The strange cult of Shabana Mahmood
Is Shabana Mahmood ‘one of the best Conservative Home Secretaries we have ever had’? Tory MP Edward Leigh thinks so.…
What would Katie Lam’s defection to Reform mean for the Tories?
Fresh from chastising Labour for not involving Britain more deeply in another American misadventure in the Middle East, Kemi Badenoch…
What Poilievre can (and can’t) teach the British Right
Over the last week, I have been stalking Pierre Poilievre. The leader of the Canadian Conservative Party has been in…
Why I fell in love with Welsh nationalism
Being a mildly Celtophobic Tory from Metro-Land, I’m an unlikely Welsh nationalist. Aside from once sharing a Christmas dinner with…
Badenoch’s integration speech is too little, too late
If Kemi Badenoch makes a speech during a war with Iran, does anyone hear it? Following the Gorton and Denton…
‘It was making me think like a Latin American dictator’: why my moustache had to go
Iloved my moustache. Unfortunately, my fondness for it seemed inversely proportionate to its popularity among my peers. After much unsolicited…
What Labour should have learnt from Dominic Cummings
‘O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?’ Keir Starmer seems to have mirrored Juliet after deciding to move on Chris Wormald on as Cabinet…
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…
