Columns
Leave the countryside alone
I used to volunteer at a wildlife sanctuary, counting sheep and goats on an agreeable patch of chalk downland in…
The ADHD racket
In 1620, in the Staffordshire market town of Bilston, a teenage boy decided he didn’t much fancy going to school.…
Angela Rayner and the spite of Labour
As a snapshot of our country, you’ll be pressed to find anything quite so resonant as the one which depicts…
The wrong kind of flag-raising
At the end of Sky News’s coverage of last year’s Notting Hill Carnival, its correspondent recited the usual list of…
The left’s fightback against Labour has begun
If there is a hallmark of Keir Starmer’s leadership, it is a willingness to bash the left. For five years,…
The oppression of Sally Rooney
Almost a decade ago the Irish academic Liam Kennedy published a tremendous book with the title Unhappy the Land: the…
When national flags are a warning sign
I don’t quite see the point of flying Union flags in Tower Hamlets, or complaining about it when the council…
Nigel Farage is banking on a political sea change
Nigel Farage is adept at riding the currents of British politics. When he named Reform after the Canadian party in…
My shoplifting shame
On reflection, a tradition of shelving many desirable goods within ready reach is extraordinary – especially because the premises in…
Of course shoplifters are scumbags
A familiar cliché, which in history has been disproved time and again, is that a police force cannot operate without…
Clive of India must not fall
The only MP I have ever really wanted to marry is Thangam Debbonaire. The former Labour MP for Bristol West…
Give J.D. Vance a glimpse of real Britain
We’re used to strange sights in north Oxfordshire. The first person I ever met in our small Cotswolds town was…
Has Zelensky become a liability?
Is Volodymyr Zelensky becoming a liability for the West and for his own country? We are entitled at least to…
The lies of the land
You can gauge the fragility of an ideology by the blind fury with which it reacts to questioning. So it…
My victory over Mohammed Hijab
One of the occupational hazards of being a journalist is being hounded by litigants. Indeed, one of the reasons why…
Haircuts are a human right!
During the immigration deluge in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seems one Afghan and one Indian national…
The return of Russiagate
In June, Tulsi Gabbard found herself in a difficult position. As a dovish Iraq war veteran who happens to be…
Could Danny Kruger save the Conservatives?
I’ve seen signs of life in the Conservative party – unlikely I know, but true. I had thought it a…
What it means to be English
How can you ever put your finger on the comfort, the joy, the absurdity, of being English? Not, perhaps, through…
Britain shouldn’t put up with Donald Trump
History is the march of folly and far too many of my countrymen are hearkening to a drumbeat which would…
Israel has gone too far
If any other country in the Middle East had behaved as monstrously as Israel has in recent weeks, the jets…
How to handle the Wagner problem
There are deep ructions across Europe, as in Britain. All come down to the same thing. The societies in question…
The High Court’s war on truth
In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty-Dumpty tells Alice: ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose…
MAGA, Epstein and the paedo files
Bill Clinton published another memoir last year, entitled Citizen, and I take it that everyone read the book the minute…
Raise the age of suffrage to 25
If I had been given the vote at the age of 16, I would have put my cross beside the…
