One of the mistakes Theresa May made in calling an early election was not anticipating the effect it would have on the Labour party. Up until April 2017, Labour had been noisily divided between the parliamentary party — the vast majority of whom had no confidence in its leadership — and Jeremy Corbyn whom they
There’s a very funny moment in Jon Ronson’s book Them: Adventures with Extremists, part of which follows the New Age mental case David Icke on a tour of Canada. All the way across the great plains, Icke has been promulgating his thesis that we are the unwitting subjects of shape-shifting reptilian alien overlords. Aside from
After an essay in this month’s Prospect about literature and freedom of speech, it seems I was cited on Twitter as a ‘racist provocateur’. Now, I rather fancy being a ‘provocateur’. But as for the adjective… Someone can call you ‘stupid’, and that’s just one person’s opinion. It doesn’t seem true because a single childish
When Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, ejected from the aeroplane he was flying solo to Scotland, he parachuted to the ground and, injured, was taken to the local police station. This was 1941 and he had come on a doomed mission to draw the United Kingdom into peace negotiations. Hess’s aim was to deliver his proposals
Theresa May’s Home Office record is normally off limits at cabinet. But when ministers discussed the government’s strategy for reducing violent crime on Tuesday, Boris Johnson took issue with what the Prime Minister regards as one of her key legacies: the dramatic reduction in stop and search. He argued that more stop and search was
‘No one wants to send their son to Eton any more,’ I learned from last week’s Spectator Schools supplement. It explained how parents who’d been privately educated themselves were increasingly reluctant to extend the privilege to their offspring; some because they can’t bear for their darling babies to board, others because the fees are way
My friend’s ten-year-old daughter has a new hobby. Like many of her school pals, she hopes to become a video blogger — a ‘vlogger’. She has started to record clips of herself for others to watch, share and ‘like’. She showed me a few, then gave me a list of famous vloggers to watch: JoJo
There was a growling Russian maniac on the BBC’s Today programme last week, an MP from the United Russia party called Vitaly Milonov. Breathing rather heavily, as if he were pleasuring himself, Mr Milonov likened our country to Hitler’s Germany for having accused Russia over the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
The single most important domestic policy decision that the Conservatives must take is what to do about public spending. After the snap election went so wrong last year, many Tories rushed to blame ‘austerity’. Gavin Barwell, now Theresa May’s chief of staff, said this was one of the principal reasons he had lost his Croydon
Ever since Theresa May’s clarion address of the UK’s housing shortage (and how many successive PMs have embarked on the same brave heave-ho?) countless comment pieces have addressed the real problem that drives the disjunction between supply and demand. Nimbyism. Complex, protracted planning permission. Developer land banking. Rich Chinese and Russians investing in unoccupied properties
As I write, a great gale is blowing in from Lake Turkana. The dry hills on the other side, always faint, have disappeared. Sheets of warm rain lash our tent, rollers crash on to the white sandy shore, huge pelicans struggle against the wind, the flamingos are gone, and fishermen like thin black sticks —
Last time I was in South Africa I spent two weeks deep in the Karoo, that desiccated wasteland in the Northern Cape which is home only to a handful of jackals, the occasional springbok and supporters of the Afrikaaner Resistance Movement. I had been visiting Orania, a smallish town in which no black people are
Last Monday, Theresa May’s chief of staff talked junior ministers through her Mansion House speech. Gavin Barwell was frank with them. The decision to stay in various EU agencies — and the commitment that UK regulatory standards for goods would remain ‘substantially similar’ to Europe’s — would make it harder to negotiate big trade deals
‘It’s always me who gets the worst of it,’ said the Fawn, surveying the wreckage caused by the burst water pipe. I did not disagree a) because I would have had my head bitten off and b) because it’s true. Though I wouldn’t say I was completely useless: who was the first to spot the
We are becoming a nation of older mothers. The average age at which a woman has her first child is now 30, a fifth reach 45 without having a baby and the usual busybodies are in a flap. The government, which had anyway decided on compulsory relationship classes, thinks the answer lies in more of
Why aren’t children called Roger any more? I wondered this when reading about the sad death of Sir Roger Bannister. Coincidentally, the evening before, my young daughter had been watching The Great Escape and most of the Englishmen in it seemed to be called Roger. The only time you hear the name is in early
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Every time Conservative Leavers speak up demanding a clean break with Brussels, those in the party who want a soft Brexit feel obliged to push back. The latest row has been provoked by a letter from the European Research Group — the most powerful Brexiteer
A few years ago, in these pages, Matthew Parris defined Ukip as a party of extremists. Perhaps one of his llamas had just spat at him and he was feeling a little piqued. Or perhaps he actually meant it, I don’t know. Matthew decided Ukip was a party of extremists because its supporters, in some
Last week, the New York Times ran a very un-New-York-Times-y article, ‘Resentment Grows Over Who Gets Health Care Aid’. It contrasts two women in New Hampshire. Married with one child at 30, last year Gwen Hurd paid more than $11,000 for her family’s health insurance, purchased through the Affordable Care Act exchange. They had to
Few readerships of any intelligent national magazine will be more alive to the perils and downsides of 21st–century cyber-life than you, fellow Spectator readers. Many of you might share my use of the generalised expression ‘the internet’ for the whole damn thing — while not being quite sure what we’re referring to. Few, on the
