Articles by Guy Rundle


Guy Rundle: Gordon Brown is tap dancing like an old hoofer

Gordon Brown is desperate to find anything that works. After all, you’ve got to keep moving, listen to criticism, not be put off by it, especially when you’re up against the man putting a new unformed area of flesh on Tory politics.

Guy Rundle: Rundle’s UK: and so it comes down to two grapefruit bowls

It is sad to see that the great Kaufman has been brought down by the purchase of that most ancient of temptations, to have the public pay for two grapefruit bowls.

Guy Rundle: Rundle: Guardian grid ups the ante while Rupert gets the sheets

As News Ltd boasts unironically of its “new era of profitability” for its clunky websites, The Guardian has just upped the pace, with the launch of its new “zeitgeist” interface.

Guy Rundle: Rundle’s UK: no sh-t Short takes the stand, Brown deflects with voting scam

Gordon Brown’s announcement today that he would try and push through plans for a referendum on constitutional reform has been greeted with light but general derision.

Guy Rundle: Rundle’s UK: Tony Blair’s very ordinary madness

For Tony Blair, by his own account, the crucial fact of 9/11 was not whether or not there had been any connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, but that the combination of dictatorial viciousness and an appetite for lethal weapons was something that could no longer be ignored.

Guy Rundle: The Hack-writer on the Fly

A conversation with Catcher in the Rye protagonist Holden Caulfield and its author JD Salinger, as told to Guy Rundle.

Guy Rundle: Hell of a day for Chilcot, for Haiti, for remembering the Holocaust

Evidence at the Chilcot inquiry reveals the British government lied and schemed on its way to war.

Guy Rundle: Rundle’s UK: Who’ll throw a shoe at Tony Blair?

With the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war moving inexorably towards the headline act — Tony Blair’s second appearance in the witness stand is on Friday — there is something of a dark carnival atmosphere around London.

Guy Rundle: Rundle’s UK: Jack Straw takes the stand, Chilcot becomes the new Watergate

Today Jack Straw took the stand at the Chilcot Inquiry, the first currently serving cabinet member so to do – and promptly landed his erstwhile leader, Mr Tony, even further in it.

Guy Rundle: Notes in transit: Rundle’s recollections of Kuala Lumpur (and Avatar)

Is Kuala Lumpur the worst city in the world? It must come close, says Guy Rundle.

Guy Rundle: Memo state Labor governments, occasioned by the closing of the Tote

How a capital city has gone from a famously dour black hole to a huge cultural and tourist enterprise, as well as a genuine hub of new ideas … and how it’s the government’s mission to kill it.

Guy Rundle: Get Nicked, that’s no spell cast on the Left

According to the The Oz’s authorised left-winger, Nick Dyrenfurth, the Left is humourless and the Right make better drinking companions.

Guy Rundle: Mr Rundle’s Christmas Sermon

You know that the culture is in a parlous state when the most sage advice is coming from Lily Allen. Time to become a neo-luddite and get your life back.

Guy Rundle: Oh, nein, it wasn’t that bad a year … or was it?

From Obama’s inauguration to the pointlessness of Copenhagen, Guy Rundle takes a light look back on the year that was.

Guy Rundle: Windschuttle screams blue murder over Quadrant funding cut

Quadrant has had its Australia Council Grant cut by $15,000 and is screaming blue murder and about the fix being in, because every left wing magazine –- Overland, Meanjin(!), Australian Book Review (!!) — has seen its funding maintained or bumped up.

Guy Rundle: Friday book review: Why You Are Australian

Nicki Gemmell’s latest offering is like a meal of Tim Tams — not too healthy for anyone, and you aren’t too far in before you’re wondering why you ever started in the first place.

Guy Rundle: Rundle: dancing the Windschuttle chorus

It’s a full-time job keeping up with Keith Windschuttle — or the several people writing under that name, and offering completely contradictory accounts of history.

Guy Rundle: Windschuttle hung out to dry on the rabbit-proof fence

Keith Windschuttle’s appearance in last week’s Oz Spectator may be the first example of Howard-era retro-chic, in an article focused obsessively on the 2002 film Rabbit-Proof Fence

Guy Rundle: Crazy Barnaby shooting from the heartland

The trouble for the Coalition is not that Barnaby Joyce says first thing that comes into his mind — it’s that he’s speaking from the heart. And the longer he’s in the shadow Cabinet, the more he’ll do.

Guy Rundle: Tiger’s trysts, no one saw this coming

Two weeks into the Tiger Woods scandal and anguished friends of the sports superstar are all asking the same thing: What is it about the tall, handsome, panther limbed champion billionaire that women find so attractive?

Guy Rundle: Rundle: on Minchin, the green movement and Marxism

Understand this clearly – more people now believe the Red-Green hypothesis, that capitalism is a system testing us to destruction in its current form, than go with the idea that it is some empty charade of communism by other means.

Guy Rundle: Rundle: Abbott has a deep and original desire to fail nobly

If you want to understand where the “Liberal” Party is heading, forget Burke or Oakeshott — read de Maistre’s The Executioner.

Guy Rundle: The Oz has been sipping Abbott’s kool-aid

The Australian’s commentators were out in force this morning to announce the return of the Abbott through the city gates — shouting heahs and hosannas, with Dennis Shanahan back in his happy place.

Guy Rundle: Friday book review: Fishing in Utopia

Andrew Brown’s account of the most successful social democracy in his book Fishing In Utopia - Sweden and the Future That Disappeared serves as a prism for the political questions we face.

Guy Rundle: Abbott, God and the cosmopolitans

How do you know the conservatoriat’s landed? Because the whining continues even after the jet engines have been shut off.