News, culture and style

Dominic Cummings

The man with a plan

Ten years on from Brexit, six years after Barnard Castle, the strategist thinks he has a plan to ‘set things on a profoundly different path’. Why does he still believe he has all the answers?

By Andrew Hankinson

No 10

Mandelson’s steaming pile of problems

Peter Mandelson leaves behind a mess for his former party. It’s for Keir Starmer to deal with, not answer for, writes the prime minister’s biographer Tom Baldwin

Sign of the dimes

Won’t somebody think of the multimillionaires?

Fans being priced out of seeing their favourite star is nothing new. But when it comes to Harry Styles, Frank Skinner says, we should cut him some slack. He pays tax, for one thing

Sport

My day as a Six Nations groundsperson

Days before England play Wales in the men’s rugby Six Nations, our assistant sports editor Jess Hayden went to Twickenham to learn about the hosts’ ‘16th player’ – the pitch

For today

Dear Keir

Lucien Young

Mandy lied to me. Really I’m the victim

Brown knew Mandelson was a ‘very bad person’ – and knows there is more to come

Politics

James Macintyre

Brown knew Mandelson was a ‘very bad person’ – and knows there is more to come

Call my AI agent! Chatbots can now post on their own version of Reddit

Technology

John Naughton

Call my AI agent! Chatbots can now post on their own version of Reddit

Happy 50th, Muppets! As a child, answering their fan mail taught me so much

Dear Kermit...

Erica Wagner

Happy 50th, Muppets! As a child, answering their fan mail taught me so much

Afghanistan

The least public inquiry

Some critics say the secretive public inquiry isn’t public at all. Others call it ‘bonkers’. Afghans like Bilal and Imran just want to know what happened to those they love

The Epstein files

Lily Isaacs

Epstein has become a meme, not a monster

Jon Ungoed-Thomas

Ghislaine Maxwell ‘took artistic pornographic photos’ of Epstein victims

Xavier Greenwood

New revelations from the Epstein files look like a wrecking ball for already damaged reputations

Tanya Gold

Who was Jeffrey Epstein, really?

Ideas

It’s time we paved paradise and put up a housing block

Green space

Martha Gill

It’s time we paved paradise and put up a housing block

Jules Verne’s dystopia was a world without humanities. Don’t let it come true

Storytelling

Elif Shafak

Jules Verne’s dystopia was a world without humanities. Don’t let it come true

History predicts a fall in the price of gold. I wouldn’t bet on it

Investment

Tim Leunig

History predicts a fall in the price of gold. I wouldn’t bet on it

In my home state of Minnesota, neighbours are standing strong against ICE

Minneapolis

Siri Hustvedt

In my home state of Minnesota, neighbours are standing strong against ICE

The manosphere

Generation Bateman

Thirty-five years on from the publication of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, its vain, murderous antihero has become a model for a new looks-obsessed toxic masculinity storming social media