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“I am not a manual labourer and please God I shall never be one, but there are some kinds of manual work that I could do if I had to. At a pinch, I could be a tolerable road-sweeper or an inefficient gardener or even a tenth-rate farmhand. But by no conceivable amount of effort
In the last few years, climate change has risen to the top of the agenda for consumers, voters, politicians, and journalists alike. But as well as cutting down emissions and using less plastic, could we also be rethinking the way we use energy at home? Here’s where smart meters come in – a smart meter
As a lifelong Europhile, I rather liked the love letter to Britain from Frans Timmermans, vice president of the new European Commission. We in this country do love Europe, its people, its culture, its quirks, its diversity. Never has Britain been integrated more closely with the rest of Europe, never have we done more trade,
Boris as PM can be a joy! He is bold, he has such enthusiasm, he has marvellous and often funny turns of phrase and he often has great instincts. Take for example his greetings to the Jewish people given just before Christmas on the feast of Hanukkah. It is exuberant, knowledgeable and very moving. This speech
East Germans had a name for their version of ‘woke’ culture’; it was Zersetzung, or ‘decomposition’ in English. It was a form of psychological warfare deployed against citizens suspected of ‘subversive incitement’. There were several techniques to Zersetzung but probably the most effective was what the Stasi described as the ‘systematic discrediting of public reputation’ by
‘People trust us,’ claimed Lord Hall, recently. But like a lot of what you hear from the BBC these days I’m not sure that that is strictly accurate. The BBC’s shamelessly biased news coverage over Brexit was bad enough but what has really started in sticking in viewers’ craws is the way its relentlessly woke
In previous years, Boxing Day has proved an occasion in which high profile Tories can find themselves in the firing line for taking part in various fox hunts across the country. However, this Boxing Day, it’s another political figure making headlines for their interactions with a fox. Step forward Jolyon Maugham QC. The Remain-supporting lawyer
We’re closing 2019 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 6: Toby Young on Prince Andrew: Like many people, I watched Prince Andrew’s Newsnight meltdown with mounting disbelief. Why had he agreed to do it? It wasn’t as if the general public was clamouring for an answer about what he was
Boris Johnson is nothing like Churchill, a view with which my friend Andrew Roberts concurs. But in the 20-odd years I have known Boris, I have often been struck by his similarity to John Wilkes, 18th-century politician, journalist and catnip to women. A wit and a showman, Wilkes, who denounced European entanglements and championed the
The moment of Boris’s victory makes me stop and look back. In the referendum of 1975 — my first vote — I voted ‘Yes’ (i.e. Remain), but I remember feeling a twinge of admiration for Orkney and Shetland, the only area to vote ‘No’. At Cambridge afterwards, I learnt and liked sovereignty arguments from people
We’re closing 2019 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 7, Paulina Neuding’s piece from October, on bomb attacks in Sweden: One night last week, explosions took place in three different locations in and around Stockholm. There were no injuries this time, just the usual shattered windows, scattered debris and shocked people
They said it In 2019, who said: 1. ‘You have stolen my dreams and my childhood.’ 2. ‘I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at.’ 3. ‘Ninety per cent of giraffes are gay.’ 4. ‘I
Every Christmas I find I am living in the past. I blame my father. He was born in 1910 — before radio, before TV, before cinema had sound, so he and his siblings made their own entertainment at Christmas. He brought up his children to do the same, which is why my unfortunate offspring have
Just to sour the festive mood a little, I thought I’d ask what are your least favourite Christmas songs and carols. I’ve got lots of least favourites. ‘Look to the future now, it’s only just begun’, from Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody is probably the most stupid line ever written in a song. But I like
The 2019 general election will be remembered as one of the most consequential elections in Britain’s recent history. Aside from rejecting a more economically radical Labour Party, the British people used the election to provide what their elected representatives had been unable to provide: an answer to Brexit. For Boris Johnson and the Conservative party, the election
Much of the post-election attention has gone on the next stage of Brexit and the government’s attempts to set down a domestic reform agenda that works for the Tories’ new northern constituencies. As such, the Integrated Security, Defence and Foreign Policy Review, briefed as ‘the deepest review of Britain’s security, defence, and foreign policy since
The newly re-elected MP for Leeds West Rachel Reeves has never got on particularly well with the far-left wing of her party. When Corbyn was elected as Labour leader back in September 2015, Reeves announced she would not be serving in his shadow cabinet. Since then, she has regularly criticised Corbyn, suggesting that he should
We’re closing 2019 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 8: Slavoj Žižek on Roma: My first viewing of Roma left me with a bitter taste: yes, the majority of critics are right in celebrating it as an instant classic, but I couldn’t get rid of the idea that this predominant perception is
Imagine being in love with someone who ignores you eleven months of the year, then suddenly seems really into you. Instead of elation you feel a weird form of pain as your beloved finally smiles on you, and finds you interesting, for you know that it is just a seasonal thing, and that frosty indifference
Diane Abbott I spent the entire day searching for those familiar traditional Christmas delicacies which all kids adore – but could find none anywhere. From shop to shop I went, asking: ‘Do you have any of those large chocolate eggs that children like so much at this time of year? Very often sold in cardboard
Remember when Boris Johnson met Emmanuel Macron for the first time as Prime Minister? It was in August and, as the Guardian made clear to its readers, it was the French president calling the shots. The newspaper illustrated its point with a photograph of the two leaders at their lecterns, the French president looking statesmanlike
I have long since learned, not least from my interview with Al Gore published here in 2017 that the surest way to get called a climate change denier is to quote genuine science that runs counter to the hyperbolic ‘science’ spun by the likes of Gore, Extinction Rebellion and the global Greta community. But no matter,
Just when you might have thought that our departure from the EU was finally dealt with it turns out another cliff edge is looming. We have only a year to agree a trade deal with the rest of Europe. Already there are scare stories about how we may crash out without one, and plenty of
We’re closing 2019 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 9: Mary Wakefield’s article on Benedict Cumberbatch playing her husband: Imagine looking at a photo of a stranger and feeling in response, quite naturally, the sort of happy affection you might feel towards a spouse. Well, it’s weird. In July this year,
I recently tried to put my profession down as ‘actress’ on Instagram, but the only option available from the drop-down menu was ‘actor’. Why? Actress is such a graceful word, so evocative of elegance, refinement and poise that the common and blunt ‘actor’ cannot possibly conjure. It’s even worse when we are referred to as
Spectator writers, past and present, were asked: ‘When have you changed your mind?’ Here is the Prime Minister’s response: What I’ve really changed my mind on was whether it is possible to reset with Russia. I really thought, as I think many foreign secretaries and prime ministers have thought before, that we could start again with
Now that the Tories have replaced Labour as the party of the workers, are we heading towards a one-nation economy? And if so, are the days of ‘rolling back the frontiers of the state’ completely over? It’s not yet clear that the Conservatives have fully come to terms with the enormity of the transformation in
The early promise of the internet – to bring us closer together, better inform us, and spread liberty around the world – can seem naïve today. The internet’s actual effect on our politics, society, and security has been very different. The recent general election was marred by disinformation and fake news, while the outcome of
We’re closing 2019 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 10: Ivan Rogers’s article from June on the prospect of a no-deal Brexit: We all know this is a great country. Sadly, it’s one currently very poorly led by a political elite, some masquerading as non-elite, which has great difficulties discerning and
This year’s Christmas challenge was to compose a poem entitled ‘’Twas the Night Before Brexit’. That seasonal classic ‘A Visit From St Nicholas’, more usually known as ‘The Night Before Christmas’, was published anonymously in 1823 and written by Clement Clarke Moore — or at least he claimed it was. The family of gentleman-poet Henry
It’s an unfashionable thought, but having spent many hours in the university sports hall where constituency votes for Boris Johnson and John McDonnell were counted, I feel freshly in love with democracy. There they all were, local councillors and party workers from across the spectrum; campaigners pursuing personal crusades, from animal rights to the way
The most vocal opponents of our decision to leave the European Union have been the City and big business. For the last three years, from the CBI to the Bank of England to the FT and countless FTSE chairmen and trade groups, there have been hysterical warnings about the consequences of leaving. As Project Fear
I initially misread the reaction of Labour’s leading Corbynites and social media outriders to the party’s most cataclysmic defeat since 1935. I thought they were arguing Labour lost because of Brexit; that Jeremy Corbyn’s unpopularity was purely due to media vilification; and its manifesto evoked only a positive response on the doorstep simply because they
The thumping majority by which both the second reading and the programme motion for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill passed yesterday, confirmed that Boris Johnson will have no problem taking the UK out of the EU on January 31st. This sums up the remarkable position that this government is in. It will have done the main
