Stephen Daisley

Stephen Daisley

Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail

Israel’s ‘allies’ should reckon with reality

Everyone wants an end to the fighting in Gaza. The United States backs ‘an immediate and sustained ceasefire’. The European Commission urges ‘an agreement on a ceasefire rapidly’. The Brits demand ‘an immediate pause in fighting, then progress towards a sustainable ceasefire’. So eager is the Biden regime for a cessation in hostilities that the

Will NHS Scotland follow suit and ban puberty blockers?

The decision by NHS England to end the prescription of puberty blockers to minors at gender identity clinics will be a source of relief to those who have fought a long, hard and unpopular campaign against this practice. When these people, including whistle-blowing clinicians, feminists, gay rights activists and concerned parents, first stuck their heads

The revolution has devoured AOC

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the super-progressive congresswoman, was leaving the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn with her fiancé when she was confronted by pro-Palestinian activists. Their charge, essentially, was that the vociferously anti-Israel congresswoman wasn’t quite anti-Israel enough.  In a video apparently posted by the activists, AOC can be seen telling them: ‘I need you to understand that

Vulnerable children don’t belong in jail

Britain’s prisons brim with vulnerable people but perhaps the most vulnerable are children. At 30 September 2023, there were 301 children in prison in England and Wales alone. Wetherby Young Offender Institution in Yorkshire is home to 165 of them and a new report from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons makes for troubling reading about

Something the Tories can learn from Canada’s conservatives

When contemplating the scale of the Tories’ expected drubbing in the coming general election, some commentators reach for the example of Canada’s Progressive Conservatives. The 1993 federal election saw the governing centre-right party, which had been in power since 1984, lose all but two of its seats in the House of Commons. It never recovered

Britain’s politicians should never bow to a mob

The government and the SNP are furious at the Speaker over his parliamentary jiggery-pokery on the Gaza vote. In calling Labour’s amendment to an SNP ceasefire motion alongside the government’s amendment, it meant there was no vote on the Nationalists’ original resolution. It was an SNP opposition day in parliament, but the Speaker handed it

Defacing Amy Winehouse’s statue is anti-Semitic

It’s not about Jews, it’s about Zionism. It’s not anti-Semitism, it’s pro-Palestinianism. It’s not racism, it’s social justice.  These are the mantras and all must accept them. To do otherwise is to ‘weaponise’ anti-Semitism, to level false allegations to ‘silence’ critics of Israel. To demean, they say with the gall of the concern troll, ‘real

Britain’s Jews aren’t safe

The explosion of hatred and extremism prompted by the October 7 massacre was never going to limit itself to the Jewish state. Even as early reports were filtering in, the news that Palestinian terrorists had infiltrated Israel and slaughtered its citizens appeared to kickstart a dynamo of Jew-hatred in the West. Since then, we have

Why Donald Cameron should be in the Lords

Finally, Rishi Sunak has put a half-decent Cameron in the House of Lords. In raising Donald Cameron to the peerage and appointing him parliamentary under-secretary of state for Scotland, the Prime Minister has poached one of the sharpest minds in the Scottish Parliament. Cameron has been an MSP for Highlands and Islands for the past

Javier Milei is no populist

When Javier Milei visited Israel and announced that he would be moving Argentina’s embassy to Jerusalem, I suppose that was terribly ‘populist’ of him. Try as I might, I can’t find it in me to be appalled by Milei’s pronouncement, and not because he already floated it during his election campaign. For one thing, it must be

Nothing will change after Mike Freer stands down

Nothing will change in the wake of Mike Freer’s decision to stand down. That a Member of Parliament says he is leaving politics because of intimidation from Islamists is troubling enough, but Freer is a government minister. If the state cannot protect him, can it protect any of us? In a letter to his local

Stephen Daisley

Spain and the mystery of Scotland’s Covid travel list

Nicola Sturgeon had a very rough time at the UK Covid-19 inquiry in Edinburgh yesterday. A sticky moment in particular was when Scottish cabinet minutes were raised showing that the former SNP leader and her senior ministers discussed how to marshal ‘the experience of the coronavirus crisis’ into a fresh campaign for independence, as Isabel

David Cameron is in a muddle over Palestine

The definition of madness, commonly attributed to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In all likelihood, Einstein never said this, but the formulation is useful for understanding not only madness but western policy in the Middle East. (Admittedly, there is substantial overlap.) One idea that fixates

Replacing Sunak won’t rescue the Tories

Sir Simon Clarke’s call to replace Rishi Sunak leans heavily on Tory MPs being in denial about the scale of defeat that could be heading their way. He quotes Alan Clark on the ‘defence mechanism of the psyche’ that allowed Conservatives to disbelieve the landslide thumping forecast ahead of the 1997 election, even though ‘every single device

Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda Bill is a sham

In voting through the government’s Rwanda Bill, Conservative MPs have made a declaration: they want to reduce illegal immigration but they don’t want to take any of the hard choices required to do so. The final version of the Bill is the worst of both worlds, tailored to the sensitivities of the Tory left and

Could a 1997-style wipeout spell the end of the Tories?

There is not a crumb of comfort for the Conservatives in the YouGov poll splashed across the front of this morning’s Daily Telegraph. It forecasts that the Tories will lose 196 seats in the coming general election, a bigger slump than the party suffered in 1997, 1945 or 1929. This would represent the second-worst defeat

Why isn’t the Sun backing Starmer?

The Sun’s reporting on Sir Keir Starmer’s legal activities is strident and therefore curious. The paper reports, in thunderous terms, on a number of convicted murderers in Commonwealth countries whom Starmer saved from the noose. It notes that, as these cases took place abroad, the former barrister was not bound by the cab rank rule

The Reform party is just another Thatcherite redux

What exactly does the Reform party stand for? Helpfully, its leader Richard Tice gave a press conference on Wednesday at which he sketched out some of his party’s principles and policies. The millionaire businessman described the Tories and Labour as ‘two sides of the same socialist coin’, citing in evidence ‘record high taxes’, ‘record high wasteful government

Who will remind the Met Police of their duties?

On Saturday, according to the Daily Telegraph, pro-Palestinian protestors ‘brought Oxford Street to a standstill on one of the busiest shopping days of the Christmas period’. The organisers, Sisters Uncut, declared that ‘Christmas is cancelled’ while placards read ‘no shopping while bombs are dropping’ – a reference to Israel’s military response to the 7 October