Margaret Thatcher

What if Thatcher won the 1990 leadership challenge?

23 November 2020 5:40 am

Thirty years ago today, Margaret Thatcher was in 10 Downing Street. For almost eleven and a half years, it had…

thatcher academics

Why academics hold Thatcher and Trump in such contempt

19 November 2020 1:15 am

‘Has that orange baboon gone yet?’ asked a senior professor in the teacher’s room at my university yesterday. The remark…

The Spectator’s proud history of standing up for Hong Kong

6 June 2020 9:00 am

This week in 1989, the Chinese authorities massacred protestors in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. I was editing this paper. It struck…

How much are people eating during lockdown?

4 April 2020 9:00 am

People power Boris Johnson said that the reaction to the coronavirus crisis showed ‘There really is such a thing as…

How Boris Johnson can emulate Margaret Thatcher

26 January 2020 6:30 pm

An open letter to Boris Johnson: People, even including your opponents, are getting used to the idea that you are…

Labour’s failure isn’t necessarily the Tories’ success

21 December 2019 9:00 am

A moment arrives when one does just have to admit defeat. We shall leave the European Union and there isn’t…

My friend Margaret Thatcher

14 December 2019 9:00 am

By the time you read this it will all be over, but will it? I’ve had a bad feeling all…

Politics of a certain vintage – and wine to match

7 December 2019 9:00 am

I wonder how they do things now at Tory headquarters. For the ’79 election, the preparations had been completed weeks…

Letters: David Cameron’s real referendum mistake

26 October 2019 9:00 am

Cameron’s fatal error Sir: Jo Johnson’s otherwise informative review of David Cameron’s For the Record (Books, 12 October) suggests Cameron’s…

Nigel Farage had better hurry up and settle for a peerage

26 October 2019 9:00 am

Last week, an angry Telegraph reader asked me why I had got through a whole column on Brexit without mentioning…

Letters: Shoots should be about quality, not quantity

19 October 2019 9:00 am

Bad sport Sir: At last a respected member of the shooting community has popped his head above the parapet. Patrick…

We selfish gits must wear the name with pride

12 October 2019 9:00 am

I walked down Villiers Street to Embankment Tube station. In front of me were two Extinction Rebels, a mother and…

A vintage tale of Thatcher, Reagan and some truly great wines

12 October 2019 9:00 am

Poor Old Girl. The final act may not have been sanglante, but as the third volume of Charles Moore’s life…

Why didn’t Cameron realise the ‘strength of feeling’ about Brexit?

21 September 2019 9:00 am

In his memoirs, David Cameron admits that he ‘did not fully appreciate the strength of feeling’ in favour of Brexit,…

The PPI scandal ends at last – but the nuisance calls will keep coming

7 September 2019 9:00 am

Of all the stains on the reputation of UK banks, the PPI scandal is surely the most shameful, the most…

Boris Johnson is the EU’s nemesis. But could he be Europe’s saviour?

16 August 2019 5:25 pm

It is a curious and rather moving experience to see someone you have known for thirty-five years standing in front…

Will the next prime minister betray Hong Kong again?

27 June 2019 7:54 pm

For many years, a framed cover of The Spectator looked down, like a silent reproach, on the drinkers in the…

Just who – or what – are the men in suits?

1 June 2019 9:00 am

After he invented the term young fogey (in The Spectator in 1984), the much lamented journalist Alan Watkins coined the…

Geoffrey Hill. Credit: Peter Everard Smith

Last lines on Brexit from Geoffrey Hill

25 May 2019 9:00 am

In 2012 OUP published Geoffrey Hill’s Collected Poems; they could have waited, because they’re now going to need another edition.…

summer of biden

Are you ready for the Summer of Biden?

6 May 2019 8:37 am

Ah Biden, Sleepy Joe, the gaffe machine from Scranton, Penn. He’s familiar to everyone, but an unknown quantity as a…

Backing Mrs Thatcher

27 April 2019 9:00 am

From ‘Be brave’, 28 April 1979: We can think of a number of reasons why voters might feel reluctant to…

It’s not science I don’t trust – it’s the scientists

25 August 2018 9:00 am

Everyone knows the real reason people like Donald Trump are sceptical of climate change is that conservatives are fundamentally anti-science.…

The Spectator’s notes

23 September 2017 9:00 am

Sir David Norgrove, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), is an honourable man. When he publicly rebuked Boris…

Algy Cluff on Margaret Thatcher, Robert Mugabe and Brexit

30 April 2016 9:00 am

Former Spectator owner Algy Cluff on Margaret Thatcher, Robert Mugabe and Brexit

From Grayson Perry’s Sketchbooks

Self-portrait as Margaret Thatcher in a pink power-suit — by Grayson Perry

16 April 2016 9:00 am

Well, he’s back. Though you’d be forgiven for thinking he’d never been away. Fresh from delivering the Reith lectures, exhibitions…