What would Margaret Thatcher do about Brexit?
‘What would Margaret Thatcher do about Brexit?’ people keep asking me. Why do they think I would know? If I…
An invitation to carry on insulting me and my fellow Brexiteers
After appearing on Newsnight last week, an #FBPE-monikered keyboard warrior wrote a much liked comment above my picture that read:…
Climate change; the facts — and how you can help to spread them
As the editor of the last book — and the next — in the Institute of Public Affairs’ Climate Change:…
The Conservatives have become the true workers’ party
The party conference season has showcased two very different visions of Britain. Jeremy Corbyn speaks of the country as one…
Portrait of the week: Tory conference, John Lewis cuts jobs and Duchess of Sussex sues
Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, presented the EU with a proposed withdrawal agreement. It entailed Northern Ireland remaining for…
Richard Dawkins: It’s hard to imagine that Leave would win a second referendum
On a book tour to promote Outgrowing God, travelling from London’s Festival Hall to Birmingham and then Manchester, I have…
Are childhood vaccination rates dropping?
Who speaks what The Chancellor, Sajid Javid, included a little Punjabi in his speech to the Tory conference. How many…
Letters: We need judges with practical experience
Judges of experience Sir: In the midst of the furore about the Supreme Court judgment, many people are now questioning…
If Boris snogged Nick Robinson, would he be forgiven?
Manchester It could be caused by desperation, but this Tory conference is very jolly. At last there is something to…
Will Leave voters forgive a Brexit delay?
‘It is definitely less than 50 per cent,’ says one Downing Street source when asked about the chances of a…
Sorry, sir, we only stock books we agree with
I was on my way to the pub the other evening, about seven o’clock, rain lashing down on my head,…
At last, the TV-hogging space invaders have returned to university
‘Hands up which other university parents are bloody glad to have got rid of their lumpen, food-gobbling, space-invading kids…’ When…
Why Downing Street still hasn’t named a new Bank governor
Private secretary: ‘The Bank of England governorship, Prime Minister… opposition MPs have been saying it’s a political stitch-up and calling…
The death of civilised debate
Today nearly all real public discussion has become impossible. Which is why nearly all public thinking has become impossible. Which…
For political discourse to survive, we must be more honest about language
When I was an English literature undergraduate, we were all very careful to avoid what used to be called the…
Paul Dacre: Do I regret the ‘Enemies of the people’ front page? Hell no!
So what to make of the extreme language, veering from the histrionic to the hysterical, dominating political discourse? The words…
Young recycling zealots are talking rubbish
Church attendances may be falling, but there’s a new religion in town: recycling. Its followers are devout and full of…
‘It wasn’t the Russian people who poisoned Skripal, it was just a few guys’: Alexander Lebedev interviewed
Who wants to be a billionaire? Not, apparently, Alexander Lebedev, the self-described ‘Russian ex-oligarch’ who has tried billionaredom and found…
The men I’ve groped (including Boris)
Charlotte Edwardes reports that Boris put his hand on her leg during lunch 20 years ago. Full disclosure, I put…
Brexit grifters are making a killing selling useless advice
Over the past three years, as we have torturously debated our departure from the European Union, we have heard a…
Small but perfectly formed: The Romney and Hythe Railway
‘The smallest public railway in the world.’ So proclaims a faded poster at New Romney Station, the midpoint of the…
Man’s first instinct has always been to return to the sea
Travelling the Indus valley late in the third millennium BC you would have been awed by two Bronze Age megacities,…
Ian McEwan’s anti-Brexit satire is a damp squib
Kafka wrote a novella, The Metamorphosis, about a man who finds himself transformed into a beetle. Now Ian McEwan has…
Where are Yeats, Eliot and Plath in a new survey of 20th-century poetry?
Shelley famously and optimistically proclaimed that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Adorno famously and pessimistically declared that…
Jessie Burton’s The Confession is, frankly, a bit heavy-handed
Jessie Burton is famous for her million-copy bestselling debut novel The Miniaturist, which she followed with The Muse. Now she’s…
