Columns

My fears about the new ‘extremism commission’

The Egyptian-born Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi was once invited to speak in this country — and the row which developed as a consequence was both entertaining and instructive. Many people said he shouldn’t be given a visa because of his ‘extremism’. Others, such as the mainstream UK Muslim organisations, insisted that this was a libellous

James Forsyth

The Tories need a ‘what’ as much as a ‘who’

Theresa May has made it to the summer. In the aftermath of the election, Downing Street’s immediate aim was to get the Prime Minister to the parliamentary recess. On Thursday they succeeded. They think that the next six weeks will give the government a much-needed chance to regroup and catch its breath. Like a cricket

Matthew Parris

Dear Leavebugs, it’s time to admit your mistake

‘Brexit,’ says my friend David Aaronovitch, ‘is dying.’ We Remainer irreconcilables certainly hope so. But there’s a slim chance the grisly Brexit project could yet pull through, and it’s right to acknowledge this. So in a spirit of candid friendship I write this letter to die-hard Leavers, of whom a small — but vigorous —

A vicious reaction to a very bad word

Having a nigger in the woodpile and a skeleton in the closet are closely related problems, although subtly different. In the first case it is a problem which is lurking, hitherto unseen, but which may pop up very soon to cause mayhem and mischief. In the second case it is a problem which has been

James Delingpole

Let’s keep up the Moggmentum

‘We need to talk about why the internet is falling in love with Jacob Rees-Mogg, because it’s not OK,’ warns a recent post on the Corbynista website The Canary. Its anxiety is not misplaced. Polite, eloquent, witty, well-informed, coherent, principled — Jacob Rees-Mogg is the antithesis of almost every-thing the Labour party stands for under

Hugo Rifkind

Labour’s middle-class problem

Be fair. Theresa May’s plan actually half-worked. No, there was a plan. I know the consensus now seems to be that the entire election was motivated by little more a succession of senior Tories saying ‘Gosh yes, everybody loves you!’ to the Prime Minister while Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy stood behind her chair, slapping

Corbyn can be beaten – here’s how

The Tory party is suffering from an intellectual crisis of confidence. Before 8 June, its collective view was that Jeremy Corbyn was simply too left-wing to be a serious candidate for the prime ministership in modern Britain. He hadn’t learnt the lessons of Labour’s defeats in the 1980s, and while he might excite a noisy

Mary Wakefield

The strange case of my first love and the stolen Stradivarius

Because I’d been reading about Stradivarius on the bus home, my helpful iPhone suggested a related story: the Totenberg Ames Stradivarius, stolen and ‘silent for decades’, was to be played again in concert. Idly, on the hot top deck of the 38, I read on. Roman Totenberg, the celebrated Polish-American violinist, was 70 when his

Matthew Parris

How not to handle an independence referendum

If David Cameron seeks any testament to his handling of Britain’s difficulties with Scottish separatism, the mess that Spain is making of a very comparable demand from Catalan separatists could stand as grisly evidence of how not to do it. The government of Catalonia in Barcelona has defied Madrid by announcing an October referendum on

Rod Liddle

Being anti-smoking damages your mental health

I lit a cigarette in an open-air car park a couple of years ago as I was walking to the exit. I noticed a Nissan Micra heading towards me from the far corner and thought at first it was going to run me over. But it pulled up alongside and a woman put her head

Why May must stay

Sometimes crises end simply because all of the participants are exhausted. Essentially, this is what has happened with the post-election Tory leadership crisis. No one has the energy for a fight, so Theresa May carries on as Prime Minister. Conservative MPs say it is now almost certain that she will make it to the summer

James Delingpole

The Bank of England is enslaved by groupthink

I do find it odd that I’m so often having to write about the science of global warming, species extinction and ocean acidification because, though I’ve certainly acquired a pretty useful base knowledge over the years — superior, I’m guessing, to 97 per cent of scientists — it’s really not my main interest. What fascinates

If you’re not tired of London, you’re tired of life

London, city of the damned. City of incendiary tower blocks, jihadi mentals trying to slit your throat, yokels from Somerset up for the day to enjoy a spot of ramming Muslims in a white van. City of Thornberry, Abbott and Corbyn. City of Boris. City of anti-Semitic marches to commemorate Al Quds. City of Isis

Matthew Parris

What should party leaders be allowed to believe?

‘If he can’t be in politics,’ the Archbishop of Canterbury tweeted last week after Tim Farron resigned the leadership of his party, ‘media & politicians have questions.’ So prelates now think complex theological concerns can be despatched within the Twitter limit of 140 characters. They cannot. Let me now unpack Dr Welby’s abbreviated consideration of

Labour’s happy surprise

‘Science,’ wrote Jules Verne, ‘is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.’ Perhaps this is why politics, which claims to be a science, is so littered with tremendous errors at the moment. It wasn’t just the pollsters and the

James Delingpole

I don’t blame millennials for voting for Corbyn

On the morning after the election I was drinking coffee with one of my heroes, Sir Roger Scruton. We talked about the moment during the 1968 Paris évenéments when Scruton, who had been fairly apolitical up to that point, suddenly discovered he was a conservative. He had watched the educated children of privilege wantonly destroying

Rod Liddle

Where are the Tory hordes shrieking ‘lefty scum’?

The Conservative party lost the general election, even if they are still in power (at time of writing). It was a defeat — as awful and fundamental a defeat for the political right as any I can remember. Brexit is now endangered. And few would doubt that a subsequent election would mean a victory for

Why hasn’t the Remain dog barked in this election?

The hopes of those who want Britain to stay in the EU have been dashed by this election. There has been no Brexit backlash. The party that wanted to overturn the result, the Liberal Democrats, have had a minimal impact on the campaign. By the time Britain next goes to the polls in a general