Columns
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…
In defence of Piers Morgan
The Liberal Democrat party’s foreign affairs spokesgoblin, Velma from Scooby-Doo — or ‘Layla Moran’ as she is known to close…
What will life look like after 21 June?
‘Alas’ is a word used many times by Boris Johnson during the pandemic. It is how he prefaces announcements that…
Where will vaccine passports take us?
Desperate to find someone to commemorate with a statue for having done great things, but who isn’t a white male,…
The case for immunity passports
For more than 20 years, I’ve been raging away at pointless rules. When my blood’s up, there’s not a foam-flecked…
Will freedom always be just over the horizon?
We should talk about horizons, and the setting of desirable ones. A newspaper gave it a go the other day…
It is time to make friends with the EU
On Monday morning, Clément Beaune, Emmanuel Macron’s Europe Minister, clipped out the section of his media interview criticising Britain’s vaccination…
I’m living in a country that won’t let me out
Anyone who’s been through customs Down Under isn’t surprised by the region’s OTT response to Covid. Having been X-rayed before…
Facts are now history
Your quiz for the week is to make the connection between the following people: fun-loving Greek hack Homer, veteran US…
The Northern Ireland protocol problem
Ursula von der Leyen now admits that she overreacted in the EU’s vaccine row with the UK. She has spoken…
The sticky truth about Navalny
His courage is exhilarating. Even if you think his cause hopeless, Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and Putin-baiter, deserves…
The importance of daydreams
I miss daydreaming. It’s a small problem to have in a pandemic, but it nags at me. Laptop, cooker, home-school,…
The disconnect of Davos Man
You may have missed Ursula von der Leyen’s big speech at Davos last week. Most people did. Perhaps because Davos…
