Columnists
Will the Abbey ring for Remembrance Day?
It took me several weeks, after returning to the Spectator office, to work out what was missing. It wasn’t the…
Why Boris has his hopes pinned on spring
In a non-Covid world, next week would be the Tory party conference. Boris Johnson would march on to the stage…
It isn’t always easy to give money away
I always felt sorry for my father, then president of a chronically strapped educational institution, for having ceaselessly to approach…
This dead-bat business minister should plead to be reshuffled
What advice can I offer Alok Sharma, who took a pasting in the weekend press for his lacklustre performance as…
The memo Dominic Cummings never sent
There’s something about Dominic Cummings I will always like, and perhaps partly it’s the danger. I hardly know him well…
In defence of wokeness
We have been reading an awful lot about ‘wokeness’ recently. Nobody, I notice, seems to be much in favour of…
Who rules supreme?
Within hours of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, Democrats and Republicans began fighting over how to fill her…
The police’s picky attitude to protests
I’ve never been a great fan of public demonstrations. When I was at university, one of the great causes du…
Covid has ended the rail franchise fiasco at last
Good riddance to the passenger rail franchise system which has finally been killed off by Covid, though a majority of…
Time for me to be more assertive
In the light of recent articles in The Spectator, I think it is vital I should point out here and…
The Spectator’s Notes
The National Trust has brought out its ‘Interim Report’, with the clumsy title ‘Addressing our histories of colonialism and historic…
An autumn of discontent
The government is bracing itself for a second wave of coronavirus. Everyone knew the autumn and winter would be more…
J.K. Rowling’s fundamental mistake
I had my first doubts about Lord Hall, the former director-general of the BBC, when he addressed a group of…
Our steady diet of Covid hysteria
Readers may recall a column last month that laid out powerful evidence for the proposition that the ethnic and racial…
This deal with Japan is little more than cheese and biscuits
A small cheer for Liz Truss’s treaty with Japan. It is, says the official press release, ‘the UK’s first major…
The age of camp is over
Last week we broadcast my BBC radio Great Lives episode on Kenneth Williams. The effervescent comedian and presenter Tom Allen…
The Spectator’s Notes
One of the most extraordinary features of the ‘cancel culture’ is how well it works. All decent people hate it,…
Wrecking final Brexit talks won’t help our fishermen
‘Every country has a political problem with its fishermen,’ wrote Peter Walker, the Conservative minister who negotiated the first effective…
The Spectator’s Notes
Large parts of the senior civil service regard Brexit as almost illegal. Some of them regard loyalty to the EU…
Cute rots the brain
I have become allergic to ‘cute’, bad-tempered biddy that I am. Cuteness and the requirement to be cute have spread…
Falsehoods are running amok
I don’t know how much of a shock this will come to you as — perhaps none, because you are…
The no-deal dilemma
Backbenchers are discussing when to give Downing Street a bloody nose, a former prime minister is on the warpath and…
Who would risk being a government adviser?
Poor Tony Abbott. It would seem being prime minister of Australia doesn’t bring you to the attention of the British…
Are the wheels coming off Rolls-Royce?
Along, cold weekend brought a haul of business news more bad than good. The worst was from aero-engine maker Rolls-Royce,…
How a lie becomes truth
Teachers were told to exclude children who made ‘inappropriate’ jokes about Covid when they returned to school this week. These…
