Columnists
The Spectator’s Notes
When we left this Britain on Thursday last week, life was almost as usual. Shops and restaurants were open. The…
The antidote to virus panic is in the hands of entrepreneurs
‘It’s a ghost town,’ said the officer manning the body scanner at Manchester airport — Manchester, New Hampshire, that is,…
Apocalypse in East Finchley
I was mansplaining to my wife earlier this week about why we ought to be very, very concerned by the…
The stranglehold of the wokerati
At least none of us will have to pretend that we read Woody Allen’s memoirs. This week the publishers Hachette…
Britain has its first punk-rock government
The most surprising thing about the letter from Guardian and Observer journalists moaning about Suzanne Moore’s supposed ‘transphobia’ is that…
The Spectator’s Notes
Monday night’s Commons rebellion over Huawei was on a surprisingly serious scale for a new government with a big mandate.…
The test of the Budget
British politics has not lost its flair for the dramatic. If it was not enough to have Sajid Javid resign…
To the friend who dropped me
I’ve put off sending a private email that’s been ready to go for weeks. Then last Sunday, I read Julie…
I’m getting my coronavirus bunker ready
We have now got past the absurd stage of glaring in a reproachful manner at Chinese people on the tube.…
The SFO as a deterrent? Not in the Barclays-Qatar case
Hit-and-miss, heavy-handed, but a necessary use of justice to deter repetition. That was my summing-up, last year, of the Serious…
The unbearable lightness of Boris Johnson
Months ago, not long after Boris Johnson’s 2019 general election triumph, I wrote a Times column of a cautiously hopeful…
The Budget’s corona contagion
When Sajid Javid resigned in a row with No. 10, there was much speculation about what would be in the…
The Spectator’s Notes
The government is trying to get onshore windfarms going again, defying the damage they do to unique environments. I am…
The Spectator’s Notes
The fall from grace of Jean Vanier is truly a sad story. The founder of the L’Arche communities did extraordinary…
Sanders, Trump, and the populist juju
‘Bernie beats Trump! Bernie beats Trump!’ That’s what Bernie Sanders’s fans keep chanting, and they have the polls to prove…
The war the government must win
We will rue the day we all decided bullying was a bad thing. The consequence is that the inept, the…
How Sinn Fein got away with murder
The online world should be credited when it gets something right. And on Twitter an account titled ‘On This Day…
Why did no one believe Johnny Depp?
When it was first reported that Johnny Depp had been hit and pelted with crockery by his slight, blonde then…
Bet like Buffett: the virus scareis a chance to buy cheaper
If anything, stock markets have been slow to respond to the spreading coronavirus outbreak. Stories of Chinese supply interruptions, from…
The Spectator’s Notes
My parents told me that their wartime childhoods were punctuated by the expression: ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’…
The Brexit reshuffle
One of the Tories’ tactical successes has been to push Brexit down the news agenda. But even if it no…
The blindness of cultural Marxism
Words we are not allowed to use any more now include ‘cultural Marxism’. Suella Braverman, now the Attorney General, used…
How low can the BBC go?
Last weekend’s papers claimed that the government desires a ‘massively pruned back’ BBC. Former Conservative cabinet minister Damian Green and…
How I became an easy police target
Most Britons assume at the outset that any misfortune involving a cyclist is the cyclist’s fault. After all, many a…
Time for new leadership at Barclays and HSBC – and a new name at RBS
After a dull interlude, the big banks in their annual results season look a bit more interesting again. First to…
