Banning Huawei is right, but late – and bad for productivity
This column has been banging on about the peculiar nature of Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, ever since its expanded…
The state of the Union
The greatest single danger to this government is the state of the Union. Prime ministers can survive many things, but…
Diary
A rare illness has broken out in Westminster. Last week a case of what was known before Brexit as ‘consensus’…
Sweetness and light
Who would imagine that Johann Zoffany’s celebrated 1780 depiction of the extensive Sharp family happily making music on their pleasure…
All change
A journalist and poet based in Zagreb, Robert Perišic was in his early twenties when the socialist federal republic of…
Fowl indignity
It wasn’t Henri IV’s Sunday poule au pot or Herbert Hoover’s less sexy-sounding chicken in every pot, but even in…
Dark secrets
Passé Blanc is the Creole expression — widely used in the US — for black people ‘passing for white’ to…
Only human after all
Ludwig von Beethoven belongs among those men whom not only Vienna and Germany, but Europe and our entire age revere.…
Mugs
Rishi Sunak found himself in hot water last week, though fortunately it was not too hot. Just the right temperature,…
The ugly side of the beautiful game
So all that sound and fury about Manchester City’s sins signified precisely nothing. Well, a €10 million fine isn’t nothing,…
How to while away the winter
Competition is stiff among museums in Iceland. The Phallological Museum in Húsavík, devoted to the penis, stands tall in a…
Deadweight
I was trying to understand what they meant on the wireless by deadweight costs. These were something to do with…
Net effect
Let’s face it. Theatre via the internet is barely theatre. It takes a huge amount of creativity and inventiveness to…
Corona-gardening
The American diet was probably at its healthiest in the second world war. Fearing interruption to supply chains, Washington launched…
Licensed to kill
Clemency stars Alfre Woodard as a prison warden on death row whose job is beginning to take its toll, and…
Letters
Growing pains Sir: James Forsyth (‘Rewiring the state’, 4 July) shocked this loyal Spectator reader with the following: ‘Even before…
The mask slips
When Michael Gove delivered the Ditchley Annual Lecture last month he spoke about why citizens feel that the political system…
Wars and unjust peace
In 1984, China agreed a ‘one country, two systems’ treaty with the UK, designed to control the relationship between Hong…
Selves examined
Gwyneth Paltrow has a new neighbour. On the same block in Notting Hill as Gwynie’s Goop store, with its This…
The keys to Beethoven
If you want to understand Beethoven, listen to his piano sonatas. Without them, you’ll never grasp how the same man…
Containing multitudes
It might seem a bit of a stretch to see deep similarities between Michaela Coel (young, female, black and currently…
