Columnists
Has Virgin trains lost the plot?
Twelve minutes till the train. That had seemed like quite enough time as I approached the Virgin ticket machine. Two…
Why a Big Oil row tells us it’s time to stop fetishising experts
Something extraordinary and largely unreported has just happened in a court in San Francisco. A federal judge has said that…
Call this US-China tit-for-tat a trade war?
‘Stocks plunge as China hits US goods with tariffs,’ said a headline after the long weekend, and the FTSE100 duly…
At last, Labour’s anti-Semitism has caught up with Corbyn
At last Jeremy Corbyn is being made to pay a price for Labour’s anti-Semitism under his leadership. It has now, for…
What will it take for Labour MPs to act against Corbyn?
One of the mistakes Theresa May made in calling an early election was not anticipating the effect it would have…
All was calm at the elephant safari camp. Then the river began to roar…
When Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, ejected from the aeroplane he was flying solo to Scotland, he parachuted to the ground…
Labour, lizards and the problem of anti-Semitism
There’s a very funny moment in Jon Ronson’s book Them: Adventures with Extremists, part of which follows the New Age…
Can you prove you’re not a racist?
After an essay in this month’s Prospect about literature and freedom of speech, it seems I was cited on Twitter…
So farewell Toys ‘R’ Us, the predator that became the prey
I remember the arrival of Toys ‘R’ Us in Britain, because as a young banker in 1984 I was tasked…
It is the Europhiles who are the head-bangers now
For almost as long as I can remember, Eurosceptic Tory MPs have been defined by the media as ‘head-bangers’. As…
The Tories are risking their reputation as the party of law and order
Theresa May’s Home Office record is normally off limits at cabinet. But when ministers discussed the government’s strategy for reducing…
Our response to the nerve gas attack has been an act of self-harm
There was a growling Russian maniac on the BBC’s Today programme last week, an MP from the United Russia party…
The vlogging fantasy that bewitches our children
My friend’s ten-year-old daughter has a new hobby. Like many of her school pals, she hopes to become a video…
I wish I had kept my Brummie accent. I’d be taken more seriously
‘No one wants to send their son to Eton any more,’ I learned from last week’s Spectator Schools supplement. It…
Sorry fishermen, but we were never going to win back control of our waters
My decision to vote Remain was driven in part by an exercise in which I tried to identify anyone close…
Let’s find the most idiotic Brexit headlines
Gimson’s Prime Ministers, out this week, is a crisp and stylish account of every one of them. I happened to…
Revealed: the Tory health tax bombshell
The single most important domestic policy decision that the Conservatives must take is what to do about public spending. After…
Genocide in South Africa: now that’s a black-and-white issue
Last time I was in South Africa I spent two weeks deep in the Karoo, that desiccated wasteland in the…
To those with a taste for desolation, Lake Turkana may be the most beautiful place on Earth
As I write, a great gale is blowing in from Lake Turkana. The dry hills on the other side, always…
How mass immigration drives the housing crisis
Ever since Theresa May’s clarion address of the UK’s housing shortage (and how many successive PMs have embarked on the…
Advice from the Institute of Directors: prepare for the scandal tornado
As ‘business lobby groups’ go, the Institute of Directors has always struck me as worthy but unexciting: a more authentic…
The truth about Max Mosley and that leaflet
Almost eight million people have now watched Cathy Newman’s Channel 4 News interview with Jordan Peterson. This figure must be…
The EU shouldn’t punish Brexit. They’d soon regret it
Last Monday, Theresa May’s chief of staff talked junior ministers through her Mansion House speech. Gavin Barwell was frank with…
Italy’s election result shouldn’t be a shock. The populist revolution has just begun
Why aren’t children called Roger any more? I wondered this when reading about the sad death of Sir Roger Bannister.…
Commitment-phobic men are the real reason women are having children later
We are becoming a nation of older mothers. The average age at which a woman has her first child is…
