Journalist
Articles by Jack Kessler:
How Novak Djokovic became the world’s most divisive athlete
From believing positive thinking can detoxify water to hosting an unsanctioned super-spreader event, for those who have followed the grand slam star’s career, this latest fiasco in Melbourne comes as no surprise.
Evening Standard
Of course Tony Blair deserves a knighthood
I once ended an evening early because my date informed me that Tony Blair was a ‘war criminal’. I don’t know how we came on to the subject – somewhere between drinks two and three – but in retrospect, it was good to broach it early, and not after we’d adopted a beagle and moved to Zone 4.
Evening Standard
Let’s follow Greece and fine those who refuse Covid jabs
Beer duty, tobacco tax, the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (sugar tax to the kids). Sin taxes are all around us. They are hardly new, either. The origin of alcohol duty can be traced back to the 1643 Excise Ordinance levied by Parliament during the English Civil War.
Evening Standard
Taking a baby into the Commons wins my vote
For a Westminster Hall debate called “promotion and regulation of financial products on Black Friday”, it sure garnered a lot of attention. Yet what seemed to matter most was what, or rather who, the Labour MP Stella Creasy was holding during the debate — her 13-week-old son Pip, right. Quick, everyone assume the culture war position!
Evening Standard
My life has been marked out in football matches
It is hard to pinpoint the precise moment my back started to hurt. Was it December, after I carried a Christmas tree up two flights of stairs? Or did it begin in April, when Tottenham sacked Jose Mourinho and appointed Ryan Mason — two years my junior — as interim head coach?
Evening Standard
The fight to save London from climate emergency
As the city reels from flash flooding, how can we safeguard against the devastating impact of global warming and reverse the effects before it’s too late?
Evening Standard
Petrol-free cars will bring their own problems
As Government policy to encourage the take-up of electric vehicles goes, leaving the European Union, engineering a chronic shortage of HGV drivers before fuelling a bout of panic buying is not exactly nudge theory 101.
Evening Standard
Sadiq Khan is right: just wear a damn mask
Sometime after the first lockdown but before the second, I found myself on the Tube, face mask affixed, and needed to sneeze. What was the etiquette - mask on or off?
Evening Standard
XR: Extinction Rebellion is unpopular, but most of us agree with them
How you ask a question matters. “Why are you so stupid?’ is likely to engender a different response to, “Could we perhaps think this through in more detail?”
Evening Standard
At £0 admission, The Mound is still too costly
“We come,” they exclaimed “to protest with all our strength and all our indignation” a tower of “ridiculous vertiginous height”, of “stupefying folly”, an “odious column of bolted metal… a barbarous mass overwhelming and humiliating all our monuments”.
Evening Standard
Three Lions is about losing. Could we handle it if we won the Euros?
Have you ever actually sat down and read the lyrics to Three Lions? Of course not — it is a song largely reserved for late Nineties children’s birthday parties and intoxicated football fans. But if you get beyond the initial “football’s coming home” refrain, after even a cursory glance it is clear that, far from being a paean to English football, it is a song about losing.
Evening Standard
The pain of being a lifelong Roger Federer fan
How can I be 30 years old and still having to watch Roger Federer lose to Rafael Nadal at the French Open?” That was the question I was asking myself in the prelapsarian world of June 2019, as the two men faced off once more on Parisian clay.
Evening Standard
Antisemitism in London fits a depressing pattern
I have two abiding memories of my schoolfriend’s Catholic confirmation. The first was indeed a blessing — the service lasted barely 45 minutes, far shorter than the two-hour-plus marathon of synagogue. The second was the absence of guards outside of the church. Who was keeping the congregation safe, I wondered? It did not occur to me at that age that people could pray without security.
Evening Standard
‘The past few years have been tough’: Andy Murray on pain, injury and why tennis isn’t fun anymore
After debilitating injuries, major surgeries and multiple lockdowns, he will soon start battling his way back to tennis’s top tier. But in the meantime, Andy Murray tells Jack Kessler, how he’s been keeping busy.
Evening Standard
European Super League: We must stand ready to unite behind football again
The press release did not scream “intricately-planned, war-gamed to an inch of its life, JP Morgan seed-funded ticket to sporting nirvana”. For starters, the logo at the top of the page looked as if it had been created using Nineties Microsoft WordArt.
Evening Standard
The Tories are trying to change the rules of the game
I have come to accept that, no matter how hard I try to block out distractions at work or take back control of my inbox, I will never be as efficient as Labour’s vote share in the 2005 general election.
Evening Standard
No Parler? No problem: Where Trump’s QAnon Twitter mob went next
Banished from Twitter and Facebook, the more extreme end of the Donald’s believers found an accommodating home in Parler: until it got shut down. But that doesn’t mean they’re out of options. Far from it.
Evening Standard
Holocaust Memorial Day: “How is it you speak German so well?”
Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, my grandma's story of escape from Nazi-occupied Austria.
Evening Standard
Why is Australia risking everything for tennis?
This is not the first major tournament held in a ‘bubble’. But those in New York and Paris were in place to protect the players from cities where the virus was spreading. This bubble exists to protect the public from the players. That difference is lost on too many.
Evening Standard
Donald Trump made history — just not how he’d planned
Yesterday afternoon, Donald Trump became the first president in US history to be impeached twice. In an inverse Bill Clinton, his record is now one term, two impeachments.
Evening Standard
'We don't have true devolution' — why the pandemic has been a coming of age moment for England's Metro Mayors
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a watershed moment for England’s metro mayors. But will Downing Street read its bruising encounters with Andy Burnham as evidence that mayors need more powers – or as a reason to take the powers they do have away? Jack Kessler reports on the “unfinished” state of English devolution.
PoliticsHome
The grand slams determine tennis greatness — it wasn’t always this way.
When Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic walk on to Court Philippe-Chatrier today, it will be to compete for the 2020 French Open men’s title. But in truth, much more is at stake.
Medium
'Most politics is done in pubs' - in praise of the Red Lion
The Red Lion is a place that brings people together to trade in gossip and information. Thank God it's back.
The House
What we should have learnt from the Aids pandemic of the 1980s.
Clear and consistent messaging about how best to protect yourself is key and this government has not delivered either.
Prospect Magazine
The Treasury has wanted to raise fuel duty for years. Will it finally happen?
Successive chancellors have suggested the freeze will end, only to backtrack. But the grim outlook could leave little choice.
The Guardian
Where the virus hit
How age, gender, race and jobs have impacted on who got Covid-19.
Tortoise
We still need to be in people’s faces
This week, in our virtual newsroom, we asked: will LGBT+ inequality always be an LGBT+ problem to solve?
Tortoise
Infection HQ
Britain’s leading politicians are spread across a few buildings and streets in central London. Here’s how – and when – the virus swept through them.
Tortoise
Ain’t nothin’ going on but the rent
Will Covid-19 crash the booming student property market?
Tortoise
The fundamental responsibility of journalism is to tell the truth’
This week our ThinkIns kept circling back to the subject of journalism; its role in holding power to account, reporting the pandemic and whether Dominic Cummings is just a “Westminster story”.
Tortoise
Degrees of separation
Students tell us how they might navigate the hazards of uni in the age of coronavirus.
Tortoise
What we’ll forget…
…and what we won’t. The lockdown is affecting our memories.
Tortoise
Retail parked
Normally, Revival Retro is a bustling clothes store in London’s West End. But these are not normal times. Loan applications, staff furloughs and other sacrifices are all part of doing business now.
Tortoise
Fighting over data
By staying at home and streaming videos, we’re all putting a lot more strain on the world’s digital infrastructure. Here’s how the internet giants are trying to help – and how we can too.
Tortoise
Reality show
Has our fascination with celebrity become unbearably toxic?
Tortoise
Kessler on Speed
BA Flight 112 made the fastest ever subsonic commercial flight from New York to London last week when it crossed the Atlantic in four hours and 48 minutes, around 100 minutes faster than its scheduled flight time. In doing so it brought back memories of Concorde, futurism’s ghost of Christmas past.
Tortoise
Kessler on Kessler
Jack Kessler on near-Earth collisions and the M25.
Tortoise
Growth for some
President Trump boasts about his jobs boom – but is he for real?
Tortoise
Rising temperaments
Activism about the climate crisis is intensifying. What woke us up?
Tortoise
Road to recession
From trade balances to Google searches, the metrics to worry about.
Tortoise
Teenage wasteland
Tennis champions used to be much younger. Now the over-30s rule the courts. Jack Kessler investigates the triumph of experience over hopefuls.
Tortoise
The unelected
Britain’s next prime minister will come to power without a general election. It’s not as strange as you think – but a reckoning will have to be faced.
Tortoise
Game changer
The world’s greatest tennis championship used to be fast and furious. Serve and volleyers ruled the grass courts of SW19. No more. Was it the grass? Or something else? Jack Kessler investigates.
Tortoise
Are you experienced?
If home fixtures like giant flatscreen TVs do not have the prestige they once did, how do people show off these days? Welcome to the remarkable rise of the “experience economy”.
Tortoise
Britain’s most important twentysomethings
Jack Kessler on the “Treasury view”, and the unusual influence of Britain’s might finance ministry.
Tortoise
Where did the EpiPens go?
Adrenaline auto-injectors are essential items for people across the globe who have serious allergies. But, last year, the world ran out of them.
Tortoise
