Portrait of the week
Home Conservative MPs set about finding two candidates for the party leadership to be put to party members as rival…
Election diary
As a first time candidate in a volatile election, with a member retiring after 43 years, I was keen to…
Diary
All hail social media. In January, I lost my beautiful pussycat Mr Mew, and I have spent six long months…
Low life
I walked into the bar and there was Trev standing in front of a giant screen showing Germany v. Italy…
Jeremy Corbyn and the oracle
Inscribed in the forecourt of the temple of Apollo in Delphi were the famous words gnôthi sauton (‘know yourself’) and…
2268: In state
The unclued lights (two of two words) are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer among other reference books. Elsewhere, ignore…
The meaning of the Somme
From ‘News of the week’, The Spectator, 8 July 1916: On the surface of London life there is hardly a ripple,…
Letters
Junior elitists Sir: In response to Andrew Peters’s reminder that in many cultures it is the older and more experienced…
Old news to Speccie readers
The Coalition has embarked upon a risky Labor-style experiment, hoping Mr Turnbull’s sugar hit in the polls will see them…
The Spectator’s notes
Before she was murdered, Jo Cox MP had written most of a report. She worked on it jointly it with…
Malcolm can’t blame Tony for this one
On election night Liberals expected to be clear winners of the longest campaign in memory, with Malcolm Turnbull having vanquished…
Forget the Grand Mess, here’s the fun stuff
There’s something a little-dispiriting about waking up one morning to find that our elected politicians are even more psychopathic, deranged…
Accentuate the positive
Fifty years ago on Monday the World Service programme Outlook was launched as an innovative news and current affairs programme…
For the first time, I feel ashamed to be British
Before even writing this I know what response it will meet. Some who fought for Leave on 23 June will…
Long life
Amid the bloodshed and chaos that followed David Cameron’s resignation as prime minister, Theresa May earned praise for seeking to…
A sad new British status symbol: the second passport in the bedside drawer
I suppose I could probably get a Polish passport. Both of my maternal grandparents were Poles, displaced by war and…
Is Brexit’s impact coming at us like a derailed train – or am I panic-mongering?
I enjoyed the Daily Mail’s lambasting of the Financial Times as ‘panic-monger-in-chief’ for its doom-laden post-Brexit tone: ‘Is it determined…
The art of the quit
Brits don’t quit,’ said David Cameron two weeks ago, to which the obvious rejoinder is: ‘Oh but they do!’ The…
A new workers’ party
We are living through the most intense political drama in modern British history. The vote to leave the European Union…
A touch of class
Cliveden is a good review for a divided country and I have waited, not too long, for it to feel…
‘I had to step up’
On the way to interview Michael Gove, we meet a government minister, an Old Etonian, who suggests we ask him,…
Sleepless by the strait
In my novel Three Daughters of Eve, a well educated housewife with kids looks at her motherland, Turkey, and thinks:…
Frexit – oui ou non?
In France, Brexit has provoked resentment and shock. For many years-Britain has been seen in both Paris and-Brussels as the…
In the name of God, go!
Even if he scrapes in, Malcolm Turnbull has lost this election, as this column warned on 28 May. If he…
Give us a break!
As Boris Johnson will know from his love of Greek tragedy, hubris leads to nemesis. And it is Boris’s own…
