Columnists
The Spectator’s Notes
Why is it wrong, some ask, for senior British businessmen, former civil servants etc to work for Huawei UK? After…
Flipping, flopping and failing
I don’t know what’s happened to our football hooligans. The modern malaise, I suppose. A gradual descent into ineffectuality. Back…
Why ‘football thugs’ want to defend statues
‘Saturday the 13th … everyone’s out to go up town to do Antifa. Loads of West Ham, Millwall, Chelsea, Arsenal,…
Is the Brexit deadlock about to be broken?
Trade talks between the UK and the EU are in a better place than they have been at any point…
Shares have defied pessimism – but another fall is surely coming
Do stock markets foretell the future while politicians fudge and economists mumble? No: share prices collectively have a life of…
Worship anywhere – apart from in church
During these months of inertia, I confess to having on occasion made illicit trips to churches in the English countryside.…
Marching against racism is too easy
When I first saw the footage of George Floyd being asphyxiated by a policeman’s knee on his throat, my reaction…
Normality won’t return until schools do
From Monday, you will be required by law to wear a face covering on public transport. Paradoxically, this is a…
Quarantine will block more holidays abroad than foreign virus-carriers
All logic suggests that the 14-day quarantine for arrivals from abroad really is, as Michael O’Leary of Ryanair put it,…
Free speech matters
The Eastern Orthodox Church has decided that yoga is incompatible with Christianity. This is an enormous problem for me, as…
The Spectator’s Notes
The government’s promised ‘pathway to citizenship’ to Hong Kong people is wonderful, but has the Foreign Office arranged a get-out…
Lessons from the dying
A nurse friend recently finished six weeks in a Covid intensive care unit where she witnessed many deaths and always…
A magnificent way to topple a slave trader
I couldn’t disagree more with Sir Keir Starmer (it was ‘completely wrong,’ ‘it shouldn’t have been done in that way’)…
There can be no return to the Whitehall status quo
During the pandemic, Nicola Sturgeon has developed a reputation for announcing things just before the UK government does. But there…
The great Newsnight delusion
The Twitter feed of BBC Newsnight editor Esme Wren (remember, I read this stuff so you don’t have to) is…
A US import we can do without
It is nearly four years since Black Lives Matter had their first major protest in London. Emulating their US counterparts,…
The joy of the drive-by birthday party
It is a relief to parents that young children are allowed out a bit now as the length of the…
The Spectator’s notes
This week in 1989, the Chinese authorities massacred protestors in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. I was editing this paper. It struck…
Car factories revive but theatres remain dark and in danger
Car showrooms are open again: some dealerships, with a hint of forgivable hyperbole, report a surge of pent-up demand. And…
We can’t see the wood for the trees
I was relieved to discover, earlier this week, that the Prime Minister’s special adviser, Dominic Cummings, was a symbol of…
Why has coronavirus fled London?
My partner, Julian, hovered at my shoulder on Friday as I tapped out my Times Saturday column (about travel quarantine).…
It’s not only Cummings whose fate is at stake
When the cabinet met by conference call on Monday, three ministers spoke in support of Dominic Cummings: Jacob Rees-Mogg, Suella…
If ‘whatever it takes’ means state share stakes in industry, so be it
Should the government be prepared to take equity stakes in major companies that will struggle to survive the current crisis?…
The Spectator’s notes
At Dominic Cummings’s press conference on Monday, reporters tried two lines of attack. One was to behave like local detectives,…
The healing power of kindness
Nobody earns the right to respect just by having lived into old age, whenever that begins — it has happened…
