The Spectator’s Notes
The Spectator’s Notes
On the one occasion when I spent any time with Angela Rayner, she was funny, direct and friendly. We were…
The Spectator’s Notes
Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, has begun this academic year by announcing it will be his last in the…
The Spectator’s Notes
From time to time, people get worried and ask one another: ‘Is the world falling apart?’ I imagine this is…
The Spectator’s Notes
This week, the media pressure was on the British government to extend the deadline for the evacuations from Kabul airport.…
The Spectator’s Notes
Q. Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable? The President: No, it is not. Q. Why? The President: Because…
The Spectator’s Notes
The tale of A-levels shows how ministers can sometimes find themselves in a position when it is simply too dangerous…
The Spectator’s Notes
On Monday 2 August, the BBC Today programme offered its ‘Countdown to COP26’. For the rest of the month, Amol…
The Spectator’s Notes
On Tuesday, I chaired a session at Policy Exchange addressed by Tony Abbott, the eloquent former prime minister of Australia,…
The Spectator’s Notes
Anyone who thinks Boris Johnson lacks statecraft should pay attention to Dominic Cummings’s attacks on him. They often to seem…
The Spectator’s Notes
A special animus is aimed at Priti Patel, perhaps because the combination of being Indian, female and firmly Tory is…
The Spectator’s Notes
In deciding whether or not to wear a mask after 19 July, I am sure Boris Johnson is right that…
The Spectator’s Notes
Is Winston Marshall — guitarist, banjo player, composer of Mumford & Sons, and father of the west London ‘Nu-Folk’ music…
The Spectator’s Notes
If it is true, as Lords Hall and Birt told a Commons committee this week, that Martin Bashir succeeded in…
The Spectator’s Notes
There is much to be said for meritocracy, and Adrian Wooldridge, in his new book, The Aristocracy of Talent, says…
The Spectator’s Notes
It is poetically fitting that the resignation of the chairman of the National Trust, Tim Parker, was announced on the…
The Spectator’s Notes
We are being urged — and, in some cases, paid — by the government to plant more trees. Actually, this…
The Spectator’s Notes
This week, the Church of England issued its document ‘Contested Heritage in Cathedrals and Churches’. It is guidance for what…
The Spectator’s Notes
There should be more ‘religious literacy’. So says the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Religion in the Media, chaired by Yasmin…
The Spectator’s Notes
Like almost everyone else writing on the subject, I have no idea whether Boris Johnson told colleagues in October that…
The Spectator’s Notes
The conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd makes last summer’s Black Lives Matter mania in British…
The Spectator’s Notes
The recent Sewell report on Race and Ethnic Disparities has been much abused and little read. It is full of…
The Spectator’s Notes
On Grand National Day at Aintree this Saturday, the Rose Paterson Trust will be launched. This time last year, Rose…
The Spectator’s Notes
‘Interior silence’ is not a phrase I associate with Sarah Sands, until recently the editor of the BBC Today programme…
The Spectator’s Notes
As the former editor of a Sunday newspaper, I know their front pages can be rather confected. There is sometimes…
The Spectator’s Notes
The recently departed head of MI6, Sir Alex Younger, wants to balance China’s ideological antagonism to the West with the…
