Columnists
The homoeroticism of looksmaxxing
‘Did you ever think that maybe there’s more to life than being really, really, really, ridiculously good-looking?’ So asks Derek…
Brace for higher inflation
All eyes on the Strait of Hormuz, the 24-mile-wide choke point between Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, through…
Do we really want our politicians to be uneducated?
The interesting thing about political pendulums is that they always over-swing. In the campaign for this week’s Gorton and Denton…
Has it all gone wrong between Trump and Starmer?
‘The Special Relationship only exists when the Americans want something,’ a former Downing Street aide observed after Donald Trump rejected…
Am I a Zionist?
The death of Quentin Deranque is strangely under-reported here. He was a 23-year-old beaten up in Lyon on 12 February…
My night at the Baftas
Sometimes things work out much better than one could have imagined, as if God, looking down, had decided that for…
The real reason I left Britain
This is a two-parter, albeit linked. If you’re interested in the duplicitousness of British journalists, then keep reading. If you’re…
The no.1 quango that deserves the axe
There are elements of economic life, such as the impact of President Donald Trump’s ever-changing tariffs, that are far beyond…
My Epstein confession
Is this Britain, 2026, or Spain, 1478? Our era begins to feel horribly like the latter. So, as the flames…
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 –…
