When righteous anger goes wrong
From abroad I’ve returned to a country where, in language to which the word ‘shrill’ hardly does justice, fellow British…
The four big questions our politicians need to answer
Anyone would think (anyone, that is, who has followed our three main annual party conferences this autumn) that Britain’s principal…
Folk wisdom gets so much wrong
I was only a boy when I first began protesting against the idiocy of so much of the folk wisdom…
Australia’s disastrous referendum
My partner and I have just returned from the most magical trip. As guests of Western Australia’s tourist board we’ve…
Britain has an entitlement problem
An Institute for Fiscal Studies paper, published at the end of last month, makes grim reading. Through the prism of…
The hypocrisy of the Farage outcry
Much heartened by the barrage of criticism I’ve been receiving from both Spectator and Times readers, I’m returning to the…
Coutts, Farage and the trouble with choice
Dame Alison Rose should not have resigned as head of NatWest over the Nigel Farage affair – and ministers who…
Don’t write off Rishi
Were I sure this was about me alone, I’d hardly bother to mention it: but I may be typical of…
Our God complex
Pantomime is meant to be silly and perhaps superficial, but fun. One does not (for example) join an audience for…
My idea of a true Conservative
The hubbub about Boris Johnson is blocking the view. He is, of course, an easy and undemanding topic of conversation.…
There will be no price cap on ‘basic items’
Sometimes it’s the little things that depress most. I groaned last week to hear the news item. The government is…
Could Derbyshire survive on its own?
Since at least the beginning of this century there has been a mood abroad – cultural as well as political…
Looking without seeing
Guadix is a windy, dusty town on the slopes of the dry side of the massive ridge that is the…
Cross purposes
On Easter Saturday, I wrote for the Times about the victimhood of Christ, describing this as a regrettable foundation for…
My messiah complex
In June 1999, I described on this page jameitos, tiny, blind, albino crabs on the sea bottom in a cave…
A day in a small town in the Andes
In the language of the Mapuche people of Patagonia, futa (I’m told) means ‘river’ and leufú means ‘big’. So Spanish–speaking…
Why ‘safe routes’ to asylum can’t work
I have never met Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, but I have not the least doubt…
Death, beauty, and the writing of a will
Perhaps there’s a German word – for there’s no English one – for that alloy of liberation with melancholy that…
Britain needs a tremendous shock
Fifty years ago I was hitchhiking down the Eastern Seaboard towards Miami overnight. It was midwinter, icy and way, way…
After the war in Ukraine
I awoke in the small hours last week and began worrying about the Ukraine war. A friend had earlier taken…
The clippings and sweepings of Soviet history
Topiary is the art of making something be something it wasn’t. This is achieved by subtraction. By clipping away everything…
And the moral of the story is…
From time to time newspapers invite writers to describe the ‘books that changed my life’. The resulting columns too often…
The truth we dare not speak
Though it was sensible for Lady Susan Hussey to resign, I do find the chorus of disapproval that has greeted…
‘We’ can’t know how the very poorest live
I’ve been conducting a straw poll. Using incidental encounters with people who don’t follow politics closely, I’m learning what ordinary…
We’ve lost interest in our dependencies
Let nobody say Liz Truss achieved nothing in her mayfly days at Downing Street. She gave away the vast British…
