Columnists
Why I have succumbed to sourdough mania
This ought to be the perfect time for a rant about how we’ve reached peak sourdough. It’s been all the…
An odd new feeling has crept up on me – sympathy for the police
Spring has come to my local park in its usual way. First the magnolias, then the cherry blossom, then the…
I’m an optimist for trade despite the idiocies of politicians
I’m proud to be a member of the 661-year-old Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York, having qualified…
The Good Friday Agreement is not a peace but a truce
The Good Friday Agreement (GFA), which celebrates its 20th anniversary this week, is not a peace, but a truce. This does…
Will Britain find a new role in the world after Brexit?
Britain’s imperial past distorts the debate about our place in the world, but not in the way that is commonly…
I can never resist a trip to the rubbish dump
I was back at the tip on Sunday. I cannot help it. What art galleries or rock concerts or online…
Why catastrophising is my idea of a good time
When, on a test of general knowledge, the highly educated score far worse than chimpanzees, university degrees may be overrated…
The US Treasury shows London how to cold-shoulder Putin’s cronies
A decade ago I commissioned an article about Vladimir Putin’s business cronies. Among other lines of enquiry, it sought to…
Labour moderates are desperate to leave – but there’s nowhere to go
The case for Labour moderates leaving their party strengthens by the day. Jeremy Corbyn’s behaviour demonstrates that he is not…
Corbyn, anti-Semitism and the righteous vanity of Tony Benn
What is it, psychologically, that makes it so hard for Jeremy Corbyn to recognise that some of his supporters are…
The DPP’s Alison Saunders was never much cop
An interesting development for our police force, then. In future they do not have to believe everything someone tells them,…
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…
