Why we are all solipsists
I once tried to write a novel but lacking any ear for dialogue or skill at characterisation, I abandoned the…
The mind-body conundrum
I’m committed this winter to too many expensive building projects at once. As the balloon of my bank balance drifts…
Was the BBC’s Trump edit outrageously wrong?
I should begin by making something clear. Splicing together two parts of a speech to give the impression they were…
The engine’s pitch has changed
On a long flight there’s an instant, and perhaps you’ve noticed it, when a very slight alteration in the pitch…
The lost art of the insult
Imagine I were to begin this column by remarking that a woman preaching is like a dog walking on its…
In defence of Chris Cash
Can you be a spy by mistake? If, with no treacherous intent, without ever intending to disadvantage your own country,…
Hard-won gay rights will be easily lost
In the Palace of Westminster a fortnight ago, I spoke at a reception celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Tory…
Has Zelensky become a liability?
Is Volodymyr Zelensky becoming a liability for the West and for his own country? We are entitled at least to…
What it means to be English
How can you ever put your finger on the comfort, the joy, the absurdity, of being English? Not, perhaps, through…
Why you should never trust a travel writer
After one of Jeffrey Archer’s minor tangles with the absolute truth, his friend the late Barry Humphries remarked: ‘We all…
How Labour governments always end
Couldn’t we just skip to the end? I’m old enough to have seen this so often: must I sit through…
The real reason birth rates are falling
Last week the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released its State of World Population report. According to the Guardian: ‘Millions…
What history doesn’t tell us
The trouble with history is that it is topiary. History is what’s left after the unwanted foliage has been clipped…
The battle over fishing is a sideshow
So far, so routine. Labour wants to update and if possible upgrade the United Kingdom’s arrangements with our immediate neighbour…
Kemi shouldn’t play the Trump card
I doubt I’m alone among Spectator readers in feeling a certain slight but nagging discomfort when I hear those on…
The joy of Channel Island hopping
Seldom has a collective term been less appropriate: ‘the Channel Islands’ – as though these were in any sense (other…
What if Trump is just bonkers?
‘I wonder what he meant by that,’ King Louis Philippe of France supposedly remarked on the death of the conspiratorial…
America is a moral idea or it is nothing
Harold Wilson once declared that the Labour party ‘is a moral crusade or it is nothing’, a proposition whose logical…
Trump wants Putin to win
It is meet, right and our bounden duty to begin any column about Ukraine with a vigorous expression of the…
A trap for the right
On Thursday 16 August 1739, the young John Wesley met and for an hour argued with the middle-aged Bishop of…
Let Trump buy the Chagos Islands
Forgive me for returning in this column to Diego Garcia. The issue is too important to shrug aside: important not…
How to solve a problem like the Chagos Islands
Very soon – as soon as the mutual courtesies now being exchanged between the new American President and his British…
Why was everyone fooled by Rachel Reeves?
It is some time since I could claim any close acquaintance with the daily skirmishes of workaday Westminster. From risers…
In defence of first past the post
Here comes a new law in political science: Joe’s Law. As I write, the Republic of Ireland is still working…
