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At the hacks’ hustings for the Tory leadership candidates, I asked the five who could be bothered to be held to account by your inky fingered servants a really boring question. Would they accept the definition of a ‘hard border’ on the island of Ireland written into the December joint agreement between the UK and
In less than a month, Theresa May’s premiership will be history. If she is remembered at all, it will mainly be for Brexit. She took on a near-impossible task, made it harder (her misjudged ‘red lines’ from autumn 2016 will always haunt her), and finally failed at it. That had many consequences, not least the
It seems like half of Twitter has fallen in love with Rory Stewart and his whirlwind campaign to become prime minister. But recently, it’s not just centrist swing-voters who’ve been swept off their feet by the International Development Secretary. Certain figures on the pro-no deal side of the Brexit divide now seem to have fallen
With Boris Johnson having all but booked his place in the final two, the most interesting question of the Tory leadership contest right now is whether Rory Stewart can get the 33 votes he needs to get through the next round of voting. If he does, he makes it to Tuesday night’s BBC debate. At
So far in the Tory leadership contests, the candidates have spent a lot of time bashing the frontrunner Boris Johnson. However, with Johnson a sure thing for the final two, the real contest is currently between the other five leadership contenders, hoping to win second place to get on the members’ ballot. Hearing that battle cry,
Is Boris Johnson’s route to No. 10 now unstoppable? The former foreign secretary has more MPs backing him than any other candidate and over the weekend bagged the support of two leadership dropouts – Esther McVey and Matt Hancock. Hancock’s support for Johnson is the most surprising – just a week or so ago the
With four minutes to go, Boris Johnson ran in. I was already concerned – maybe more concerned than Boris. It was an awards ceremony at the Hilton, Park Lane. The room was packed with financial people in bow ties. It was a couple of years before Johnson became Mayor of London. At this point he
On June 7th of this year, five teenagers were arrested in connection with a homophobic attack on two women on a London bus. It was an extremely heinous incident, and prompted widespread condemnation across the UK. But though the crime was grotesque, disingenuous outlets have since used the incident to promote a nefarious idea: that members
One of the most enjoyable videos to watch on YouTube features Colonel Gadafi. I am not referring to those snuff videos which cover the internet in which the Libyan leader is shown getting the sharp end of the Libyan peoples’ emotions. Rather I refer to the Colonel’s seminal, though too infrequently referenced, address to the
The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, dropped out of the leadership race last week and had been mulling whether to support Michael Gove (odds: 25/1) or Boris Johnson (1/5). In the end, he went for Boris. In an article in The Times, he says more. Here’s an edited extract. Central to my outlook is that we need
The first televised Tory leadership debate drew as much attention for who wasn’t there as who was. After Boris Johnson decided to avoid the Channel 4 leadership debate on the grounds that voters had had enough blue-on-blue action (and perhaps also that as the Tory leadership frontrunner he has little to gain and much to
When you consider that Theresa May’s unwise decision to campaign for a ‘dementia tax’ almost single-handedly cost her the general election in 2017, you would think that the current Tory leadership candidates would be very careful about alienating older voters ahead of any upcoming membership vote. Jeremy Hunt, though, seemed to take the opposite tack
It’s the first of the Tory leadership television debates tonight, as the candidates vying to be the next prime minister (minus Boris, who chose not take part) spar over Brexit and their suitability to lead the country in the next stage of the negotiations. And while it might seem like not that long ago that
Jeremy Hunt – EU will be ‘willing to renegotiate’ Brexit deal The Foreign Secretary joined Andrew Marr this morning, days after coming second in round one of the ongoing Conservative leadership contest. With a good chance of reaching the final round, Hunt asserted that, unlike frontrunner Boris Johnson, he would be able to persuade other
Jeremy Corbyn’s right about Iran, isn’t he? On the attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, he tweeted (and don’t you just wish politicians could use a more considered medium?): ‘Britain should act to ease tensions in the Gulf, not fuel a military escalation that began with US withdrawal from the Iran
When Rory Stewart first announced his intention to enter the race to be the UK’s next prime minister, he was seen by colleagues as having little to no chance of making it far in the leadership contest. Yet as the Parliamentary contest goes into its second week, Stewart is one of six contenders left standing
There are plenty of much-anticipated contests in the 2019 Cricket World Cup. But nothing to compare with today’s match at Old Trafford, where India play Pakistan in the latest epic in a rivalry that dates back to Partition in 1947. It’s a rivalry that is regularly punctuated by war. No cricket was played between the
As I write these words, I regret to inform you, John Cleese is on his way to being cancelled. Now there’s a sentence that straddles a generation gap. Many people very familiar with John Cleese will have only the dimmest idea of what ‘cancelled’ means; while people who are all about cancelling celebrities will tend
Although people over 75 will naturally be annoyed to have to pay their television licence fee once more — unless they are poor enough to qualify for pension credit — the decision will, in fact, empower them. Gordon Brown should never have let them off payment in the first place since they are the greatest
We are all aware that Jo Brand saying battery acid would be a more appropriate liquid than milkshakes to throw at people was a joke. It was a bad joke, but it was a joke. We are all aware that the chances of a Radio 4 listener hearing the joke and being inspired to hurl
If a lawyer advises you to pay money which you do not owe, and you do so, then you can sue that lawyer to compensate you for the loss. That’s because the lawyer owes his client a duty to not give wrong advice. Does a politician or a journalist owe that duty? Can we sue
The idea for the latest challenge — to compose a fan letter from one well-known person from the field of fact or fiction to another — came from a letter written by Kirk Douglas to Gary Cooper, received just days before Cooper died of cancer, in which Douglas reflects on the impossibility of complying with
Cocaine is an abominable drug, by far the most hateful of all the various uppers and downers and psychoactives because it turns you into such a complete moron. The problem with coke, as my friend, the drug historian Mike Jay, once explained to me, is that nature never intended us to use it the way
Philip Hammond is up to one last trick before bowing out – and it’s a good one. The Chancellor has called on each of the Tory leadership candidates to commit to ensuring Britain’s debt falls as a share of national income every year. Hammond reportedly asked in a letter to leadership candidates: ‘If we do
And then there were six. The Conservative leadership contest already feels interminable – and, let’s face it, it’s been going since the day after the 2017 election. And yet it’s only this week that the candidates have formally thrown their hats in the ring. We’ve already been treated to bucketloads of ambitious claims, bold rhetoric,
Can anyone stop Boris Johnson? It is an inevitability that the former Mayor of London will be in the final two candidates of the Tory leadership contest, and already many members of other campaigns are talking about what he will do as Prime Minister, rather than how their candidate will beat him. Given there has
Matt Hancock has become the first leadership candidate to bow out of the race following the first secret ballot. In Thursday’s vote, Hancock came sixth – winning 20 votes. Announcing his decision, Hancock said he was ‘hugely grateful’ for the support he had received but had concluded now was not his time as the ‘party
There is a reason Boris Johnson is avoiding the TV debates, and his name is Lynton Crosby. Crosby is running the Johnson leadership campaign — in awkward conjunction, it seems, with Boris’s girlfriend Carrie Symonds. He is a veritable TV debatephobe. He has run the last two Tory general elections, and he ordered David Cameron and
For the past week they’ve been exchanging side-glances, passing on compliments, and making excuses to spend time together. Now they’ve made it official. Yes, late last night Chuka Umunna finally made his move and joined the Lib Dems. In an interview with the Times announcing the new relationship, the former Labour MP revealed that he
Before this Tory leadership election started, the party’s grandees and custodians were telling me party members MUST at all costs be given a choice of candidates to be leader and our next prime minister. Now they tell me Boris Johnson is so far ahead – both among MPs and seemingly among the membership – that it would
Boris Johnson has undergone a makeover and no, it’s got nothing to do with his tidier hair and vanishing paunch. While Boris’s girlfriend Carrie Symonds has been busy transforming his appearance, journalists are now doing their bit to rebrand Boris too. I’m talking of course about Boris becoming Mr Johnson. A ‘request’ from Channel 4’s
I have celebrated John Bercow, eulogised Martin McGuinness and urged Spectator readers to vote Labour. So I appreciate I’m on thin ice with a defence of Jo Brand, and since the hefty lefty and I are of similar girth, that metaphor could end badly. Yet the news she is being investigated by police over a joke ought
When good men who did great things pass into the next life, they leave an example for this one. Tom Derek Bowden was 17 when he first set foot in the land that once was – and would again be – Israel. It was 1938 and he was stationed in Palestine under the mercurial British