Boris Johnson
The column you don’t want to read
Curiously unobserved about last month’s US election: how astonishing it was that the candidates’ policy positions during the pandemic played…
Was Graham Brady really the awesome power-broker he imagines?
His kiss-and-tell memoir implies that the past five Tory prime ministers all feared him. But the longtime Chair of the 1922 Committee was in reality no ‘kingmaker’
Nigel told me he’s the new Boris
Last week I arrived in London from the Cotswolds just in time to witness the collective meltdown from everyone around…
Boris Johnson is no Pericles
Boris Johnson’s Unleashed imagines him, like Cincinnatus, leaving his plough, saving Rome, and returning to it. But given that Boris…
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.…
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…
My father was the best of England
I always think of my father at this time of year. In particular, I go back to the summer of…
One damned thing after another: Britain’s crisis-ridden century so far
The Iraq war, the financial crisis, Brexit and Covid have seen many prime ministers blown off course. Will Keir Starmer be any luckier than his predecessors?
Why am I so unlucky in love?
One of my exes is trying to get me arrested. I discovered this when I received an email from the…
What’s really behind the Tories’ present woes?
Geoffrey Wheatcroft identifies two root causes: the disastrous revision of the leadership election procedure, and David Cameron’s turn to the referendum as a device to govern
Who decides which politicians are liars?
This week the Welsh parliament has been debating a law that would ban politicians from lying. Assuming it ends up…
Letters
Whose victory? Sir: Politicians are often accused of engaging in doublespeak, and I fear in the case of Boris Johnson’s…
Fish out of water
As a one-nation Tory, Rory Stewart was not a good fit in the party’s new incarnation. We discover how his desire to make the world a better place was always going to work against him
Should vintage comedy be judged by today’s standards?
A successful joke relies on rhythm, tempo, cadence, pause – so why does David Stubbs find comedy and music so antithetical, wonders Joel Morris
What, if anything, have dictators over the centuries had in common?
Simon Kuper finds little to connect the strongmen of the past and present apart from their contempt for their own supporters
How my brother-in-law Boris got me cancelled
How Boris made me a threat to Mexico
Boris Johnson’s peculiar conservative conversion
In his most recent column for the Mail, Boris Johnson fires a shot at, among other things, ‘the leftie twittersphere’.…
Portrait of the week: Boris locked out, mortgage misery and Titanic submarine search
Home Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, was ritually buried by the House of Commons voting by 354 to seven…
Is Boris Johnson a great man of history?
Boris Johnson has always been an enthusiastic proponent of the long unfashionable ‘great man’ theory of history. As he argued…
If only Britain knew how it was viewed abroad
22 June 2024 9:00 am
If the country were a person, it would need its friends to sit it down and deliver it a few home truths about its damaging behaviour to itself and others, says Michael Peel