Heaven is an Airfix Spitfire
Last weekend, I sat in my kitchen to build and paint an Airfix model. I’d experimented before with mindful colouring…
Iran’s cheerleaders are on borrowed time
Predictions ageing poorly is an occupational hazard for journalists and commentators. But few have gone as sour as those made…
Why does anyone still take Rory Stewart seriously?
As per J. M. Barrie, one either believes in fairies, or they don’t. I take a similar approach to Rory…
In defence of the Freemasons
It’s a personal delight that on 29 September 1829, the first day of Robert Peel’s new force, the first warrant…
Has Badenoch bounced back?
Much like Alan Partridge, Kemi Badenoch hopes to have bounced back. After an unsure start to her first year as…
Why are we so suspicious of magpies?
I started counting magpies during my brief, doomed time as a history teacher. Trudging in every morning, the grim prospect…
My teenage brush with a micropenis
Like Adolf Hitler, I have been involved in a Channel 4 documentary about penises. I also share a love for…
The Tories must free themselves from the cult of Thatcher
Like every Tory Boy, I had a Margaret Thatcher poster. I put it up when I was 15 and had…
The lunacy of emotional support animals
Naturally, the start of the new school year is often stressful for pupils. Perhaps those anxious children returning to their…
Farage: Scrap the fracking ban and bomb Iran
Would a Reform government lift the ban on fracking? ‘Abso-bloody-lutely,’ is Nigel Farage’s answer. Fracking and nuclear will form the…
Dominic Cummings has run out of answers
On Wednesday, The Spectator dispatched me to Dominic Cummings’s Pharos lecture in Oxford. Packed into the Sheldonian theatre was an…
The conservatism of Thomas the Tank Engine
Ringo Starr is mostly known as the second or third best drummer in the Beatles. But for me – as…
Tory MPs are forgetting Britain
After the next election, Bob Blackman’s role as chair of the 1922 Committee should be much easier. With the Conservative…
Are the Tories mad enough to bring back Boris Johnson?
The Conservative Party is not an imaginative organisation. The clue is in the name. In response to an electoral disaster…
Badenoch is leading the Tories off a cliff
It’s always sad to discover that one of your favourite quotations was made up. After communism’s fall, Robert Conquest’s American…
Where might Reform and the Lib Dems hurt the Tories at the local elections?
Kemi Badenoch faces her first big electoral test in this week’s local elections. The Conservative party has much to lose.…
What Vance understands about Suez
As with so many of the aphorisms and witticisms attributed to Winston Churchill, it is impossible to verify whether the…
Amanda Spielman’s peerage is richly deserved
Amanda Spielman, former Ofsted chief inspector, is set to become a Conservative peer. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is elevating Spielman…
Cambridge must stop whining about the Boat Race rule changes
At some point in every sensitive young Oxonian’s life he admits that he should have gone to Cambridge. Since graduating…
Badenoch must explain why the Tories deserve power
Kemi Badenoch’s victory was not overwhelming. Her margin of victory was smaller than of any of her Tory predecessors since…
Is Kemi Badenoch scared of Robert Jenrick?
Is Kemi Badenoch running scared? It’s not an accusation often levelled at the shadow housing secretary, who is usually criticised…
Why Priti Patel will struggle to win the trust of Tory members
Jonathan Gullis is a happy man. ‘Good news!’ the ex-Tory MP for Stoke-on-Trent North wrote following reports that Priti Patel,…
London’s nightlife is getting even more embarrassing
In the end, there was little reason why England fans might have wanted to hang around after yesterday’s Euros final,…
Rishi Sunak should do the honourable thing – and stay put
A record number of cabinet ministers gone. A wipeout in Wales. Only 22 per cent of the vote, with Reform…
The Tories don’t deserve my vote – but they’ll still get it
Sometimes I feel like the only person in Britain who is intending to vote Conservative. I know this can’t be…
