Robert Jenrick is wrong about the culture wars
To some people, the culture wars don’t matter. They are an irrelevance, an indulgence. A distraction from the material, bread-and-butter…
Labour’s puritanical attack on vaping
On Times Radio this morning Lucy Powell, Leader of the House of Commons, said that she wanted the government to…
The culture wars are far from over
It’s only been a month since the new Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, declared that the ‘era of culture wars is…
We’ve forgotten how to say ‘no’
It has been widely observed that we live in a society marked by cancellation, censorship and cowardice in the face…
How to tell the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia
With England playing Slovakia in the Euros later today, there’s absolutely no excuse this time for Anglophones to confuse this…
Let’s take no lectures from Emma Thompson on the climate
The actors are out in force again, speaking politics. Only days after Brian Cox appeared on the BBC bemoaning that…
How a dead French poet helped the Allies to victory on D-Day
D Day, 6 June, 1944, saw put into action one of the most unlikely alliances in the history of warfare:…
Gary Lineker and the problem with celebrity boycotts
One of the country’s most cherished footballers, and one of its most irritating right-on social media commentators, Gary Lineker, has…
Why we need the word ‘woke’
Has the word ‘woke’ become a lazy, all-too-common cliché? The novelist and Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver thinks so. During an appearance at…
Why is it acceptable to mock the working class?
You may laugh. You may have gasped in disbelief. But yes, it’s true, we now have a new socio-economic classification,…
The delusion of the pro-Palestinian campus protestors
Much has been made in recent weeks, and especially in recent days, about the degrees of ignorance often displayed by…
Did Stephen Fry join the Garrick by mistake?
The battle over sexism and equality at the Garrick Club continues to rumble on. It was revealed yesterday that several of its members, including Stephen Fry, Sting,…
Why the smoking ban exposes the ‘right side of history’ delusion
As a conservative non-smoker who in his youth was a libertarian twenty-a-day man, I can see both sides of the…
Why is the civil service being given lessons on ‘microaggressions’?
Civil servants are being given lessons instructing them not to roll their eyes or look at their mobile phones while…
Why do the French struggle to speak English?
Why are the French so bad at learning foreign languages? Yes, you read that right. This isn’t a lament as…
Is the business world sane again?
There are signs that woke capitalism is on the way out. Unilever, purveyor of the most right-on brand of the…
The problem with the word ‘problematic’
There have been groans of derision following the proclamation by the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cotterell, that the opening lines…
Trans ideology and the triumph of feelings over fact
Most people who have been following the controversy over Kathleen Stock’s speech at the Oxford Union, and who have been…
Let’s stop pretending the culture wars aren’t real
Are the culture wars real? Some assume that they’re an imaginary affair, or, at best, a distraction from the real,…
Can under-25s be trusted?
The government’s proposal to overhaul and tighten betting laws, ostensibly to target problem gamblers, has understandably raised concerns about government…
Will eco-activists disrupt the London Marathon?
Ever since Monty Python created their internecine, bickering and ridiculous groups of freedom fighters – the People’s Front of Judea and the…
The BBC is axing its panel shows. It only has itself to blame
The veteran BBC show Have I Got News for You is ‘due to become BBC television’s only satirical comedy show’. This is the…
Don't grass on your neighbour if they break the hosepipe ban
There’s nothing worse than a grass. Or so goes the wisdom expressed in soap operas like EastEnders. Of course, there…
The BBC's gender equality project has come unstuck
The BBC’s 50:50 project is designed to empower women. One of its targets is to ensure that half of the contributors…
A cultural boycott of Russia plays into Putin's hands
Has the cultural boycott of Russia gone too far? Events at an Italian university this week, where writer Paolo Nori…
