Columns
In defence of fairy tales
One by one, life’s harmless little pleasures are outlawed by an overweening, repressive government. The Online Safety Bill has been…
I was wrong about the CCP
I’ve always loved the Chinese national anthem. I used to think I was the loudest Communist Youth League pioneer as…
Fifa has scored a spectacular own goal
Unlike some fair-weather fans I maintain a fairly constant interest in the workings of Fifa. Not because I especially care…
Why Starmer’s going after the Lords
It’s not just the government that’s now beholden to forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility. Keir Starmer told the…
The truth about the World Cup
You have to admire their bravery, don’t you? The stoicism with which they put up a fight in the name…
‘We’ can’t know how the very poorest live
I’ve been conducting a straw poll. Using incidental encounters with people who don’t follow politics closely, I’m learning what ordinary…
Should the better-off pay more for everything?
Once the energy price cap expires in April, the Chancellor is apparently considering the levy of ‘social tariffs’ on the…
The contours of the next election have been set
Since the 2008 financial crash, British politics has been moving faster and faster, and becoming less stable. This frenzy reached…
A course in Rod Liddle studies
As someone who has always had a grotesquely inflated sense of his own importance, my experience speaking at Durham University…
There’s nothing magic about magic mushrooms
For about six straight hours after taking magic mushrooms – psilocybin – I had visions of a vast, skeletal shark…
The delicious fall of Sam Bankman-Fried
Dame Edna Everage says one of life’s most precious gifts is the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others.…
Advertising’s false picture
An advert for jobs in the prison service has fallen foul of the Advertising Standards Authority because it portrays an…
Kamala’s blagging it
We throw around pejoratives such as ‘Idiot!’ a bit too carelessly, because then when we need to flag up genuinely…
What Liz Truss got right
Soon after Kwasi Kwarteng’s not-so-mini-Budget, I found myself in conversation with former aides to David Cameron and Boris Johnson respectively.…
We’ve lost interest in our dependencies
Let nobody say Liz Truss achieved nothing in her mayfly days at Downing Street. She gave away the vast British…
The weaponisation of ‘bullying’
Bullying appears to be suffering from inflation, like everything else. Certainly as an art form it seems to be in…
How to balance immigration and jobs
Immigration is now at the top of the political agenda in a way that it hasn’t been since the vote…
Cutting the links with reality
It was a difficult one for the BBC, but they got through it. The problem was this: how to do…
In defence of Elon Musk
I know a man who plans to burn an effigy of Elon Musk on his bonfire on 5 November. Musk…
The negligence of ‘not in my lifetime’
It is sometimes said, correctly, that conservatism is more an attitude than an ideology. And for me there have always…
Will the Tory truce hold?
During the summer leadership race between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, Sunak’s team were braced for a bloodbath if he…
Money is rotting
Punters and pundits alike reacted to rising mortgage rates in the wake of Truss’s mini-Budget with indignant horror. Leaving aside…
What everyone knows but no one says about Brexit
Theresa May’s premiership is now a memory. Boris Johnson’s time in office assumes the status of a rather brief, if…
The West’s uncivilised euthanasia policy
So much is happening on the surface at the moment that it can be difficult to notice certain undercurrents. Since…
Why I won’t be watching Qatar’s World Cup
The pop-up ad I get most frequently these days is David Beckham’s promotional video for the Islamic sandpit of Qatar,…
