Boris Johnson
‘People can’t take a joke these days’: Michael Heath on wokeness, The Spectator and turning 90
When I joined The Spectator, the office was in Bloomsbury, in a four-storey Georgian house, and the further down the…
The mystery of Rapa Nui’s moai may be solved
The vast, painstakingly carved stone figures are thought to represent ancestors – and their partial destruction to signify punishment for their failure as guardians
Relations with Europe provide the key to British postwar politics
Tom McTague shows how the two most consequential decisions for Britain over the past 80 years have been entering the European Union in 1973 and leaving it in 2020
The shocking state of perinatal care in Britain
Theo Clarke gathers heartbreaking instances of infant mortality, medical malpractice and severe post-partum trauma in the nation’s maternity wards
Being stalked by a murderer was just one of life’s problems – Sarah Vine
At times one cannot believe what the Gove family endured during frontline government service, and politics gets much of the blame as Vine looks back over the wreckage
I was right – and Gove was wrong – on lockdown
In an otherwise excellent article for the Sunday Telegraph last week about our government’s hopeless pandemic response, Dan Hannan made…
The punishing life of a chief whip
Simon Hart describes his frustrations as he grapples with the rivalries and petty jealousies of colleagues lobbying for peerages and knighthoods as the Tory party implodes
‘I’m a new kind of Christian’: Jordan Peterson on faith, family and the future of the right
Professor Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychologist, author and commentator whose latest book, We Who Wrestle with God, is about…
‘The public sector is the illness’: Javier Milei on his first year in office
Buenos Aires ‘I never wind down,’ says Argentina’s President Javier Milei when we meet in his Presidential Office at the…
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’
‘I was much more disposable than I believed’: an interview with Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson is enjoying himself back at The Spectator. ‘My place of former employment,’ the former editor booms as he…
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…
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