Columnists
How I know the Conservative party is doomed
Gosh, it’s depressing watching the natural party of government committing slow-motion suicide. It’s depressing even if you’re not, as I…
UK business investment has nosedived – what’s to blame?
Business investment in the UK declined in all four quarters of 2018 to complete a year-on-year dive of 2.4 per cent,…
The obvious solution to the problem of Brexit
There is an obvious solution to the Brexit problem. It is based on a recognition that we want out and…
Muller has led to the vindication – not the destruction – of Donald Trump
Washington Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation into ‘Russiagate’ was meant to bring down President Donald Trump. That was the plan.…
Imagine the uproar if Remain had won, but MPs then made Britain leave
Sometimes it’s worth addressing what didn’t happen. For one exasperating aspect of appearing on television news is leaving the studio…
Outlawing ‘Islamophobia’ would help jihadis
Last weekend the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, described the massacre in Christchurch as the result ‘of failing to root…
The real winner from Brexodus won’t be Frankfurt, Paris or Dublin
How big is Brexodus — the flight of business and people from the City of London in parallel with our…
Britain’s fate now lies in the hands of Angela Merkel
Angela Merkel says disdainfully, ‘I admit I was not on top of the British parliament’s 17th-century procedural rules.’ Her implication…
On the subject of John Bercow
You can buy the latest edition of Thomas Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice for just over three hundred quid, but I…
In defence of snake oil
A few months ago I had possibly the best massage I’ve ever had. My masseuse, Anouschka, had learned her skills…
There’s an arms race underway – between headphones and musak
I live with a ghost, or rather, I share an address with a man who’s been dead for many years.…
Merging two unhappy companies is a recipe for disaster
It never works to take two unhappy companies and blend them into a bigger pile of misery. That’s the way…
Leadership requires imagination, but Theresa May has never displayed any
I had forgotten, until I checked this week, that Mrs May timed the general election of June 2017 in order…
Can the Republican Party finally win over minority voters?
Washington, DC Republican strategists have long complained about how, every election, the Democrats mobilise minority groups against them. Now they’re…
Why I’ve joined the SDP (and why you should, too)
I was down the pub with my wife last week, out in the tiny smoking section, when a woman with…
What you learn standing on a street corner in Beirut
A pale sun had emerged from wintry clouds and the hillsides were topped snowy white. But all around me was…
If you forgive the IRA, then you must forgive the Parachute Regiment too
In my 2010 short story ‘Prepositions’, a woman has lost her husband not in 9/11 but on 9/11 — when…
What shares would a post-Brexit ‘Optimist Fund’ include?
The nation certainly needs optimism this week, so what better moment to start building our ‘UK Optimist Fund’ of shares…
Artists are not always good people, but should their work really be boycotted?
A kind billionaire called Jeremy Hosking, whom I do not know personally, has invited us to join the Britannia Express,…
Will Brexiteers miss their best chance at Brexit?
Theresa May was only ever going to win approval for her Brexit deal by persuading MPs that it was the…
In defence of a liberal education
A good decade or so ago I wrote a fairly vituperative article in response to a piece by the writer…
We’ve still to wake up from the nightmare of the Swinging Sixties
Every day our age seems to be getting madder and madder, in defiance of the notion that man is a…
Don’t hate housebuilders who profited from Help to Buy. It wasn’t their fault
Was Help to Buy a timely market intervention with a valid social purpose or a political gimmick that unintentionally showered…
Corbyn’s handling of Brexit has been magnificently opportunistic
Jeremy Corbyn never ceases to attack Mrs May for trying to run down the clock. She has certainly done that,…
Women’s sports may one day soon consist entirely of men
Congratulations to Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood for sweeping all before them in the Connecticut girls’ high school track races…
