Columnists
How did I learn women are superior? From a burst water pipe
‘It’s always me who gets the worst of it,’ said the Fawn, surveying the wreckage caused by the burst water…
Can Theresa May find time to be her own housing supremo?
Theresa May has belatedly taken the advice I offered her here last May and named a supremo to tackle the…
Tories who side with Labour on the customs union will be rebelling over a fantasy
Jeremy Corbyn wants Britain to ‘stay in a customs union’, according to the BBC. The phrase does not make sense.…
The Tory divide that May must bridge
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Every time Conservative Leavers speak up demanding a clean break…
The word ‘extremist’ has lost all meaning
A few years ago, in these pages, Matthew Parris defined Ukip as a party of extremists. Perhaps one of his…
It’s not all Twitter mobs – the internet can be a force for good
Few readerships of any intelligent national magazine will be more alive to the perils and downsides of 21st–century cyber-life than…
The all give and no take of US taxes
Last week, the New York Times ran a very un-New-York-Times-y article, ‘Resentment Grows Over Who Gets Health Care Aid’. It…
Running a bank’s tough. That’s no reason to start handing capital back
A mixed bag of annual results from the big banks. RBS, still 73 per cent owned by the taxpayer, recorded…
This Traveller funeral was the most emotional send-off I’ve ever been to
Bev died, aged 61. She was the wife of ‘Foxy’ John, kennel huntsman of our local hunt. Bev was the…
The Tories’ real dilemma? To spend or not to spend
While the rest of the country waits for this spring to arrive, in Westminster the talk is all of spring…
Why are businesses like Center Parcs so terrified of a small minority?
I am boycotting Center Parcs. Admittedly, this is not going to have an enormous impact upon my life. It’s a…
Even being pro-Trump didn’t lose me as many friends as being pro-Brexit
When I mentioned on social media recently that I’d lost friends because of Brexit, I was quite surprised by the…
Investors were right to sell Carillion shares when they spotted trouble ahead
The fallout from Carillion’s bankruptcy spreads in slow motion — just as the outsourcing and construction giant’s finances gradually stretched…
Oxfam is the Harvey Weinstein of aid
The Queen is Head of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is headquartered in London, in the splendour of Marlborough House. The…
There can be no Brexit deal without Tory unity
In a hung parliament, recess takes on a particular importance for the government. It is a chance for ministers to…
There’s a reason women sell roof tiles in hotpants
I would rather watch flies buzzing around a light bulb for two hours than Formula 1. At least the flies…
I miss Auberon Waugh. He’d know what to say about relentless women’s issues
Every now and then one suddenly misses somebody. I miss Bron, who died 17 years ago last month. There’s an…
Why not ban artists who forget to feed their cats or recycle?
Sometimes a picture — the big picture — is worth more than a thousand words. Consider this Art vs Artist,…
Could the Serious Fraud Office put an end to Barclays as we know it?
The Serious Fraud Office has upped the stakes in the case of the controversial $3 billion Qatari financing that saved…
Women’s suffrage was just part of a huge shift in the idea of who should vote
A reader writes: ‘In my last letter, I called you a numbskull. However I should have qualified this with “sometimes you…
Brexit belongs to the Tories — whether they like it or not
The Tory party is the party of Brexit, whether it likes it or not. The referendum was called by a…
Sometimes men deserve to be paid more
It is 100 years since women got the vote and I have been joining in the celebrations, on public transport…
There is no housing crisis. It would be easier if there were
Britain does not have a housing shortage. We have a problem with the cost not the availability of homes. This…
Extreme pain, of the purest intensity, changes everything
Since my pulmonary embolism a couple of years ago, I have become something of a connoisseur of pain. The agony…
Falling US shares tell us only that investors were too excited in January
If you were the incoming or retiring chairman of the Federal Reserve, you might be quietly pleased to see stock…
