Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.

In praise of Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage is the most important British politician of the last decade and the most successful. His resignation leaves a hole in our political system. With enormous intelligence and chutzpah and a refreshingly unorthodox approach, he built Ukip up from nothing to become established as our third largest party and succeeded in his overriding ambition

Michael Gove is going to lose, and lose badly

There is a slap Michael Gove game on the internet, and it’s very popular. All you have to do is slap him in the face. I must admit I was tempted when I read his synthetically pious toss about how he had felt forced to stand as leader, deep sense of regret, false humility leaking

Three great myths of the sulking Remainers

I think my favourite moment of the referendum campaign was John Major’s intervention, a couple of weeks before polling day. In that immediately recognisable tone of condescension tinged with snippy petulance, which we all remember and love so well from the time of his magnificent stewardship of this country, he said that people who didn’t

How much longer can David Lammy hold on?

It’s all looking very grim for Lammy. My petition to have him removed as MP for Tottenham has now soared past the 3,000 mark. He surely cannot hang on much longer. Another 2,000 signatories and we will have proved, beyond all doubt, that he is not fit to sit as an MP, because he does

Lammy Out! Sign my petition to oust David Lammy

The petition to demand a second a referendum has now reached 2.8 million signatories. There’s an awful lot of people in this country who do not understand democracy; they can scream abuse at Boris and demonstrate in central London, write long anguished letters to the Grauniad and act like petulant children, but they still will not

Can a nutter also be a terrorist?

When is a nutter not a nutter, but a politically motivated terrorist? And are those two states of being always mutually exclusive? Or are they always the same thing? That first question was asked, in a fairly gentle manner, by a Muslim mate of mine on a social media site. The thread had been about

Rod Liddle

Rise of the atrocity exhibitionists

Life is speeded up. It used to be that when a hideous atrocity occurred people waited a day or two, even a week, before co-opting it into their political armoury. Now it happens while the smell of cordite is still in the air and before the blood has dried. There is a breathtaking shamelessness about

The EU bullies everyone – on both the Left and the Right

The prevalent notion is that all those people who wish for us to leave the European Union are thick as mince ‘Little Englanders’ (the wrong insult, incidentally), motivated by racism, nostalgia and xenophobic spite. The left-wing argument to get the hell out has been scarcely touched upon, and yet it is – for me, at

Naked lunches and hidden bigotry

Have you got your names down yet for the Bunyadi? I’d hurry, if I were you. There’s currently a waiting list of more than 40,000, most of them homo-sexual Camden cyclists, I would guess. The Bunyadi is the country’s first nude restaurant and is, of course, in London. You go in, take all of your

Yay, root out those Jew-haters, Jeremy!

A long and arduous flight back from the Caucasus, but worth it nonetheless for the meaningful protest we had staged in the fragrant and lovely Georgian capital, Tbilisi. They have opened a vegan restaurant there called the Café Kiwi — an affront not just to ordinary Georgians, but to all right-thinking people, surely. A bunch

Voters have no time for the flaccid centre

A depression has settled on the Liddle household ever since Norbert Hofer narrowly failed in his bid to become the president of Austria. I like a man who keeps a Glock pistol in his jacket pocket, and there is something noble in the cut of his jib. Norbert was thwarted by the voters of Red

My take on the England football team

Apologies for the lack of blogs – I’ve been on jury duty for two weeks. Hang the bastard, regardless of the evidence, was my watchword as jury foreman. Anyway, normal service will soon be resumed. In the interim, let me give the few of you who care about football my take on the England team

Will Labour convict me of thought crime?

I got an email this week, from a chap called Harry, which began as follows: ‘I am writing to inform you that I will be carrying out the investigation on behalf of the Labour party into the circumstances that resulted in your suspension from the party.’ Harry went on to say that he will be ‘conducting

Write a leftie column and win a doctorate

I see that law students at Oxford University were told that if they found the contents of a lecture on rape and sexual assault ‘distressing’, they would be permitted to absent themselves. This is an interesting approach for future lawyers and barristers. Perhaps, further down the line, they will excuse themselves in court when the