James Ball
19 December 2025
Is 2026 the year that Britain’s universities go bankrupt?
Immigration crackdowns are cutting revenues from overseas students - and now some institutions are on the brink
Read the full article17 December 2025
Why are they such damned liars?
Everyone knows No 10 briefs against members of the cabinet, but Starmer told the Commons it doesn’t. That, in a nutshell, is why political trust is dying out
Read the full article15 December 2025
Bondi Beach and the politics of meeting hate with hate
Politicians and activists must do better than using slaughter to justify their points of view
Read the full article09 December 2025
A letter to Donald Trump, from London
You don’t seem to like London very much, or our mayor. But people around here live longer than Americans, and we’re much less likely to get murdered. As for your Sharia law claims - have you ever actually been here?
Read the full article07 December 2025
Why are we funding pathetic, vengeful Liz Truss to lie about Britain?
The failed PM gets £115,000 of taxpayer money per year to spread poison about the UK on her new online show
Read the full article05 December 2025
Please shut up about your Spotify Wrapped
In fact, it’s a total abomination, dreamed up by the company’s marketing department as a way of appealing to your inner narcissist
Read the full article03 December 2025
The crazy right will never be satisfied about migration
Keir Starmer slashed net migration as the Mail and Farage demanded - and still got hammered for it
Read the full article26 November 2025
The Budget: Rachel Reeves’s missed opportunity
A government doesn’t get many chances to make real change. Today was one of those opportunities - the chancellor missed it
Read the full article26 November 2025
Naomi Alderman: ‘The right side is not largely defined by your opinions’
Being right or wrong is not as important as what you do in the service of those opinions and how far you are willing to go
Read the full article26 November 2025
Cory Doctorow, the gatecrasher at the AI party
The writer coined the word ‘enshittification’ to describe how useful tech inevitably gets worse. Now he’s turning his sights on AI
Read the full article25 November 2025
Michael Prescott: the BBC assassin’s woeful day in Parliament
The man whose report got rid of the BBC’s boss faced MPs yesterday, along with a group of senior BBC executives. Their appearance raised more questions than it answered
Read the full article20 November 2025
If Michael Prescott didn’t leak the BBC bias dossier to the Telegraph, who did?
A whodunnit with serious implications for the future of the broadcaster is underway – with all expected to be revealed at a select committee showdown
Read the full article19 November 2025
Inside Starmer’s shambles
With some Labour MPs in despair and others in revolt, the prime minister’s situation now looks terminal
Read the full article12 November 2025
EXCLUSIVE: Michael Prescott himself doctored Trump quote in his anti-BBC report
A report alleging Panorama broadcast misleading Trump quotes contains misleading quotes itself
Read the full article12 November 2025
‘Next-level ineptitude’: The coup against Starmer may finish off McSweeney
No 10’s briefings about a plot against the prime minister are the work of his unpopular chief of staff
Read the full article12 November 2025
Denmark’s asylum policy isn’t the answer
A harsh, intrusive Danish-style immigration system won’t win right wing votes for Labour and will enrage the party’s traditional supporters. When will this government learn?
Read the full article05 November 2025
Mamdani shows a different way is possible
The New York mayor’s resounding victory is a warning to Trump and his own party’s old guard
Read the full article05 November 2025
First the flag. Now the poppy
A sombre display of remembrance is being weaponised and policed by nationalists
Read the full article31 October 2025
Lord of the Wrongs: What Musk gets wrong about Tolkien and Orwell
The far right tech guru is supposed to be a genius - so why does he misunderstand the books he loves?
Read the full article31 October 2025
Why Facebook is suddenly full of nostalgia for the recent past
Millennials used to mock their parents’ sepia-tinted Facebook posts. Now they’re the ones yearning for a simpler time – before student debt and existential angst
Read the full article26 October 2025
Sarah Pochin and the new age of open racism
What the Reform MP said was appalling. The Tories’ refusal to condemn her is arguably worse
Read the full article23 October 2025
Katie Lam’s immigration panic is built on lies
As a Tory proposes the harshest migration policy since Idi Amin’s, data shows the public doesn't understand the numbers - thanks to politicians too venal or timid to tell the truth
Read the full article16 October 2025
Tinker, tailor, China, farce
A clownish spy scandal has shown up the severe shortcomings of British security, and given the Labour government an even bigger Chinese problem
Read the full article15 October 2025
Paul Marshall, the man who owns the right
The multimillionaire controls a network of news channels, publications and think tanks that the left could only dream of. If Reform or the Tories win the next election, he will become the country’s most influential non-politician
Read the full article04 October 2025
Labour’s London problem
The party cannot stay in power without dominating in the capital – party insiders are now worried the city is about to slip from the government’s grasp
Read the full article01 October 2025
Nick Lowles, the fighter of hate who hid from the sun
As a child in the National Front’s heyday, fear made HOPE not Hate’s CEO try to conceal his origins. Now he says tensions are worse than they were in 1979
Read the full article30 September 2025
Keir Starmer has finally found his bite
A so-so speech soared when the PM went for Farage. The start of a fightback, or too little, too late?
Read the full article29 September 2025
The ID cards disaster is another sign that Starmer has lost it
The PM has failed to spot voters’ anti-big-government streak, enraged his own party and reunited the warring Farage and Boris Johnson
Read the full article24 September 2025
Terminal irony and the collapse of meaning
Coded messages on the bullets that killed Charlie Kirk reveal a nihilistic, always online world where cynicism, violence and politics blur together – and meaning itself collapses.
Read the full article17 September 2025
Exclusive: Royal Society to debate throwing out Elon Musk
One of the most prestigious scientific bodies in the world is considering expelling Musk after his appearance at Tommy Robinson’s extremist London rally
Read the full article17 September 2025
Ed Davey: decency versus division
The Lib Dems beat Reform at the election but lost the media war. Now their leader warns that Farage and Robinson seek to tear Britain apart for personal gain
Read the full article15 September 2025
It’s time for Starmer to confront Elon Musk’s extremism
Tesla’s owner wants a “fight back” to create regime change in the UK. The government must stop indulging him and using his platform
Read the full article