Columnists
The hard truth about Britain’s soft power
How hard is your soft power? According to David Lammy, Britain’s soft power is so strong and underrated that he…
Don’t believe the ‘Believe Her’ movement
I never expected to have strong feelings for a member of Germany’s Green party, but I really do feel extremely…
Britain is losing friends – and making enemies
Whatever way you voted in 2016, I suspect that many of us have the same image of post-Brexit Britain. It…
Will Trump remember his allies?
I had thought that having to be inaugurated indoors would have cramped Donald Trump’s style. Not so. The rhetoric with…
Is Keir Starmer a lawyer or a leader?
Keir Starmer surprised his colleagues during his first week in power when he appointed his old friend Richard Hermer KC…
The truth about Southport
When I first saw the headline I was highly optimistic. Sir Keir Starmer had identified the threat to society posed…
Immigration’s theatre of the absurd
On the cusp of an almighty row over Trump’s planned mass deportations, let’s look to Europe for light relief. Last…
Would it be worth Trump buying Greenland?
London’s capital market needs a kick in the pants, as I write every week, and ‘activist investors’ are no bad…
The answers Starmer must give
It will probably only damn me further in the eyes of many, but when I was a government minister I…
My guide to liberals
Last Saturday I was making my way across the road from St Pancras to King’s Cross when I noticed a…
Rachel Reeves owes Brompton bikes an apology
I long to write less about Rachel Reeves and more about world-beating British businesses – such as Brompton, the folding…
The day DEI went up in smoke
What’s in a word? ‘Equality’. ‘Equity’. It’s the sort of thing that Channel 4 newsreaders find impossible to understand. Surely…
The inevitable rise of the divorce party
Have you been to a ‘divorce party’ yet this season? If you haven’t, not to worry, there’s still time. Divorce…
Why was everyone fooled by Rachel Reeves?
It is some time since I could claim any close acquaintance with the daily skirmishes of workaday Westminster. From risers…
‘We’re pretty bullish’: Farage’s plan to transform politics
‘We’ve had enough of living in two-tier Britain,’ bellows Nigel Farage to cheers from an 800-strong crowd at Chester’s Crowne…
The National Trust took the knee
In a recent interview, Hilary McGrady, the director-general of the National Trust, complains that ‘The culture wars we’re trying to…
We need safeguarding from safeguarders
What does it mean, in practice, to say that reporting child abuse should be mandatory? It sounds appropriately severe, but…
Donald Trump and new political disorder
Donald Trump isn’t back in the White House yet, but already his victory is being felt across the world. Greenland…
Who’ll join my war against liberalism?
I can see one possible benefit of having a full inquiry into the almost exclusively Muslim grooming gangs who raped…
Keir Starmer, school harmer
Twin studies are one of the most useful exercises in scientific inquiry. Take two biologically identical children who are brought…
The case against a ‘climate emergency’
January is the ideal month for gaining a sense of perspective. I’m increasingly convinced that the ‘climate emergency’ is another…
Should you leave the country? Other questions for 2025
I was intending to write one of those ‘Ten tips to change your life’ lists that fill so many column…
Is Reform unstoppable?
Lying in bed pissed on Boxing Day night, I was visited by the ghost of Christmas Future, dressed in a…
Rachel Reeves’s new year’s resolution
On Christmas Day, 12 million people watched the will-they-won’t-they couple Smithy and Nessa finally marry after 17 years in the…
The nightmare of ‘maladaptive daydreaming’
At the beginning of the spring term of my second year at university, a French boy called Xavier looked up…
