My love for black and white birds
All my life I have been obsessed by black and white birds. Magpies are my tormentors, my morning omens of…
Will the Tories win the Aberdeen South by-election?
For all of the squabbling between Reform and Restore, the Right’s best chance at a by-election win on 18 June…
‘Do you know the local MP?’ ‘Aye, she runs the sauna’; my Shetland dispatch
The Shetland Islands The SNP have had better weeks. It’s strange to think that it was only this month that…
Make the fez great again
Ireturned from a recent holiday to Morocco with three mementos: a bright red pair of swimming trunks (teenager-sized; the largest…
Badenoch is the perfect Tory leader
Plenty of narratives can be pulled out of last Thursday’s elections. Labour’s shattered hold over its Northern and Welsh heartlands;…
Why Starmer must stay
I have little interest in what Keir Starmer will say in the Commons later today. I’ve only been in political…
Is time up for Viktor Orban?
For a country of ten million people that spent most of the 20th century occupied and impoverished, Hungary today is…
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…
