Portrait of the week
Home David Cameron, who was cutting up lettuce in his kitchen, told James Landale of the BBC that he would not…
For the Time Being
Time slips away while we conjecture how to make best use of it. Waking late, the hours already sliding by,…
Studio Portrait
My uncle in his uniform, dog-collared, briar clutched at an angle, brilliantined hair with a central parting,très debonaire. This could…
Independents’ day
Sometimes a guy feels abstracted from the world. He visits Europe’s finest galleries, but the paintings seem to hang like…
Why this long-awaited FTSE100 peak deserves only a small cheer
The FTSE100 index has at last breached 7,000, surpassing its peak of 30 December 1999 and provoking moderate celebration among…
If you’re my age, the present is a foreign country
There was a letter to the Daily Telegraph last weekend which depressed me more than anything I’ve read in ages.…
How to make a political party vanish
The establishment drive to marginalise Ukip has been under way for three months now, and it has having its effect.…
Election diary
It’s just six days before the Israeli elections. Bibi versus Buji and Tzipi. Labor’s Isaac ‘Buji’ Herzog and Hatnuah’s Tzipora…
The wrong trousers
In 1986, the year after he officially became an Eminent Person courtesy of both the United Nations and the Commonwealth,…
Australian notes
It was the only local meeting that I managed to get to in the NSW election campaigns. I expected the…
Portrait of the week
Home In a Budget intended to have ‘no gimmicks, no giveaways’, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, offered pensioners…
Barometer
Plus: petitions to rival Jeremy Clarkson’s; racial discrimination cases; and a cat comparison
What the censors miss
From ‘Unofficial News’, The Spectator, 13 March 1915: The exclusion of war correspondents from the firing line has greatly reduced the…
Osborne’s decisive moment
Wednesday’s performance was an example of just how crucial George Osborne’s skill at horse-trading could be to the Conservatives’ future
Liberal absolutism may be the worst kind of all
If you transgress any of a vast array of PC shibboleths, fury will rain down on you
The zealotry of anti-zealots is alarming me
The views expressed by anti-Islamists are hateful towards all Muslims, and to those of us who don’t share their own antipathy
Why no one’s telling the truth about Scotland
Labour's commitment to the Union is as shallow as the Tories' – which, it is now clear, is saying something
A truly radical review of business rates is worth more than all the Budget spin
Plus: Greece, Germany and forgiveness; and bankers in need of a little more hellfire
A miracle at work
If a jobs boom also creates demand for immigrants, it is apparently too embarrassing to mention
Stolen Kisses
This elfin child was taken into care, And maintenance devolved upon the State. His whimpering mother was inadequate, His father…
I blame the parents
If Britain really does have a youth mental health crisis, it’s not hard to see why
A lesson in bias
The ‘rigorous review’ for DFID of private education in poor countries is anything but
