The Joy of Six 1128

"With every echoing step, British parliamentarians are reminded by these weighty premises of their own importance. It is rather rare, however, that one of them makes their way from the halls of parliament into the underworld of the old palace, which was once built on a swampy island in the Thames. Here, in the low-ceilinged, labyrinthine catacombs, the foundation of Britannia’s democracy is literally rotting away, largely out of sight and out of mind. Most of the structure is contaminated by asbestos, while thick tangles of cables hang chaotically from the ceiling and pipes suddenly come to an end, seemingly in the middle of nowhere." Jörg Schindler sees Britain facing a perfect storm of struggle, with millions sliding into poverty and little to suggest that improvement will come anytime soon.

David Gauke has little time for Dominic Raab's defence against bullying charges.

Elon Musk's attempt to monetise the Twitter blue tick is a master class in business failure, argues Alex Kirshner.

Richard Vinen reviews Rory Carroll's Killing Thatcher: "There was a curious sense in which the IRA did kill Thatcher at Brighton. Magee and his comrades described the high-security units in which they were imprisoned as 'submarines', because they were so cut off from contact with the outside world. Thatcher’s own security team put her in a submarine of sorts, and it was one that dived ever deeper after Brighton. Isolation from ordinary life was one of the things that accounted for the erosion of her political instincts in the late 1980s and, eventually, her fall. 

"How did she do it? That’s the question that inevitably comes to mind when watching such moments of feminist audacity in a film written and directed by a woman working within the mainstream British film industry of 1957." Melanie Williams celebrates the achievements of the film director Muriel Box.

Joel Morris sees the culture war invade tributes to dead comedians.