Columnists
Does Sadiq Khan approve of colonising?
How to report Iran? It is a huge story. Perhaps as many as 30,000 people were recently murdered there by…
Don’t underestimate the ‘stop Farage’ alliance
So Thursday came and Oxford went to the polls And made its coward vote and the streets resounded To the…
The thinking behind Nigel Farage’s shadow cabinet
There is an old joke about Nigel Farage, put about by former colleagues. ‘Why is Nigel like a beech tree?……
Britain’s right is falling into the same trap as the left
As I have suggested here before, there are few joys in life equal to that of watching the left fall…
What would Kenneth Williams make of our age?
Sunday marks what would have been the 100th birthday of Kenneth Williams. It’s tempting to try to imagine what he…
Is it last orders for BrewDog?
‘Nostalgia is not a strategy,’ declared Schroders chief executive Richard Oldfield after announcing that the investment firm, descended from a…
To understand pure stupidity, watch The News Agents
There have been numerous surveys over the years intended to prove that conservatives are more stupid than liberals and vice…
How Keir Starmer might still hang on
A government minister and I dined just after the fiasco of the 2017 general election, with Theresa May clinging to…
‘We know where the bodies are buried’: How Kemi put Keir on the ropes
What does a dying government sound like? At 12.08 p.m. on 4 February we got an answer. Keir Starmer admitted…
British politics has become a Devil’s Wheel
There is a moment in Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall which has been much on my mind lately. It is…
Who doesn’t want a better life?
Every couple of years a columnist-cum-novelist will inevitably stoop to shameless self-promotion. In my defence, at least the novel released…
The stakeholder class needs blowing up
In February 1974, a frustrated Ted Heath, unable to achieve anything in government against constant opposition by the mighty trade…
Japan’s female leader is a bright beacon, but do her sums add up?
My scepticism towards soaring markets with unconvincing fundamentals was nurtured by working in Tokyo in the mid-1980s, when the Nikkei…
I was right about Peter Mandelson
A fight between Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson? A difficult one to call, really. Like a war between Pakistan and…
The British should have their holy places
I think by now most of us can spot a double standard when we see one. So let me try…
‘It’ll be a photo finish’: inside the Gorton and Denton by-election
British by-elections are often prolonged affairs, dragging on for months. Yet in the Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton –…
Why did Peter Mandelson want Jeffrey Epstein to read my column?
Last Saturday, a friend in Washington emailed to say he had been studying some of the latest 3.5 million pages…
What Catholics get wrong about assisted dying
The Catholic Church has always been remarkably relaxed about sin. It becomes distinctly jumpy, however, when it encounters any challenge…
The role of ABBA in the Ajax fiasco
‘It’s all about ABBA,’ a military acquaintance whispered when I mentioned the scandal of the British Army’s order of 589…
I decluttered a 1990s time capsule – and this is what I learnt
After my grandmother died a few years ago, we couldn’t bring ourselves to get rid of most of her possessions.…
Why won’t the BBC use the word ‘Jews’?
I was intrigued to learn from the BBC Today programme on Tuesday that ‘buildings across the UK will be illuminated…
What is ‘Starmerism’?
If Keir Starmer didn’t already understand Harold Macmillan’s warning about ‘events, dear boy, events’, he got a lesson on Saturday.…
Nigel Farage is not infallible
In our online edition, Danny Kruger, who is a dear man and my former employee, attacks our editor, Daniel Finkelstein…
No one is safe from a wealth tax
No matter how many jurisdictions discover the hard way that wealth taxes backfire, in California an initiative is collecting signatures…
The censors are winning
They say you should never meet your heroes, a rule that is not always correct. But I did have a…
