My plans for The Spectator
Shortly after Boris Johnson was selected as the Conservative candidate for Henley, he invited me to lunch at The Spectator.…
Can Morgan McSweeney reboot the government machine?
The Queen is dead: long live the King. This week brought an end to Downing Street’s unhappy experiment in dyarchy.…
Is it ever ok to call women ‘birds’?
Towards the end of the 1980s, Jeffrey Bernard, late of this magazine, sometimes used to wear grey shoes with jeans…
Plutarch’s lessons for Labour
The lives of those daily in the public eye are bound to attract attention, especially when they are politicians telling…
Why C of E bishops are so bland
Nolo episcopari. These were the words a person was expected to say on being offered an episcopal see. It basically…
Does Keir Starmer have a soul?
One of the main arguments against hereditary peerages is that talent and ability are not always passed down across generations.…
Who works as a bouncer or security guard?
Farewell, Chagos The government announced that it would hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. There are 13 other…
Meeting the Chagos islanders of Crawley
Departing Gatwick train station, with nine minutes till Crawley, I tried to get in the head of a Chagossian. In…
Liberals are not just stupid – they’re dangerous
We held a small party to celebrate the news that the UK had seen its largest rise in population in…
The ladies who punch
Double jab, right, hook body, duck, right… Right, left, right, upper, four hooks… Ten straight punches… And ten more… Twenty…
Can Labour resist China’s embrace?
The Foreign Secretary David Lammy will touch down in Beijing next week to pay his respects. Next year, Rachel Reeves,…
Who will dress Keir Starmer now?
It is worth upholding the stuffy point which should have prevailed at the start. It was always improper and unethical…
The art of swearing
Sometimes it’s the only word that will do. Every journalist at Max Verstappen’s press conference last month understood him perfectly…
My friend the pariah
Spectator TV viewers may recall that in last week’s Americano podcast, Freddy Gray interviewed the University of Pennsylvania law professor…
How I keep Question Time audiences under control
Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love – or it’s supposed to be. William Penn, good Quaker that he was,…
An ode to lamplighting
I was growing impatient with a recent blog by Sam Altman, who runs OpenAI, promising progress, universal prosperity, ‘a space…
The sugared-almond theory of economic consequence
Let me ease you gently into a big and boring-sounding word for a small dishonesty that today corrupts the language…
