The Critic

The Critic is Britain's new highbrow monthly current affairs magazine for politics, art and literature. Dedicated to rigorous content, first rate writing and unafraid to ask the questions others won't.

Labour’s battle of egos

The Critic

Letters • Write to The Critic by email at letters@thecritic.co.uk including your address and telephone number

Life for stealing a phone? • IPP sentences are a shocking stain on the criminal justice system that the Prime Minister would do well to kill off

Woman About Town

PESTON’S INBOX

FAILING TO FACE THE FACTS • The Tories’ rosy view of their recent election drubbing reveals a reluctance to have the tough intellectual debate needed to secure the party’s future

OUR NEW FIVE-PARTY SYSTEM • First-past-the-post no longer means an electoral carve-up between the Tories and Labour, allowing “fringe” parties real political influence

THE DOG THAT FAILED TO BARK • Jeremy Corbyn hoped the local elections would be a launch pad for his new party. Instead, Your Party has mostly been arguing with itself

The great survivors • As the DEI era fades, personnel heads live on as senior CEO consiglieri and hatchet-bearers

SCOTLAND’S BIGGEST LEGAL SCANDAL • hundreds of men could have being denied their right to a fair trial because of a justice system that rules important character evidence inadmissible

New model Auntie • David Elstein spells out the big decisions that Matt Brittin, the BBC’s new director-general, needs to make very quickly in order to save the Corporation from “managed decline”

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

How to save our green and pleasant land • It’s time to stop ruining Britain’s countryside with drab, identikit houses and instead build real places with focus, heart and purpose

The testing of Giorgia Meloni • Reviled as the heir to fascist dictator Mussolini, Italy’s first woman PM has proved a pragmatic conservative who has brought stability to her country. Now a series of setbacks, including a spat with Donald Trump, has pierced her aura of invincibility

Regulating the rogue degree factories

WHAT MAKES AN AMERICAN? • GREEN’S AMERICA Dominic Green asks what characterises a US citizen in the twenty-first century, beyond abiding by the country’s laws and supporting its constitution

Dear prudence • Jeremy Black reflects on the Tory Party’s historic suspicion of interventionism

Restore the King James Bible • The laity love the poetry of the Authorised Version but priests are averse to preaching it

Beware of a British ICE • Daniel Johnson says mass deportation of Muslims will not solve antisemitism, but feed feelings of alienation

Bypassing the parasites • Too often, lawyers add little to business transactions except delays and questionable costs

Vote Green to end antisemitism

Jorge Luis Borges • A giant of Spanish letters who was forged by childhood exposure to his father’s vast English library

Gregory Halting Procrastinator

Adam Dant on …

STUDIO • VENICE BIENNALE 2026

The intractable problems pulling modern Britain apart

Peeves and a weekend in Worcester

The flawed thinking behind state suicide

What is the CID for?

Eulogy for rural life

Strange new world

Real culture wars

Deciphering the royal dress code

Clarifying the fog of the gender wars

DeepMind delusion

Poop history

Illuminating shady corners of the soul

The book awards are a joke • The panel of non-literary judges shows just how frivolous the Nibbies are

Romeo Coates “Between you and me …”

The last true Kappelmeister

Operatic satire is a Shaw...