Here is the latest episode of Politics on the Couch, visiting the front line where science and truth are defended against the massed battalions of weaponised lies and hatred.

Not a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe. An essay about a personal brush with cardiac calamity and the connection with a toxic atmosphere in British politics at the time.

This week’s column is about the reasons why no-one is listening to Keir Starmer. The pandemic is a big one, but far from the online one.

A column about the Secretary of State for Education, why he shouldn’t still have his job and why Boris Johnson has kept him anyway.

This week’s column is on the prime minister’s habit of letting procrastination do the heavy-lifting, letting a crisis build to the point where decisions get easier because the options are fewer, although the downside is that the good options have run out.

The latest episode of Politics on the Couch is now live – on nostalgia, how it works, what we get from it and why political campaigns love to exploit it.

https://politics-on-the-couch.zencast.website/episodes/nostalgia-canvassing-the-politics-of-memory-lane

Column on the fundamental calculus of Brexit – and how it hasn’t changed since 2016.

A raw deal, whichever way you slice it.

In this essay for Prospect magazine I pondered the question of whether the liberal dread of a resurgence of 20th Century-style threats is misdirecting us from what is really going on. Perhaps vigilance that is too focused on the rear-view mirror carries its own risk of complacency about unimagined threats.

This week’s column is on the hybrid party that has emerged from years of ideological congress between Tories and Ukip. Here.

In which I consider the possibility that there is more mileage in the Johnson project than has sometimes seemed likely, given his incompetent handling of the coronavirus response