The Critic Magazine (UK)

2 days ago | thecritic.co.uk | Lawrence Freedman

Tony Brenton argues that it did and Lawrence Freedman argues that it did not On 2 June, the Committee for Academic Freedom held a debate in King’s College London on the question: “Ukraine — was Russia’s invasion provoked by Western foreign policy”. This was almost the first discussion of its sort to have taken place in a UK university — an extraordinary fact, considering the importance of the issue.

3 days ago | thecritic.co.uk | Robert Hutton

Keir Starmer’s impersonation of normalcy is less than convincing Waiting in the wings as he prepared to face Angela Rayner, Mel Stride looked nervous. Keir Starmer was abroad again, and so the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (there’s no shame if you didn’t know) was the latest member of Kemi Badenoch’s front bench to be served up at Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions. As he prepared for his gladiatorial tussle with Angela Rayner, he fiddled with his phone and shifted from foot to foot.

3 days ago | thecritic.co.uk | Robert Hutton

The sketch is now in effect. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT! How did you mark Dan Hannan Day? Big party, or quietly with close family? Tuesday was, for those blissfully unaware, the day identified by Conservatism’s Greatest Intellectual™ for an essay he wrote in the days before the 2016 referendum, setting out how Britain would mark its departure from the European Union each year with early evening fireworks and a sense of wonder about how easy Brexit had turned out to be.

5 days ago | thecritic.co.uk | Robert Hutton

“Well,” began the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, on being asked about whether America’s bunker-busting bombing mission against Iran was strictly, y’know, legal. “We weren’t involved.”OK, replied the man from the BBC. But did we, a nuclear power with a seat on the UN Security Council, have a view on whether countries can just bomb other countries? “We weren’t involved,” Lammy replied. He suggested they try asking the Americans: “You can get the ambassador online.”This wasn’t quite doing the trick.

5 days ago | thecritic.co.uk | Patrick Galbraith

This article is taken from the June 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £25. It wasn’t the smooth happy birth I’d hoped for or envisaged. At about four o’clock on a Friday evening — five days before my new book, Uncommon Ground, was due to be published — an email landed from my editor.