The Week
Cameron is the only leader who can deliver an EU referendum. Why is he ashamed to say so?
The election campaign is becoming increasingly dominated by a small party whose raison d’être is to preach independence from membership…
Portrait of the week
Home The prospect of a parliamentary alliance between Labour and the Scottish National Party injected an element of fear into…
Justin Marozzi’s diary: Lunch with Saddam’s hangman, and a democratic revolution in Kensington
Lunch with the man who hanged Saddam. My irrepressible old Baghdad friend Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Ealing neurologist turned Iraqi national security…
What happens to politicians who insult the audience? Ask Dan Quayle
Any answers? Nigel Farage accused the audience in the BBC opposition leaders’ debate of being left-wing. Need insulting an audience…
Plutarch and Aristotle vs Lynton Crosby
Attack Ed Miliband and sing up the long-term economic plan: that is the now obviously useless scheme devised by the…
Florence weeps
From ‘Soldiers of Italy’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: It is winter in Florence. The sun shines, but snow lies low on Monte…
Spectator letters: England’s defining myth, and another forgotten genocide
Enemies within Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much…
The other union
The election campaign is becoming increasingly dominated by a small party whose raison d’être is to preach independence from membership…
Plutarch and Aristotle vs Lynton Crosby
Attack Ed Miliband and sing up the long-term economic plan: that is the now obviously useless scheme devised by the…
Barometer
Any answers? Nigel Farage accused the audience in the BBC opposition leaders’ debate of being left-wing. Need insulting an audience…
Florence weeps
From ‘Soldiers of Italy’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: It is winter in Florence. The sun shines, but snow lies low on Monte…
Portrait of the week
Home The prospect of a parliamentary alliance between Labour and the Scottish National Party injected an element of fear into…
Cameron led calls to remove Gaddafi. Why is he silent on Libya's drowning refugees?
One Friday, 28 people were rescued by the Italian coastguard when the boat on which they were fleeing Libya capsized in…
Portrait of the week
Home Launching the Conservative party manifesto, David Cameron, the party leader, told voters he wanted to ‘turn the good news…
David Starkey’s diary: Why don’t we celebrate the triumphs of private dentistry?
To the dentist. And for an extraction. I hadn’t had a tooth out in decades. But the twinges when I…
Campaign songs and the singers who wish they weren’t
Out of tune The use of a song, ‘Love Natural’ by the Crystal Fighters, at the launch of the Labour…
Demosthenes vs Michael Fallon
Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon’s claim that Ed Miliband, having practised on his brother, would also stab his…
Am I still an Englishman?
From ‘Some reflections of an alien enemy: the contradiction between being and feeling an Englishman, by a Czech’, The Spectator, 17…
Spectator letters: The mobility scooters strike back
The real road menace Sir: I write in anger after reading Mark Mason’s malicious attack on mobility scooters (‘Hell on…
A deadly silence
One Friday, 28 people were rescued by the Italian coastguard when the boat on which they were fleeing Libya capsized in…
Demosthenes vs Michael Fallon
Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon’s claim that Ed Miliband, having practised on his brother, would also stab his…
Barometer
Out of tune The use of a song, ‘Love Natural’ by the Crystal Fighters, at the launch of the Labour…
Am I still an Englishman?
From ‘Some reflections of an alien enemy: the contradiction between being and feeling an Englishman, by a Czech’, The Spectator, 17…
Portrait of the week
Home Launching the Conservative party manifesto, David Cameron, the party leader, told voters he wanted to ‘turn the good news…
Won't somebody please try to win this election?
The age of two-party politics is over: we know that because everyone keeps saying so. We are entering an era…
