Opinion

Our editor-at-large's rundown of the pick of the week’s streaming, cinema, theatre and books

Victory for Kim Leadbeater’s bill won’t stop legitimate doubts about it - or it becoming a distraction for a PM struggling to define himself

Why has No.10 been so swift to wield the axe now when the PM has known about her conviction for years?

Telling small groups of people that they will be taken seriously if only they shout loudly enough is damaging for democracy

Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage won a referendum on the lie that leaving the EU would control immigration

Dylan Jones, who hacks resented over his jaunts, has stepped down

Călin Georgescu is a textbook post-truth politician: a conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer, climate change denier, and moon landing sceptic

The country has twice rejected the chance to join the EU, including in a referendum 30 years ago this week with a 52:48 split. Why did they say no? And how’s it working out for them?

I was there when Chirac asked for money that should have gone to Lebanon’s citizens. Now Macron is struggling to save the country from destruction

A misjudged call for the government’s resignation and a string of lame jokes made for another poor performance from the Tory leader

While Keir Starmer continues to pretend that a worthwhile deal can be done without concessions or going back to the single market, this role is a non-starter

Many languages, including English, contain loan words ‘borrowed’ from other languages. But there is one notable exception – Icelandic

An adventurous romantic life lent almost a Zelig-like quality to the writer, constantly drawing her towards the centre of events

The president-elect’s embrace of comedians, podcasters and combat sports stars is a lesson for hectoring liberals

The inheritance tax debate is a little more nuanced than you will read on social media

The forgotten Scottish philosopher’s legacy resurfaced last week when his historic cello was played for the first time in 220 years

Physicists are searching for evidence of the existence of particles known as gravitons – to determine if gravity is a ‘quantum’ affair

Across the world, a new coalition is growing – of exhausted people on all sides who are gunning for Scholz, Macron... and Starmer

In paying their tributes, many people are still underestimating the former deputy prime minister

That we have seemingly managed to beat Elon Musk should be cause for celebration. Why, then, do I have this uneasiness about it?

The sneaky, the snobbish and the snide. The spiteful, the shameless and the downright sinister. They are all shits – and all here in the New European’s annual rundown of 50 people the UK could definitely do without

People who were born during the postwar ‘baby boom’ are sick of being tarred with the same brush. One size does not fit all

Following a rise in politically motivated sentences after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, prisoners in Russia and Belarus have come to rely on letters from strangers

The country has an obsession with cleanliness but there are some kinks in its food waste system that need to be ironed out

If Umbria is hailed as the heart of Italy, then its capital, Perugia, is the heart of all things chocolatey

Despite the new globalised name, speculoos, thankfully, still taste like home

There are few things we like better than stories about good people who turned out to be less so

The EU’s new General Product Safety Regulation system launches on December 13, and will make it even harder for UK firms exporting to Europe

Once a painter of charming small-town scenes, Antonio Calderara radically departed into the abstract. But was this shift as sudden, or surprising, as it seems?

We cannot finesse our way out of the problem that the American people have swung isolationist