that…

17/06/2024

The Labour manifesto is a recipe for bland bureaucratic managerialism, argues Sam Bidwell

If Michael Foot’s 1983 Labour manifesto was the longest su***de note in history, then Keir Starmer’s 2024 successor is surely history’s longest victory lap. At an eye-watering 133 pages…

13/06/2024

On the latest Critic election podcast, we're talking Tories. Sebastian Milbank is joined by Henry Hill, Deputy Editor of Conservative Home, and Fred de Fossard, Director of Parliamentary Affairs for the Legatum institute, to discuss Conservatism past, present and future.

11/06/2024

Fred Skulthorp finds that an attempt at national myth-busting is itself laced with the sins of myth-making

Should Keir Starmer find himself in Downing Street after the next election, he will have little to play with in terms of zeitgeist

11/06/2024

Iain Banks had one of the most impressive literary careers of our time, argues John Self, but also one of the most frustrating

This brilliant but wayward novelist wrote both literary and science fiction. His disturbing debut, The Wasp Factory, is being reissued this year

10/06/2024

As populists make gains in the EU elections, and Reform rises in the polls in Britain, we ask if Europe's future, on both sides of the channel, is with the dissident right?

08/06/2024

According to a recent report, 40 per cent of Labour voters can be descried as "blue values voters" — economic and social conservatives who want greater state investment in public services, but also law and order, migration restrictions and a patriotism from their political lea...

06/06/2024

The publication of the Cass Review validated many of the concerns that “gender-critical” commentators and activists had expressed about transgenderism and transitioning. In this series, Jo Bartosch will explore how we got here — interviewing some of the people who helped to ma...

05/06/2024

A recent court case exposed the surrogacy industry’s big lie, reports Julie Bindel

A recent court case exposed the surrogacy industry’s big lie: that mothers don’t have feelings for the children they gave birth to.

05/06/2024

Despite everything, writes Connor Tomlinson, some Conservatives still deserve to win

After fourteen years of Conservatives betraying their electoral mandate, a rallying cry for the Right at the imminent general election is to deliver “ZERO SEATS.” This does not mean voting Labour.

29/05/2024

The publication of the Cass Review validated many of the concerns that “gender-critical” commentators and activists had expressed about transgenderism and transitioning. In this series, Jo Bartosch will explore how we got here — interviewing some of the people who helped to ma...

22/05/2024

The publication of the Cass Review validated many of the concerns that “gender-critical” commentators and activists had expressed about transgenderism and transitioning. In this series, Jo Bartosch will explore how we got here — interviewing some of the people who helped to ma...

20/05/2024

It is time for Paris and Rome to rethink sovereignty and their relationship with the EU, writes Krzysztof Tyszka-Drozdowski

In Ever Closer Union, Perry Anderson highlights the poverty of contemporary European reflection on the EU. For the past few decades, it has been America that has shaped the Old Continent’s imagination.

20/05/2024

Concerns about over-prescription should not be trivialised or problematised, argues Victoria Smith

In Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe’s history of the Sackler family and the US opioid crisis, there’s a particular section that leapt out at me. Dr Russell Portenoy, paid by Purdue Pharma to…

20/05/2024

Roz Adams’ victory is a triumph for tolerance, writes Michael Foran. But it also underlines the significance of biological s*x

Edinburgh R**e Crisis Centre conducted a “heresy hunt” of an employee who believes s*x matters for r**e victims. An employment tribunal has found it unlawfully harassed and constructively dismissed…

15/05/2024

The publication of the Cass Review validated many of the concerns that “gender-critical” commentators and activists had expressed about transgenderism and transitioning. In this series, Jo Bartosch will explore how we got here — interviewing some of the people who helped to ma...

09/05/2024

Professor Jeremy Black and Graham Stewart discuss declining scholarly standards, the state of peer review and the sycophantic treatment of subpar work.

08/05/2024

S*x scenes should be salvaged from hardcore po*******hy, argues Sarah Fletcher

S*x scenes come with a soiled reputation. You’re usually twiddling your thumbs with your parents, deciding on a blank space of ceiling to focus on intently until the longest two minutes of your life…

08/05/2024

What do you do when you are being targeted by someone within law enforcement? Harry Miller explains

When Stephen King tweeted Holy S**t! in response to Baby Reindeer, he nailed it. Being stalked is about as much fun as a remote forest cabin owned by Annie Wilkes and Pennywise. My stalker…

26/04/2024

Rivers of filth bear our merry band to the grotesque wonders of Dickensian London in the latest episode of Critical Mash

A river running with raw sewage, a parliament of self-serving rats and weasels, rapacious capitalism run amok…welcome to 1860s London! This episode of Critical Mash dons its Hazmat suit to plunge into…

26/04/2024

More women should realise that “inclusivity” should not come before freedom, argues Nina Welsch

Months ago, I had a miserable “eureka” moment. I was an aspiring writer who’d quietly exiled myself from most of my writing circles due to the bullying pressure to support extremist left-wing politics…

24/04/2024

We do not need human rights law to protect human rights or to maintain the rule of law, argues our May editorial

A new ruling of the European Court of Human Rights is a bald challenge against the foundations of democratic self-governance in this country

24/04/2024

Britain’s foreign policy in the Middle East should put British interests first, argues Sam Bidwell

Instead of moral grandstanding, Britain’s foreign policy in the Middle East should put British interests first.

23/04/2024

Josephine Bartosch is joined by Charlotte Gill to discuss silly academic research, the right to debate the apportioning of taxpayers’ money and our decadent intellectual culture.

18/04/2024

Filmmakers have fallen out of love with romantic movies, writes James Innes-Smith, but it’s time to bring back passion to the picture house

Filmmakers have fallen out of love with romantic movies, but it’s time to bring back passion to the picture house.