Columnists
How Pete Burns helped to create our fatuous modern world
So RIP Pete Burns, transgendered Scouse popstar. His indescribably awful song ‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’ — clever…
The Spectator’s Notes
World leaders are preoccupied nowadays with what is known as their ‘legacy’. In practice, this means being linked with moral-sounding…
Despite what Big Bang destroyed, there’s still nowhere quite like the City
As the 30th anniversary of Big Bang loomed, I found myself back at the scene of my City demise. Ebbgate…
Free speech and the right not to bake a cake
Let us consider the case of the Ashers family bakery in Belfast which, in 2014, refused to make a cake.…
The absent opposition
Oppositions don’t win elections — governments lose them. This has long been the Westminster wisdom. But the truth is that…
The Spectator’s Notes
World leaders are preoccupied nowadays with what is known as their ‘legacy’. In practice, this means being linked with moral-sounding…
How Pete Burns helped to create our fatuous modern world
So RIP Pete Burns, transgendered Scouse popstar. His indescribably awful song ‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’ — clever…
Stop the sabre-rattling
I have been wondering these last few weeks whether it would be cheaper to excavate a basement and buy a…
Order, order! It’s up to May to stop this ministerial bickering
Even by the accelerated standards of modern politics, this is fast. Three months after the Chancellor was appointed, the Treasury…
The Spectator’s notes
Vote Leave was the most successful electoral campaign in British history. Against the opposition of all three political parties, it…
How clever are ravens? I asked at the Tower
On Tower Hill, by the east wall of Beauchamp Tower where Robert Dudley was imprisoned for a year, a raven…
The Nissan test: can we really negotiate Brexit sector by sector?
I wrote last month that a key test of Brexit success will be whether Nissan is still making cars here…
The most persecuted minority at universities
A few columns ago, I told the mortifying story of how I totally died at the Oxford Union. Today I’m…
The most persecuted minority at universities
A few columns ago, I told the mortifying story of how I totally died at the Oxford Union. Today I’m…
The Nissan test: can we really negotiate Brexit sector by sector?
I wrote last month that a key test of Brexit success will be whether Nissan is still making cars here…
The most persecuted minority at universities
A few columns ago, I told the mortifying story of how I totally died at the Oxford Union. Today I’m…
How clever are ravens? I asked at the Tower
On Tower Hill, by the east wall of Beauchamp Tower where Robert Dudley was imprisoned for a year, a raven…
Order, order! It’s up to May to stop this ministerial bickering
Even by the accelerated standards of modern politics, this is fast. Three months after the Chancellor was appointed, the Treasury…
The Spectator’s notes
Vote Leave was the most successful electoral campaign in British history. Against the opposition of all three political parties, it…
Is that a bomb in your pocket? Or a spy? Or both?
Remember how much fun it used to be getting a new phone? I think of a friend a few years…
Will Brexit butcher the banks?
The financial crisis defines our age. It helps explain everything from the presidential nomination of Donald Trump to Jeremy Corbyn’s…
Hard Brexit, soft sterling and a glimpse of the Night Manager across the water
This column comes from Puerto Pollensa in Majorca, my favourite off-season watering-hole. The hotel is full of elderly Daily Mail…
The Spectator’s Notes
Given all the outrageous things that Donald Trump has done and said already, why has he got into so much…
At all three party conferences, I felt cut adrift
Perhaps it’s age, perhaps disillusion, or perhaps party conferences really aren’t what they used to be, but I have struggled…
Tory Theresa is Blue Labour at heart
I never really agreed with the central-thesis of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — that ‘42’ is the answer…
