Politics
The Tories’ fate is in their own hands
How will the Tory party remember 2017? Will it be the year it lost its majority, alienated key sections of…
Perishable goods
Labour of Love is the new play by James Graham, the poet laureate of politics. We’re in a derelict…
Portraits of Pakistan
By his own admission, Isambard Wilkinson’s memoir of his experiences in Pakistan a decade ago as a foreign correspondent has…
Alice’s restaurant
Though Alice Waters is not a household name here, that is precisely what she is in America — the best-known…
Low life
My mother has various chronic illnesses and finds it almost impossible to remain both immobile and awake during the day.…
We need ideology in politics
‘Studying history at Balliol,’ writes Chris Patten, ‘I knew that the one thing which made me uneasy was a grand…
We need ideology in politics
‘Studying history at Balliol,’ writes Chris Patten, ‘I knew that the one thing which made me uneasy was a grand…
By Patten or design?
My old friend Richard Ingrams was said always to write The Spectator’s television reviews sitting in the next-door room to…
The turf
Having spent three quarters of my life covering politics and the other quarter following racing, I am often asked what…
In this EU referendum, every vote will be a leap in the dark
Complaining about the EU referendum campaign has become an integral part of the referendum; even Delia Smith has got in…
The monkey-brained case for Donald Trump
A few years ago I was asked to speak at a conference in New York. ‘Where would be the best…
How we went from mere betting to gaming the world
If I prang your car, we can swap insurance details. In the past, it would have been necessary for you…
Tax avoidance and the wisdom of pitchfork-waving crowds
In a way the headline to my fellow columnist Dominic Lawson’s Sunday Times commentary on 12 April said it all.…
How to make the rich pay more tax
The 11 million documents leaked from Panama lawyers Mossack Fonseca tell us much that we know already. It’s hardly news…
It’s not the Corbynites who are in denial – it’s the Labour moderates
It has become commonplace to remark that there exists in Britain a mainstream political grouping that seems to be dwelling…
Farty, smelly and in love with Putin? You must be middle-aged
There are things that happen when you grow older — bad things, harbingers of death and decay. Past the age of…
If you’re stupid enough to let migrants in, at least treat them as people
We were on our way to a party in south-east London when my friend, Rob, saw the graffiti. Sprayed with…
Even Corbyn would find Thomas More’s Utopia too leftwing
Thomas More’s 1516 classic is a textbook for our troubled times, says William Cook
The shocking truth about the English and the Scots: they agree
Last year, the United Kingdom came within 384,000 votes of destruction. A referendum designed to crush the Scottish nationalists instead…
'The tide is turning': Justin Welby interviewed by Michael Gove
An interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby
Life inside Jeremy Corbyn’s crazy party
What life is like inside the Labour party right now
Theatre and transgression in Europe’s last dictatorship
Juan Holzmann goes underground in Minsk with the Belarus Free Theatre
A book that rattles like a pressure-cooker with anger, outrage, frustration and spleen
‘You understand, Lenú, what happens to people: we have too much stuff inside and it swells us, breaks us.’ The…
Niall Ferguson's biography of Henry Kissinger is a masterpiece
I have met Dr Kissinger, properly, only three times. First, in Cairo, in 1980, when, as a junior diplomat escorting…
Sidney Blumenthal: peddler of tired old clichés about British politics
I remember Sidney Blumenthal from my time in Washington in the late 1980s when I was there as the first…
