Columnists
To save the Union, negotiate independence
The first cabinet meeting of the new term and Boris Johnson’s summer holiday were both dominated by one concern: how…
The trouble with ‘taking back control’
I sympathised with Leave voters who yearned to ‘take back control’ of British borders. After all, if being a country…
Are liberal conservatives now history?
It was a luminous late August sunset, and we were in France, dining outdoors with some friends who have a…
The looming planning battle
The government will pass the test it has set itself: schools in England will return next week. Pupils may well…
Our Belarusian blind spot
I’d always rather liked the Finns, until I came across the conductor Dalia Stasevska. When I asked my mother what…
A bid battle for BT won’t bring better broadband
A takeover battle for BT would bring much-needed excitement to the City — as well as a major political row.…
The Spectator’s Notes
‘The British Museum stands in solidarity with the British Black community, with the African American community, with the Black community…
How progressive misogyny works
It happens a lot lately. Not just in a Twitter DM or an email but in real life. Someone tells…
US protestors are clearing the way for Trump
‘This city is not going to stop burning itself down until they [the protestors] know that this officer has been…
The true cost of the 14-day quarantine
Doing the math, as the Americans say, became this column’s theme after I abandoned another planned trip to France. Seven…
Brits aren’t idiotic – but our institutions are
Two headlines from the same news-paper, less than three weeks apart. So, the Guardian on 31 July: ‘The Guardian view…
The importance of Gavin Williamson
When Boris Johnson tried to call a general election in September last year, everyone around him assumed that Jeremy Corbyn…
Oxford circus
If you’re looking for a sign of the academic times, you could do worse than consider the image, published in…
What really makes people fat
In the UK’s capital city, where do the fewest obese people live? North London. The most? East London. The weight…
The Spectator’s Notes
Amid all the puzzlement and recrimination about why the government got into this mess about A-level and GCSE results, one…
Ill-received pronunciation
Radio 4 recently ran an adaptation of Albert Camus’s The Plague in which the protagonist, Dr Bernard Rieux, was transformed…
At last, boardroom pay starts to swing away from blatant excess
At a low moment in late March, I suggested that all large companies should consider temporary cuts in executive salaries…
The Spectator’s notes
Chris Packham is widely seen as the most extreme of well-known animal rights activists. His obsessions against hunting and shooting…
There’s nothing ‘wild’ about elopement
I didn’t realise how attached I was to the traditional British wedding — the whole messy, pricey, drunken business —…
The inflated currency of racism
Hearing that Dawn Butler MP had been pulled over by the Metropolitan police, I briefly hoped the taxpayer might get…
Kamala chameleon
Kamala Harris, the new Democratic vice-presidential nominee, certainly looks the part. Barack Obama once called her ‘the best-looking attorney general…
Could the next Lib Dem leader help Labour?
When Dominic Cummings addressed government advisers recently, he said that he was so out of touch with day-to-day politics that…
How will we handle the next contagion?
There’s nothing unprecedented about Covid-19 itself. The equally novel, equally infectious Asian flu of 1957 had commensurate fatalities in Britain:…
BP, Amazon and airlines light different paths to survival
We should take heart from BP’s £5.1 billion second-quarter loss, accompanied by a halving of its dividend. What’s good about…
Who cares about reality?
Activists wish to change the name of a school in north London because it is named after a road which…
