The new BBC director-general now faces a test of public scrutiny, with his record at McKinsey and lack of newsroom experience under the spotlight, says STEPHEN ARNELL

STEPHEN ARNELL on how US power politics is seeping into British broadcasting

Small Prophets finds Mackenzie Crook conjuring tiny prophetic beings from working-class malaise, writes STEPHEN ARNELL

Davie and Turness are two scalps for Trump, Farage and Johnson, writes STEPHEN ARNELL

STEPHEN ARNELL wonders at the family resemblance between former prince Andrew and his great-uncle ‘Dickie’

With the recent release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie One Battle After Another, STEPHEN ARNELL gives the storied history of the British real-life left-wing urban guerillas

STEPHEN ARNELL casts a critical eye over the sudden rash of challenges to the two-party system on both sides of the Atlantic, noting that today’s performative populist politics sadly lacks Roosevelt’s progressive ‘Bull Moose’ vision of the early 20th century

While Spode quit politics after inheriting an earldom, Farage combines MP duties with selling columns, gin, and even video messages — proving reality produces more shameless characters than PG Wodehouse imagined, writes STEPHEN ARNELL

The fallout from the Kneecap and Bob Vylan performances at Glastonbury raises questions about the suitability of senior BBC management for their roles, says STEPHEN ARNELL

With the news of massive pay rises for senior management while content spend dives STEPHEN ARNELL wonders when will someone call out the greed of these ‘public service’ executives

As Trump targets universities while Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem redefines habeas corpus as presidential deportation power, STEPHEN ARNELL traces how John Scopes’s optimism about academic freedom’s triumph now seems tragically premature

STEPHEN ARNELL examines whether Starmer is a canny strategist playing a longer game or heading for MacDonald’s Great Betrayal, tracing parallels between today’s rightward drift and the 1931 crisis