Columns
The battle for the Tory party’s soul
When news broke over the weekend that former minister Nick Gibb had become the 14th Tory MP to publicly call…
Nicola Sturgeon’s last laugh
I was delighted to discover that the University of Bristol has been advising students how to address those who identify…
Crisis? What crisis?
When a political party is hit by a crisis, the tendency these days is for both the politicians and their…
Rishi has a horrible task ahead
Whether Rishi Sunak is prime minister or still chancellor this spring, fate is handing him a poisoned chalice. Looking back,…
Oh ambassador, you’re spoiling us
I know the following sentence is going to get me into trouble. Still, there are times when you wonder whether…
Biden’s obnoxious promise
In lauding Joe Biden’s promise to fill the upcoming vacancy on the US Supreme Court with a black woman, last…
Boris’s existential drift
Tory MPs only have one topic of conversation: the fate of Boris Johnson. They huddle together in offices in Portcullis…
Get out of my way, Lycra warriors
I know that all must have prizes in the Victimisation Olympics these days, but when I heard a bicycle-rider on…
The blame games are about to begin
‘The main job of a government is to ensure that the economics don’t go wrong.’ So argued an economist friend…
The freedom to be wrong
I must offer my support to Luke Main and Dr Joanna Brunker, who as a consequence of their fervent Christian…
Mutiny on the Bounty
‘I can’t put into words how awful this is’ remarks one Tory MP. The party is split not on the…
Meat of the matter
Are you ready for ‘Operation Red Meat’? If not, then you should brace yourself. For it looks set to be…
Looking back in anger
What Keir Starmer should have said, but didn’t, was that he had indeed drunk some beer in a frowsy Labour…
The good side of guilt
I do not know anyone in the Sackler family. I wouldn’t even have heard of them were it not for…
Someone should tell Biden it’s not 1965
We can’t blame American progressives for yearning to relive the civil rights movement. Those were heady days. Opposition to segregation…
Why I don’t walk under ladders
Well, I did warn you. As I typed my column last week on the imminent end of Covid I said…
The truth about that No. 10 party
People seem surprised and a little doubting that the Prime Minister is incapable of remembering if he attended a party…
Work in progress
If I could lift one thing from younger generations, unpeel one idea from their anxious minds, it would be the…
After Boris, who?
Even Boris Johnson’s longest-standing supporters now think he might be on the way out. His admission that he attended a Downing…
How to wrongfoot an anti-vaxer
The headline looked promising: ‘How to argue with a Covid anti-vaxxer.’ And, yes, a Times colleague had put together a…
The end is always nigh
Typically for my generation, I woke repeatedly as a kid with my pyjamas soaked in sweat because I’d had yet…
I’m calling it – Covid is over
If anyone had any doubts about the wisdom of tempting fate then they probably haven’t considered the case of Betty…
A barking approach
We are considering privatising or selling off our dog, Jessie. She seemed a rather wonderful idea when we got her…
What Boris needs to survive
In recent years, the notion of cabinet government has been a polite fiction. In theory, the prime minister is merely…
History is less clear as you are living through it
I was recently reading the works of the 17th-century antiquary John Aubrey, who at one point mentions a ghost craze…
