Columnists
Of course airlines should have started rehiring months ago — but they didn’t
I sincerely hope you’re not reading this on a holiday flight that’s sitting on the tarmac with no indication as…
The closing of the Chinese mind
I was born in Nanjing five years after the Tiananmen Square protests. By then, records of the demonstrations and the…
Boris could be toppled by accident
Every Tory leader fears a plot against them. Their paranoia isn’t helped by the layout of Westminster, which lends itself…
Now for the hard bit
Boris Johnson has been plunged back into the mire of partygate. The publication of a photograph of Johnson raising a…
Airport officials are on a power trip
On my 2 p.m. arrival for a week-long work trip to South Africa a fortnight ago, an immigration agent flapped…
Along comes monkeypox
I hate to be one of those columnists who says ‘I told you so’. But I told you so. Looking…
The Spectator’s Notes
I wrote recently elsewhere about Jeremy Hunt’s good new book examining unnecessary deaths in the NHS. Someone should write a…
The attention deficit
I have just posted a score of 1,625,000 on Bubbleshooter, my best yet. Bubbleshooter is a game where you fire…
The good friend I never knew
I have just read an extraordinary new book. It’s by a close and old pal whom I’d count as one…
A moving experience from Paddington to Liverpool Street
It’s 8.16 on Tuesday morning and I’m actually writing this on a moving Elizabeth line train. Moving in the sense…
How far will house prices fall? Frankly, don’t ask me
‘Forecasting is a mug’s game’ is a truism attributed to everyone from fantasy author Douglas Adams to former Bank of…
Bad songs for a good cause
Twice during the Eurovision Song Contest our television lost the signal and the set went blank – once, mercifully, during…
The Spectator’s Notes
Justified relief that soldiers are now coming out of the Azovstal steelworks alive is accompanied by anxiety about what might…
Boris’s fighting talk
Boris Johnson has never quite been able to decide whether he wants to be a great unifier or a great…
The dishonesty of our age
It isn’t hard to notice that some crimes are more important than others. Or at least more politically advantageous. It…
The madness of ‘emotional support animals’
Sometimes an event or a phenomenon is so perplexing and so terrible that it’s best not to deal with it…
Britain’s national character flaws
Before we start, let’s firmly establish my long-standing affection for the United Kingdom. Why, some of my best friends are…
Haldane would have been a smarter inflation fighter than Bailey
Would Andy Haldane, the economist who left the Bank of England to run the Royal Society of Arts, have made…
Auntie’s issues
At long last the state of Oregon has got around to installing tampon machines in the male lavatories of its…
The Spectator’s Notes
When I was a lobby journalist, I never went to the State Opening of Parliament. I much regret it, because…
How to handle the next pandemic
There has been a considerable hoo-hah in the press about the recent World Health Organisation report estimating Covid-related deaths internationally…
What gets lost amid silly scandals
I wonder if we will ever be able to resist fixing the suffix ‘gate’ to the end of any not-yet-sufficiently-salacious…
The losing game
When David Cameron was prime minister, the Tories flirted with the idea of a Queen’s Speech with no bills in…
The Spectator’s Notes
As we get back into Roe vs Wade, prompted by the leak of what is said to be the US…
Will Putin go nuclear?
A ghastly tragedy Ukraine may well be, but it is coming to the rescue of a number of British Conservative…
