Columnists
America’s identity crisis
There was no reason for the world ever to hear the name Kyle Rittenhouse. Except that in the summer of…
The Tories at sea
Ever since Boris Johnson’s disastrous decision to try to stay the standards committee’s guilty verdict against Owen Paterson, things have…
In praise of stigma
Exciting news from Durham University, which is helping its students to become ‘sex workers’. This noble institution is offering two…
A rail plan that levels up by disappointing everyone
The scrapping of most of the eastern leg of HS2, originally planned from Birmingham to Leeds, is a news item…
When memory lane becomes a cul-de-sac
I begin this column on a train from Paris to London. Opposite me are a mother and baby. I don’t…
Angela Rayner’s moment
Almost no MP has emerged with dignity from the sleaze debacle of the past three weeks. Boris Johnson’s botched attempt…
Inoculated against the facts
When a column highlighting under-appreciated breaking news has had absolutely no impact on the course of events (per usual), the…
Can Johnson weather this new storm?
The row over MPs’ outside interests has landed Boris Johnson in one of the most uncomfortable positions a prime minister…
The dangerous pleasure of hating men
I have Netflix, and in particular the series Maid, to thank for the startling discovery of how easy it is…
The root of the problem
I was intrigued to learn that Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the US, is worried about racist trees. I…
Bankers are more likely to save the planet than Obama or Greta
I have observed before how useful really big numbers can be in response to crises: when US treasury secretary Hank…
Why parliament is in such bad order
I see that the most boring conversation in the nation is back. The one even worse than people in the…
A re-gift to Donald Trump
For Democrats, like the ‘insurrection’ of January 6th, the Trump policy of separating illegal-immigrant parents from their children in 2018…
The Spectator’s Notes
At the National Trust’s annual general meeting last week, the voting was much more unusual than the public will have…
Don’t let China’s climate sins cloak its crushing of Hong Kong
China’s failure to bring anything new to COP26 surprised no one. The world’s worst carbon emitter offered no advance on…
The Tories’ health battle
Boris Johnson knows the value of three-word slogans. ‘Take back control’ and ‘get Brexit done’ helped propel him to his…
Does the doctor really need to see you now?
Only later, perhaps even a decade later, as the pandemic of 2020-22 shrinks in our rear-view mirror, may we be…
My conflicted loyalty to Newcastle United
The second thing I learned about football, after moving to London, is that you can never, ever switch your allegiance.…
My COP26 message: pay more dividends to save the planet
Climate emergency demands action, not rhetoric. So, on the eve of COP26, which UK news item promises to deliver the…
What this Budget tells us
The Budget and the spending review gave the clearest indication yet of what the post-Covid government might look like. During…
Who owns the language?
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is giving local residents £25,000 grants to enable them to change the names of…
Could a truthful Clinton have saved the US?
What if Bill Clinton had told the truth? Would America’s sexual and political history be different? The thought occurs because…
The Spectator’s Notes
When I went to Poland not long before Covid, I found a country more bitterly divided by a culture war…
Brace for pain: Danny’s recession forecast might not be so wacko
Does the economist David Blanchflower — who I described as the Bank of England’s ‘resident wacko’ during his 2006-09 tenure…
The dangers of being trans-gressive
I’m accustomed to a sense of urgency in relation to Netflix offerings because the streaming service often buys short-term rights…
