Columnists
Let’s make sure our fishermen are protected against Brexit tit-for-tat
I voted Remain last year for two reasons. First, however irritating I found some aspects of the EU, I could…
The strange case of my first love and the stolen Stradivarius
Because I’d been reading about Stradivarius on the bus home, my helpful iPhone suggested a related story: the Totenberg Ames…
How not to handle an independence referendum
If David Cameron seeks any testament to his handling of Britain’s difficulties with Scottish separatism, the mess that Spain is…
Corbyn can be beaten – here’s how
The Tory party is suffering from an intellectual crisis of confidence. Before 8 June, its collective view was that Jeremy…
Being anti-smoking damages your mental health
I lit a cigarette in an open-air car park a couple of years ago as I was walking to the…
The Spectator’s notes
Having worked flat-out to defend judges over the Article 50 case in the Supreme Court, the BBC has gone the…
The next financial crisis is coming ‘with a vengeance’, says the expert. But when?
There’s a passage in Philip Larkin’s All What Jazz, the collection of his writings as the Daily Telegraph’s jazz critic,…
Did Glastonbury love Corbyn as much as it loved pirates in 2007?
I saw him — the loneliest man at Glastonbury. He was wearing a neon-green Hawaiian shirt, and he was next…
The Bank of England is enslaved by groupthink
I do find it odd that I’m so often having to write about the science of global warming, species extinction…
Why May must stay
Sometimes crises end simply because all of the participants are exhausted. Essentially, this is what has happened with the post-election…
The Spectator’s Notes
At Guildhall on Tuesday, the Centre for Policy Studies held its Margaret Thatcher Conference on Security. Its title is an…
Why I’m sad to see Barclays in the dock – and astonished to see John Varley there
Regular readers know I have an umbilical connection to Barclays, because my father spent his working life there, I was…
What should party leaders be allowed to believe?
‘If he can’t be in politics,’ the Archbishop of Canterbury tweeted last week after Tim Farron resigned the leadership of…
If you’re not tired of London, you’re tired of life
London, city of the damned. City of incendiary tower blocks, jihadi mentals trying to slit your throat, yokels from Somerset…
The Spectator’s Notes
How much longer can it go on? Deaths caused by terrorism are always followed now by candlelit vigils, a minute’s…
Let’s have a dose of business sense in Downing Street before it’s too late
Take no notice of the resilience of the FTSE100 index, which, having reached record pre-election highs, shed barely 100 points…
The Conservatives’ real problem? It’s that the electorate now sees them as reckless
The opposition wants to raze your house to the ground. No, bear with me. Analogy. They say they’ll pull it…
I don’t blame millennials for voting for Corbyn
On the morning after the election I was drinking coffee with one of my heroes, Sir Roger Scruton. We talked…
Labour’s happy surprise
‘Science,’ wrote Jules Verne, ‘is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because…
Where are the Tory hordes shrieking ‘lefty scum’?
The Conservative party lost the general election, even if they are still in power (at time of writing). It was…
The Spectator’s Notes
Before knowing the result of the election, I composed my Chairman’s message in the newsletter of the Rectory Society. In…
The Board of Trade won’t boost exports if business conditions aren’t right at home
The last limp gambit of the Tory campaign was a promise to revive the Board of Trade. As a way…
There’s no need to tell children about terrorists
Saturday evening in Durham. My in-laws and I had just begun our usual postprandial shout about Donald Trump when my…
The Tories have been diminished by this election
There’s an expression used in football to describe an approach to the game that discounts the virtues of elegance, style,…
Is enough enough? Then let’s start deporting
I divide my time between two constituencies, the first a rock-solid Conservative seat in the south-east of England, the other…
