The Critic

Young people have become social media scapegoats | Ben Sixsmith | The Critic Magazine

Under-16 social media restrictions could be broad enough to exclude teenagers from eBay and Spotify, government sources have claimed. “Critics of Australia’s social media prohibition…

More questions than answers | Robert Hutton | The Critic Magazine

There are two approaches to Prime Minister’s Questions, and which you use depends on whether you care about the answers. The first is to keep your question short and tight, forcing the prime minister…

Doing the blood work | Iain MacGregor | The Critic Magazine

By the dawn of the second world war in 1939, modern warfare had become frighteningly efficient at tearing the human body apart.

Is London falling? | Sebastian Milbank | The Critic Magazine

National decline has become a familiar fact — a collective wound we’ve all got used to gingerly nursing. We all wake up to gloomy headlines, grey faced politicians making ever more desperate promises…

On the rights of MPs | Henry Hill | The Critic Magazine

One of the absurdities of New Labour’s devolution settlement for Scotland and Wales (Northern Ireland is, as on so many issues, somewhat sui generis) is that it afforded each almost total autonomy…

In praise of pedestrianisation | Jimmy Nicholls | The Critic Magazine

A confession, before I begin: I do not frequent Oxford Street. It is too busy for a sensitive literary type like me, too noisy, and too much for the small children I keep in tow. Frankly…

Is the DUP done for? | Owen Polley | The Critic Magazine

Not very long ago, the DUP seemed an insurmountable force in Northern Ireland politics. The unionist party dominated Stormont for almost twenty years, before being overtaken by Sinn Fein at the 2022…

Festival à la Marx | Indy Bhattacharyya | The Critic Magazine

Staycation was rewarding in many ways this summer. I enjoyed wonderful weather, avoided queues at airports and enjoyed time to catch up on much needed reading. There was also the opportunity to…

Shooting the dead cat | Richard Negus | The Critic Magazine

Defra’s demand for a “call for evidence” (CfE) on game bird rearing, release and shooting appears hard to fathom. It was a left-field proclamation, made on the 4th September by an embattled farming…

A Scotland so broken | John MacLeod | The Critic Magazine

It’s a Monday afternoon in August 1979 and, by Queen Victoria Drive, Anniesland Road and Kingsway, a small taut boy of thirteen is pedalling a Raleigh Wayfarer bicycle slightly too big for him to a…

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The slow return of blasphemy laws | Hardeep Singh | The Critic Magazine

Is a de-facto blasphemy law slowly becoming embedded into modern British society? Criticism of Islam increasingly carries consequences that sit uneasily with our longstanding…