Even Boris Johnson’s longest-standing supporters now think he might be on the way out. His admission that he attended a Downing Street garden party when the rest of the country was living under strict Covid rules has proved the final straw for politicians ground down by months of negative headlines. MPs complain they’ve had enough, and
If I could lift one thing from younger generations, unpeel one idea from their anxious minds, it would be the notion they have to ‘work on themselves’, and that the point of life is to do this ‘work’ until they feel able to have a relationship, at which point they must grimly set about working
Well, I did warn you. As I typed my column last week on the imminent end of Covid I said I knew that I was tempting fate. The main fear I had in mind was that the moment the magazine hit the newsstands some wild new strain of the virus would break out, wipe out
People seem surprised and a little doubting that the Prime Minister is incapable of remembering if he attended a party in his own back garden in May 2020. It does not come as much of a shock to me, seeing as he has difficulty remembering how many children he has. Beneath that albino mop resides
The headline looked promising: ‘How to argue with a Covid anti-vaxxer.’ And, yes, a Times colleague had put together a good, informative feature assessing some of the bogus arguments flying around in this pandemic. But it was not what I was looking for. Since undergraduate days I’ve been fascinated by the category of mental imbalance
If anyone had any doubts about the wisdom of tempting fate then they probably haven’t considered the case of Betty White and People magazine. Assuming that some Spectator readers are not also subscribers to People, I should inform you that the cover for the current issue features the last of The Golden Girls. ‘Betty White
Typically for my generation, I woke repeatedly as a kid with my pyjamas soaked in sweat because I’d had yet another nightmare about nuclear war. While I rarely dream about mushroom clouds any more, a dark cloud of one shape or another has dogged me like a sooty, vaporous stray for my entire life. For
We are considering privatising or selling off our dog, Jessie. She seemed a rather wonderful idea when we got her nine years ago. But since then she has become a hideously bloated, entitled creature who almost by herself determines how we live our lives. In winter she is particularly tyrannical — she has three walks
In recent years, the notion of cabinet government has been a polite fiction. In theory, the prime minister is merely the first among equals when he meets his secretaries of state. In practice, they all owe their position to No. 10 and usually do what they’re told. The situation was summed up by an old
We’re closing the year by republishing our ten most popular articles in 2021. Here’s number one: Rod Liddle writing in March on Harry and Meghan. Caroline Rose Giuliani, the daughter of the former mayor of New York, Rudy, has been talking to the press about one of her hobbies. Apparently she likes nothing more than playing
A few years back, a hackneyed journalistic come-hither led me to a sober reckoning: would I write about someone alive today whom I especially admire? I couldn’t think of anyone I held in high esteem who wasn’t dead. Either I was surrounded by mediocrities, or I was an ungenerous, withholding jerk. I’m pleased to discover
Despite the political misery for Boris Johnson as he ends the year, he has a big hope: that salaries will boom in 2022. At Conservative party conference in October, he told fellow Tories what to expect. Yes, the country has gone through a phase of economic chaos — and as a result some supermarket shelves
How well-behaved have you been in the second year of Covid? I wouldn’t say I’ve been perfect but I haven’t been that bad. I’ve done most things the government has demanded of me. I’ve had both my Covid jabs. I’ve downloaded a vaccine passport, even though I hate the idea. I’ve squelched antibac gel on
My abiding memory of this fairly appalling year is of the face of the young student at Durham University who shouted ‘Disgusting!’ at me as I left the main college building. This followed a very short speech I’d given to about 250 students but which, I suspect, he hadn’t heard because he’d probably walked out
Since I first read about the torture and murder of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, I’ve had what feels like an A-level philosophy class running in my head. There are still those of us who believe in God, and are preparing to celebrate the birth of His son in a week or so. But how is it
A friend, a Cambridge professor, passing my old college last week, was startled to encounter a young lady standing outside shouting something and carrying a placard exhorting Mathew [sic] Parris to [expletive deleted] off. He wondered if I knew what this was all about. I don’t, but suppose it relates to my Times column arguing
I was recently reading the works of the 17th-century antiquary John Aubrey, who at one point mentions a ghost craze that had broken out in Cirencester. The ‘apparition’ was reported to have disappeared with ‘a curious perfume and most melodious twang’. Reading this I unconsciously got ready for a man as wise as Aubrey to
Is it rude to refer to the Vice President of the USA as the world’s most famous diversity hire? Possibly. But it is the same with so many things that are true. You needn’t take my word for it. Joe Biden made his selection priorities clear when he was confirmed as his party’s nominee last
If, in the days after Storm Arwen, the north of England began to suspect that the south didn’t much care about it, that suspicion has by now hardened into a cert. Many thousands of homes in the north and in Scotland still have no power and, as I write this, Storm Barra has just arrived,
One of this government’s favourite tactics is to act as if the beginning of its time in office was the general election of December 2019. This means it can dodge the usual charge against any party that has been in power for more than a decade: why haven’t you fixed the problem already? Some problems,