Columns
Reform vs Labour: who’ll win the battle for the north?
When MPs and peers were recalled to parliament for an emergency debate on renationalising British Steel, one man was the…
Why were the Abedis here in the first place?
In recent days parliament has been recalled on a Saturday to debate the renationalisation of the British steel industry. Then,…
The biggest threat to Trump is Trump
Although Republicans and Democrats have few things in common, there’s one American universal: we don’t like when you mess with…
Where the young rich flee to
If Elon Musk gets his way, and Mars becomes our newest New World, I had always assumed that the people…
How Starmer plans to weather Trump’s storm
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Keir Starmer has struggled to set the agenda. The latest attempt came…
The secret to great friendships
A few years back, a friend from Newcastle was down in London and I was giving him a tour of…
The lunacy of Gillian Mackay’s abortion bill
I had spent my life so far in blissful ignorance of a woman called Gillian Mackay. I mean, I knew…
What if Trump is just bonkers?
‘I wonder what he meant by that,’ King Louis Philippe of France supposedly remarked on the death of the conspiratorial…
How to find your perfect man
My late parents perpetually promoted their marriage as the best in the history of the universe. Because this cult of…
Who should get the credit for the climbdown on two-tier sentencing?
In Westminster, politics is often a zero-sum game. There is a winner and a loser. But this week, two politicians…
Who’s in charge here?
I heard the self-important whine of a police siren so pulled back the curtains a little to see what was…
The hypocrisy of the Heathrow Nimbys
Some readers may have noticed that it takes rather a long time to get anything done in Britain these days.…
Americans are right to hate us
In an Appalachian high school, the kids were set the task of writing about Europeans as part of their history…
Labour’s popularity contest
A few months ago, over a plate of bone marrow, a Tory adviser was considering how best to kneecap Labour.…
America is a moral idea or it is nothing
Harold Wilson once declared that the Labour party ‘is a moral crusade or it is nothing’, a proposition whose logical…
JFK conspiracy theories won’t die
One of the most controversial things that can happen at any American table is to start talking about the JFK…
The Met’s misogyny
My friend Rose likes a drink. She lives on the same street as another friend in Camden and three or…
Don’t write off literary fiction yet
I don’t intend to start a feud. Most of Sean Thomas’s essay on The Spectator’s website last week, titled ‘Good…
The shape-shifting Labour party
It is difficult to gauge who is the more discombobulated by the Labour government’s recent Damascene conversion to a political…
Inside Team Kemi’s plan for power
In elections, as in wine, lesser years can still produce good vintages. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown first won their…
Something is rotten in Stratford-upon-Avon
Almost every nation has a national poet. The Russians have Pushkin. The Persians have Ferdowsi. The Albanians have Gjergj Fishta.…
The cat that tamed Dom
I don’t like cats. I don’t like their reptilian stealth, or the way their heads are set low and poke…
Why Nigel should listen to Rupert
I was thinking lately of Robert Kilroy-Silk. For younger readers, and people who were never students or unemployed, a quick…
How to reform Reform
In early June last year I had a reasonably agreeable meal with a bunch of Reform UK activists at a…
Starmer’s tribes are at war
Labour MPs these days are experiencing whiplash. When in opposition, the party attacked the Tories’ proposed benefits cuts for ‘effectively…
