Adrian Wooldridge

Artificial intelligence is on its way to becoming the greatest grievance-producing machine the world has seen. Economic revolutions have always been followed by powerful backlashes on the part of the aggrieved. In Britain, Luddites smashed the power...

A clever interviewer recently asked me which piece of music I would choose to sum up our times. I am afraid I opted for the clichéd answer of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, even though Wagner’s genius did not extend to summing things up. As I left the interview a better answer came to mind.

Visiting Sweden from Britain is like entering a Topsy-Turvy world. The country’s recent election unleashed anarchy in its parliament. Yet it is undaunted in addressing its most pressing problems. The UK government has enjoyed a substantial majority for two years. Yet it continues to dither and delay.

The end of Britain’s party conference season and the beginning of a new parliament is a good opportunity to assess the state of its politics. The Greens are the new Nasty Party, worse than the Tories ever were. The centrist Liberal Democrats are the Pointless Party. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is the Fading Party, and the Conservatives are the Trying Hard Party.

Greens are Nasty Party, centrist Liberal Democrats the Pointless Party. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is Fading Party, Conservatives Trying Hard Party, writes Bloomberg's Adrian Wooldridge.

Arnold Toynbee was once the most famous historian in the world, Niall Ferguson, Jared Diamond and Simon Schama rolled into one. In March 1947 Time magazine put him on its cover and described his multi-volume A Study of History as “the most provocative work of historical theory written in England since Karl Marx’s Capital.” A condensed version of his masterpiece shot to the top of the bestseller list, selling 300,000 copies in the US and, as one envious fellow historian put it, “rivaling whisky a

In the best scene in The Standard of Living, James Graham’s new play about John Maynard Keynes, Keynes and fellow economist Friedrich Hayek are on fire duty on the roof of King’s College chapel, locked in debate as they wait for German bombs to drop. It’s all the better for being based in fact.

A new play about this prolific architect of the post-World War II economic order offers a solution to today's dismal state of global affairs: resurrect the Keynesian revolution.

Since 2016, the story of populism in the rich world has been dominated by the Anglo-Saxons — by Britain’s vote for Brexit and America’s decision to elect Donald Trump not once (which might have been put down to naiveté) but twice. But things are about to change: Over the next year populism is likely to fade in the Anglo-Saxon world but burn ever brighter in continental Europe.

The populist right looks set to gain power in an electoral super-cycle, kicking off with Spain in November and peaking with the French presidential polls next April.