Columnists
Yes, Jay Powell is the compromise candidate for the Federal Reserve – but not a bad one at that
Perhaps we should be relieved that Donald Trump has made a dull appointment to succeed Janet Yellen as chairman of…
Women used to forgive men their defects, but the quality of mercy is under strain
Poor Gordon Brown. He embodies the problem traditionally associated with being male, which is that our sex finds it difficult…
What to do about the returning jihadis
In normal times, the reported return of 400 Isis fighters to Britain would be the biggest story out there. But…
It’s not victim shaming to suggest there might be two sides to every story
Somewhere towards the end of the 1980s I was suddenly promoted three grades upwards in my job at the BBC;…
When did fiction become so dangerous?
The assignment of books for review has always been haphazard. Fellow fiction writers can be tempted either to undermine the…
Ignore the Twitter cry-bully brigade – on social media, you reap what you sow
The nastiest person on Twitter has quit Twitter. Because I’m so generous I shan’t mention his name. All I’ll say…
The City needs to make new friends but is becoming pals with Putin a step too far?
In connection with the receding possibility of a London Stock Exchange listing for Saudi Aramco, I wrote that the City…
The Spectator’s notes
Theresa May’s style of negotiating with the European Union is coming spookily to resemble David Cameron’s. She is in the…
Up the Zambezi: why Rio Tinto’s colossal coal cock-up is going to court
Another week, another blue-chip in the dock. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has brought fraud charges against London-based mining…
Hammond can build his way out of trouble
Sometimes in life the biggest risk you can take is to play it safe. This is the predicament of Philip…
Go naked on the green mountain
The Japanese take a near-obsessive delight in washing, particularly in natural thermal baths
Brexit can strengthen the Union
There will be no chance of the United Kingdom making a success of Brexit if Scotland votes to break up…
The young oppress their future selves
Matt Ridley’s fine recent Times column was hardly the first to raise the alarm about the pseudo-Soviet intolerance of the…
Are we really half a trillion poorer? No, but we’re not pulling in investors like we used to
How did we mislay half a trillion pounds? Revised data from the Office for National Statistics has just reduced the…
The Spectator’s Notes
‘Persecuted and Forgotten?’ is the name of the latest report by Aid to the Church in Need. Unfortunately, there is…
The bank that keeps poor nations poor
What is the point of the World Bank? You probably think of it, if at all, as a benign institution,…
That idiot Trump has got one thing right
I have been watching Donald Trump closely for more than a year and I have come to the considered opinion…
Calling Paddock a ‘lone wolf’ isn’t racist
It’s been nearly two weeks since Stephen Paddock committed mass murder in Las Vegas and the FBI is still casting…
Why May must stay
As from the Manchester conference hall I watched Theresa May’s big moment falling apart, as I buried my head in…
Bombardier says more about aircraft makers’ dirty tricks than the future of UK-US trade
‘Bombardier exposes post-Brexit realities’ was the FT’s headline after the Trump administration imposed a 300 per cent tariff on sales…
The Spectator’s notes
The Catalan nationalists surely chose this October deliberately for their attempt, now faltering, at UDI. It is the centenary of…
The plots thicken
‘Worst week ever’ is one of those phrases that journalists are, perhaps, too quick to use. Alastair Campbell once quipped…
Blame the grown-ups for the safe-space tribe
A car driver ploughs into a bunch of people outside the Natural History Museum in London and lefties are furious…
Monarch was an airline from an earlier era – but were its owners to blame for its demise?
Monarch Airlines was the ghost of an earlier age of holiday travel. When I used to see its planes lined…
If only the Tories understood economics
‘I don’t think I’m quite as Austrian as you are,’ a Tory minister said to me the other day. And…
