The Spectator’s Notes
David Trimble, who has just died, has rightly been praised for his courage. History may prove him to have been…
‘You can’t have your cake and eat it’
As the leadership contest hots up, Charles Moore and Rishi Sunak sit down for a chat
The Spectator’s Notes
Whitehall is telling ministers that this is a ‘caretaker’ government and so, by convention, cannot take decisions. This is not…
A rather funny story about Ivana Trump
The death of Ivana Trump last week reminded me of a story I had always meant to check. I rang…
Thatcher’s way with words (1982)
This piece is taken from The Spectator’s archive 40 years ago this week. At the time, Charles Moore was the magazine’s…
The Spectator’s Notes
If you had said, even ten years ago, that there was no chance of a white male cabinet minister becoming…
The Spectator’s Notes
Few leaders could be as different in character as Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson, but one can compare their predicaments…
Thatcher’s downfall has a lesson for Boris’s enemies
Few leaders could be as different in character as Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson, but one can compare their predicaments…
The Spectator’s Notes
If anyone was suitable to be the Prime Minister’s adviser on ministerial interests, it was Lord Geidt. Self-effacing, professional, unself-righteous…
The Spectator’s Notes
Even before the ECHR injunction, the bishops had issued their anathema. All 25 of them in the House of Lords…
The Spectator’s Notes
It was reported gleefully that Boris Johnson was booed as he entered St Paul’s Cathedral for the Jubilee Thanksgiving service…
The Spectator’s Notes
Like many people who do not share his views, I have felt intermittent admiration for Peter Tatchell over the past…
The Spectator’s Notes
I wrote recently elsewhere about Jeremy Hunt’s good new book examining unnecessary deaths in the NHS. Someone should write a…
The Spectator’s Notes
Justified relief that soldiers are now coming out of the Azovstal steelworks alive is accompanied by anxiety about what might…
The Spectator’s Notes
When I was a lobby journalist, I never went to the State Opening of Parliament. I much regret it, because…
The Spectator’s Notes
As we get back into Roe vs Wade, prompted by the leak of what is said to be the US…
The Spectator’s Notes
My friend, the novelist Alan Judd, emails with the right quotation for those who argue that Putin should be given…
The Spectator’s Notes
The end of the Cold War was used by the victors to unite Germany. To balance this, Europhiles created a…
The Spectator’s Notes
Now that events in Ukraine are restoring a sense of proportion about the difference between aggressive autocracies and free countries,…
The Spectator’s Notes
Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands 40 years ago. I had joined the Daily Telegraph as a reporter in 1979 and…
The Spectator’s Notes
Zakhar Prilepin is a well-known novelist in Russia and an ultra-nationalist warrior in Donbas. Once a member of the National…
The Spectator’s Notes
I remember my father telling me about Imre Nagy’s final broadcast before the Hungarian leader was taken by the Russians…
The Spectator’s Notes
I wish people would not say Vladimir Putin is mad. One understands him much better if one says he is…
The Spectator’s Notes
Much attention has been paid to how Vladimir Putin has learnt from western weakness over his earlier invasions, including into…
The Spectator’s Notes
We are always cautioned against comparing a modern political event with those that led up to the second world war.…
