Columns
Can Boris beat the vaccine passport rebels?
No prime minister wants to be dependent on the opposition to get the government’s business through the House of Commons.…
Why fear a society that’s tearing itself apart?
In my teens, rubbishing the implacable edifice of the United States felt like kicking a tank in trainers. Richard Nixon’s…
Vaccine passports are a ticket to freedom
In principle I’m in favour of vaccination passports, and don’t understand how — again in principle — anyone could be…
The dilemma of vaccination
We have a government which is basically libertarian in its instincts, despite its current affection for telling us what we…
Why will nobody publish my religious cartoons?
I am having very little success in getting my collection of cartoons of great religious founders published. Perhaps it is…
In defence of Flannery O’Connor
I have a thought for the students of Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland: this Easter, why not resurrect Flannery O’Connor?…
Want to see your friends? Call it a protest
I wonder exactly when we agreed that it is more of a priority to gather with strangers than to meet…
The sad decline of Britain’s buses
‘If anybody can write an interesting column about buses, Matthew,’ the then comment editor on the Times told me decades…
How to make the facts fit the narrative
Distracted by vaccine warfare, for once the British haven’t leapt onto America’s latest bandwagon of fake self-excoriation. Following last week’s…
My eight ‘good reasons’ for leaving the country
We commemorated one year of lockdown by sacrificing a goat to the Highly Revered Virus Deity on a hastily assembled…
Sturgeon fights on – but at what cost?
A year ago this week Alex Salmond was acquitted on all 13 charges in his sexual assault trial. In normal…
The Church of England’s new religion
With a heavy heart I must return once more to the subject of the Church of England. I recognise that…
The politicisation of Sarah Everard’s death
A woman called Jenny Jones, now elevated to Baroness Moonbeam, or something, in the House of Lords has proposed a…
Europe’s reckless caution over AstraZeneca
The first smear campaign against AstraZeneca, when Emmanuel Macron falsely claimed at the start of the year that the jab…
How to kill the English language
Probably, most of you will have only the dimmest idea what a ‘fronted adverbial’ is. I used one in the…
The West has lost its moral high ground
International travellers running the gauntlet of English airports must already test negative for Covid before the flight, and on return…
Why Elon Musk should fly me to the moon
I have just applied to fly around the moon. My chances of being selected are slim, but is it impossible?…
‘My’ truth about Meghan and Harry
Caroline Rose Giuliani, the daughter of the former mayor of New York, Rudy, has been talking to the press about…
Is Sturgeon losing support for Scottish independence?
Every politician likes to say that they don’t pay attention to opinion polls. In my experience, this is almost universally…
The war on cars is backfiring
For most London-based politicians, there’s a threat that’s worse than Covid. You’ll begin to notice it as we ease out…
The real reasons children are going hungry
‘We’re idiots, babe, it’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves.’ I listened to The Food Programme on Radio 4…
What Rishi Sunak could learn from the vaccine rollout
Barely a year has passed since Rishi Sunak’s first Budget. Its centrepiece was a £30 billion stimulus designed to calm…
There is no justification for supporting the IRA
Roy Greenslade held a number of prominent positions in Fleet Street over the course of a long career. But he…
Beware the linguistic Trojan horse
It’s the bane of many an author these days: those newspaper-filler Q&As. One I recently filled out included the question:…
The 31 inventions that Britain really needs
‘Get Brexit done, then Arpa’ read Dominic Cummings’s WhatsApp profile. Arpa was what’s now the American Defense Advanced Research Projects…
Editor’s picks
Most Popular
- Read
- Read
