Columns
Politics is on pause
Politics is in suspended animation. The only proceedings in parliament are the tens of thousands of mourners moving through Westminster…
Not all Americans are so crass
In the face of American snark about the Queen’s death, many a British newspaper reader was disgusted. With bad tidings…
The BBC’s new direction
I am becoming terribly worried about the people of Sunderland with regard to how they will cope in this coming…
Kill badgers to save hedgehogs
Until last month I hadn’t seen a hedgehog for close to 30 years, though they were part of everyday life…
Truss’s Downing Street refit
How 10 Downing Street works – or doesn’t – always reflects the character of the prime minister who inhabits it.…
The diversity myth
‘Great offices of state set to contain no white men’ was the way one national newspaper reported the formation of…
Why didn’t more people resist lockdown?
Last week’s Spectator interview with Rishi Sunak conveyed the anti-science ‘science’, the paucity of even fag-packet cost-benefit analysis and the…
After Boris
Boris Johnson has so dominated politics for the past few years that it is hard to imagine things without him.…
It’s time for some home truths, Rishi
I wonder how many people in the country are bitterly disappointed that Liz Truss pulled out of her exciting one-to-one…
What Macron wants
When Liz Truss said ‘the jury’s out’ on whether France was a ‘friend or foe’, Emmanuel Macron publicly corrected her:…
The changing shade of the Greens
How pleasant it is to watch an idea fall apart. Especially when it is an idea held by people you…
I’d be the perfect communist shill
Could I be the model communist shill? Consider these facts: I was born and raised in China. I speak and…
Salman Rushdie and a question of power
Whenever a terrorist attack occurs, like the recent attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie, our society falls into the usual platitudes.…
How to run a school
Taking a short break from persecuting Roman Catholic faith schools for ideological reasons, Ofsted has stuck the boot into the…
Who will Liz forgive?
Liz Truss has always been more popular with Tory party members than with Tory politicians. The moment of greatest peril…
The shameful truth: terrorism works
This is a bleak version of looking on the bright side, but what’s astonishing about last week’s vicious stabbing in…
The Truss challenge
‘Whatever else you do, don’t step backwards,’ a man in the crowd shouts to Rishi Sunak as he stands on…
The dangers of vegetarianism
I do not doubt that hot weather occasioned by climate change is the primary cause of the many wildfires we…
What art will represent us?
It glows. The whole painting glows. Glows not just with the way the light from a fire unseen beyond the…
The corporatisation of kindness
In those moments when I most fear that the West is on the skids, I find it helps to make…
A price to pay
I was intrigued to learn from Tom Daley – that young man who became famous for jumping off a platform…
Will the lights go off this winter?
Between 1992 and 2002, the UK experienced a period of benign economic growth. Known as the Nice (non-inflationary constant expansion)…
An exercise in futility
It’s possible that I owe Joe Biden some sort of an apology, however mealy-mouthed it might be. Last week I…
The problem with Liz Truss’s ‘momentum’
‘Truss’s campaign to be Britain’s next prime minister,’ wrote one political commentator this week, ‘seems to have unstoppable momentum. She…
Good riddance to the Tavistock
Most push notifications that pop up on my tablet concern impending catastrophe. But last week, one newsflash made my day.…
