Matthew Parris

Matthew Parris

Matthew Parris is a columnist for The Spectator and The Times.

Can we trust the people? I’m no longer sure

The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States may have signalled the death of the closest thing we have to a religion in politics. On both sides of the Atlantic, democracy risks being knocked from the high altar as an unmitigated and unquestioned good. The man’s obviously a fool and a nasty

Can we trust the people? After Trump, I’m no longer sure

This piece is from the new issue of The Spectator, out tomorrow. This week's cover: Planet Trump, with @Freddygray31, Rod Liddle, @MatthewParris3, @DouglasKMurray, @anneapplebaum and many more pic.twitter.com/jXXxHkjuOA — The Spectator (@spectator) November 9, 2016 The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States may have signalled the death of the closest thing

Why didn’t I celebrate Oscar Wilde’s birthday?

On Wednesday 19 October at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane in London, a reception was held to celebrate Oscar Wilde’s birthday. Invited by the excellent Gyles Brandreth, I arrived in good time. But as I approached the doors of the reception room, something stopped me. These are the facts. But what is the

At all three party conferences, I felt cut adrift

Perhaps it’s age, perhaps disillusion, or perhaps party conferences really aren’t what they used to be, but I have struggled this autumn against something that has seemed to be carrying me away. As with a swimmer drawn from the shore by a strong current he cannot see, I’m trying not to leave but the people

Let the metropolitan elite lead the way

How does one join the Liberal Metro-politan Elite? What should be the qualifications? I must be an LME member because literally thousands of my readers have (over the years) told me so. They don’t mean it kindly, but I take it kindly. ‘Elite’ means ‘the best’, I should hate to be called illiberal, and I

A remarkable testament of hope for Zimbabwe

‘One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed though right were worsted, wrong would triumph Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.’ This comes from Robert Browning’s ‘Epilogue’. It is quoted (though not of himself) in a staggering book by

My fascist moment on the ship of failures

There are no roads from the Peruvian river port of Iquitos, but the rich take aeroplanes. Those who cannot pay to fly may pay the premium for the 40ft motorised express canoes that take only a day to roar to and from the upriver port of Yurimaguas with its bus station. But losers in the

Something must be done for Wales

On Monday 25 July we climbed Cader Idris. No particular reason except a free Monday and a memory of what a fine mountain it looked when, many years ago and heading for the north Wales coast, I skirted this massive ridged hunk of green and black rising from oak forests. Some hills have a strong

The Bible is too important to be left to believers

May I write a review of a review? I have to get this out of my system, having been unable to sleep last night, for anger at Christopher Howse’s beastly, scoffing and unjust treatment of a new book: Simon Loveday’s The Bible for Grown-Ups, reviewed in our 30 July issue. Somebody needs to call a

Don’t knock ‘secret deals’. We’ll need one soon

As a founder member of the Guild of Blair-Bashers, someone who reacted strongly against him from our first encounter at dinner when he was only an opposition spokesman, as a commentator who railed against the invasion of Iraq the moment the idea was mooted and right through to the end, and as a journalist who

For the first time, I feel ashamed to be British

Before even writing this I know what response it will meet. Some who fought for Leave on 23 June will be contemptuous. ‘Bad loser’, ‘diddums’, ‘suck it up’, ‘go and live somewhere else’. From the online Leave brigade who stalk the readers’ comments section beneath media columns I’m already familiar with the attitudes of the

Was there any way not to traduce Cliff Richard?

Sir Cliff Richard will not be charged with historic sex offences, say the police and Crown Prosecution Service. There is ‘insufficient evidence’. You, reader — yes, you: I cannot reveal your name because I’m making this up, but let’s call you Alan, and let’s suppose my reader-ship know very well who you are… you, Alan,

The six best reasons to vote Remain

Like almost everyone, I’ve piled angrily into this fight. But as the debate nears resolution I feel ashamed of all my furious certainties. In the end, none of us knows, and we shouldn’t pretend to. So I’ll try now to express more temperately six thoughts that persist as the early rage subsides. From the first

RIP Gussie, my plainspoken llama

Gussie is the name of a grumpy and ill-natured llama, her coat largely white and somewhat unkempt, and much given to aggressive expectoration. When there’s corn in a bucket, it has been her habit greedily to spit other llamas away, not because she wants corn but to stop them getting any. And Gussie is also

Brexit Tories are feeling disrespected. How awful

There are moments when one wonders whether one is seeing and hearing the same things as others. For me such a moment occurred a fortnight ago when reading The Spectator’s weekly column by our political editor, James Forsyth. James is exceptionally well plugged in to the world of Westminster, but — beyond that — a

The wisdom of pitchfork-waving crowds

In a way the headline to my fellow columnist Dominic Lawson’s Sunday Times commentary on 12 April said it all. ‘Join the pitchfork wavers on tax, Mr Cameron, and you end up skewered.’ The column had something of an 18th-century ring to it, conjuring in my mind’s eye an elegant London dinner party, with men-about-town

The wisdom of pitchfork-wielding crowds

In a way the headline to my fellow columnist Dominic Lawson’s Sunday Times commentary on 12 April said it all. ‘Join the pitchfork wavers on tax, Mr Cameron, and you end up skewered.’ The column had something of an 18th-century ring to it, conjuring in my mind’s eye an elegant London dinner party, with men-about-town

The book that made me a Tory (maybe I’ll give it to Osborne)

His father’s dental cast, writes Graham Greene near the beginning of The Power and the Glory ‘had been [Trench’s] favourite toy: they tried to tempt him with Meccano, but fate had struck’. Trench is a dentist, trapped by his chosen profession in a godforsaken Central American hellhole. Greene ponders the way, when we are very

The winged rabbit who made me a Tory

His father’s dental cast, writes Graham Greene near the beginning of The Power and the Glory ‘had been [Trench’s] favourite toy: they tried to tempt him with Meccano, but fate had struck’. Trench is a dentist, trapped by his chosen profession in a godforsaken Central American hellhole. Greene ponders the way, when we are very