Columnists

Columns

James Forsyth

Politics: Miliband pitches his tent with the protestors  

During the Depression, tent cities sprung up across America. Today, in the second great contraction, they are appearing in the financial centres of the western world. But there is a crucial difference: the contemporary campers are there out of choice not necessity. Pitching your tent has become the fashionable form of protest. It is easy

Go on, Sarko, tell us another

The typical cowardice of French journalists has prevented us from knowing the full details of that off-the-record chat between Nicolas Sarkozy and President Barack Obama — until now. Hitherto we had to make do with Sarkozy’s rather boring attack upon the Israeli leader Benyamin Netanyahu: ‘I cannot bear Netanyahu, he is a liar.’ To which

Why, as the Great War recedes further into the past, does it loom larger?

Another Remembrance Day app­roaches as I write. Another autumnal Sunday; another Last Post; those poppies again; in Derbyshire the church parades; another nationwide two-minute silence. The occasion always sets me thinking about what people call ‘perspective’ in history. Sir Percy Cradock, leaving Peking as ambassador nearly 30 years ago, said something about history’s rear-view mirror

Don’t expect the BBC to tell you, but Ukip is on the march

 ‘Farage has only got one ball.’ The last time I made reference to the Ukip leader’s monotesticular status, I got a rocket from an outraged reader. But the reader had missed the point entirely. Nigel Farage’s handicap is a strength, not a weakness. He’s open about it, he’s unembarrassed by it and he’s a better

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes | 12 November 2011

As the eurozone totters, David Cameron risks imitating those western politicians in the late Eighties so worried about instability that they wanted to prop up the Soviet Union. He ought to recognise that Europe’s difficulty is Britain’s opportunity. He should not be investing money or political capital in the survival of the eurozone. Since everything

Any other business