Columnists
The mind-body conundrum
I’m committed this winter to too many expensive building projects at once. As the balloon of my bank balance drifts…
Why the Budget let banks off the hook
‘Banks don’t vote and citizens don’t love them, so they’ll always be the Chancellor’s target of choice,’ I wrote in…
The conservatism of Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard, who died last week, never wrote a memoir, but he did sort of speak one. Just over…
Labour’s plan to unite the left
It is easy to criticise the Budget. The process was a chaotic mess. For many on the right, Rachel Reeves’s…
Hands off my prostate
Too much information. That’s what you’re about to get. I wouldn’t read another line if I were you. I will…
What’s Trump got to do with the price of turkey?
During last week’s excruciating Oval Office make-nice between an insultingly buddy-buddy American President and a fraudulently obsequious New York City…
The theatre isn’t a thinktank
Readers tend not to approve of rows between columnists, but I must take issue with something Lloyd Evans wrote in…
The obvious truth about BBC bias
For quite a few members of the House of Commons culture, media and sport committee, the answer to the claims…
Rachel Reeves’s road to ruin
Rachel Reeves is lucky that the name ‘omnishambles Budget’ has already been taken. When the entire document was published long…
Let the Daily Mail buy the Telegraph
When I first joined The Spectator under the proprietorship of Conrad Black, we operated in sisterhood with the Telegraph titles…
Why has Peter Thiel dumped his AI stocks?
How, I wonder, did a shortlist of candidates to succeed Sir Mark Tucker as chairman of HSBC come into the…
Was the BBC’s Trump edit outrageously wrong?
I should begin by making something clear. Splicing together two parts of a speech to give the impression they were…
Trump’s Epstein gamble
It is always interesting to see who the American left claims are the leaders of the American right. There was…
It’s not Starmer’s fault that everyone loathes him
Finding someone who ‘likes’ Sir Keir Starmer is a terribly enervating quest, and I have given up on it without…
Labour may have lost the countryside forever
Before the last election, Keir Starmer promised that his party’s relationship with the countryside would be ‘based on respect, on…
What my pyjamas taught me about China
About seven years ago, I bought two pairs of pyjamas, one British, the other Chinese. At the time, they seemed…
Say hello to your AI granny
Doing the rounds on social media is the most disturbing advert I’ve ever seen. And I’m telling you about it…
Sydney Sweeney, the Hollywood radical
Every time you feel down about Britain’s out-of-touch elites, a look across the Atlantic is a reassuring reminder that it…
Justice in war is messy
At the end of last month, a judge in Belfast issued a verdict that was both right and wrong. The…
Inside the Wes Streeting plot
Keir Starmer is stuck in a catch-22. If he is to avoid the threat of continual leadership challenges, the Prime…
The true cost of the Chagos deal
When the BBC denies ‘systemic bias’, it denies the main, the crucial thing exposed by Michael Prescott’s now-famous leaked internal…
The UK’s tax take, take, take
Helping her country ski ever more steeply down the wrong side of the Laffer curve, Rachel Reeves may be preparing…
This time it’s crypto: now the Bank of England bows to Trump
The softening of the Bank of England’s stance on ‘stablecoins’ looks like another tugging of the British forelock towards the…
Income tax must rise – but Rachel Reeves must go
Call me hard-hearted, but I doubt even a magic mushroom-induced tantric visualisation of a harmonious universe could transport me into…
You can’t trust the BBC
You may remember that in February the BBC found itself in a spot of bother regarding a film about the…
