Columnists
Is this where world war three starts?
Daugavpils You can tell quite a bit about a place by the number of national flags on display.…
When righteous anger goes wrong
From abroad I’ve returned to a country where, in language to which the word ‘shrill’ hardly does justice, fellow British…
It’s time to cut our ties with Qatar
A friend of mine was recently doing business with the Qataris. Nothing strange there: a lot of people have in…
What did Hamas think was going to happen?
Much misfortune the woebegone couldn’t have seen coming: a raging fire in the house next door that spreads to yours.…
The Tory vote squeeze
When the cabinet gathered on Tuesday morning, the meeting started as a sombre affair. Just days before, the Conservatives had…
What Hamas promised to its electorate
Things you do not hear very often, number one: a pro-Palestinian protestor denouncing Hamas for the barbarity of its incursion…
My dinner with a glamorous Taiwanese MP
Taipei I arrive here shortly after Taiwan National Day, which is 10 October. The day might seem strangely…
Rishi’s smoking ban inspired me to light a cigarette
What has Rishi Sunak’s government achieved in its first year? The highlights include a renegotiated Brexit policy and setting more…
Does the Met know what jihad means?
Ever since the atrocities in Israel more than two weeks ago, I have had one main thought. Yes, Israel has…
Facebook’s not-so-secret police
I was greatly tempted by Sam Leith’s suggestion in a column on The Spectator’s website this week that we should…
The SNP’s reckoning is coming
The SNP party conference in Aberdeen this week wasn’t the nationalist jamboree activists had hoped for. Even though it was…
Keep your politics à la carte
It’s a truism that the Anglosphere has developed a ‘tribalism’ that rivals the divisions between the Kikuyu and Luhya in…
The four big questions our politicians need to answer
Anyone would think (anyone, that is, who has followed our three main annual party conferences this autumn) that Britain’s principal…
Why do we allow protests that glorify slaughter?
There are times when you wonder how history happened. And other times when you realise how it did. The past…
The great Tory tax debate
‘I didn’t come into politics to raise taxes on working people,’ said the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves in Liverpool this…
The empathy vacuum
I had a brief exchange of messages with a British Muslim bloke on social media who had asked me, very…
The Spectator’s notes
The pattern of Israeli/Palestinian conflicts is always forced by coverage into what people call a ‘narrative arc’. The attacks are…
I regret not having more children
Life doesn’t always work out perfectly. You can make the wrong decisions. You can leave things too late. I wish,…
How to spot a ‘populist’
Two months ago, in these pages, I predicted that Robert Fico’s Smer-SD party would win the Slovakian elections and everybody…
