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James Forsyth

What Rishi Sunak could learn from the vaccine rollout

Barely a year has passed since Rishi Sunak’s first Budget. Its centrepiece was a £30 billion stimulus designed to calm nerves about Covid-19 even though barely 500 cases had been diagnosed in the country. The Commons chamber was packed, with not a mask in sight. Few that day would have thought that in a year’s

The real reasons children are going hungry

‘We’re idiots, babe, it’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves.’ I listened to The Food Programme on Radio 4 this week, because the channel finder on my car radio wasn’t working and so I was stuck with it. It was, as it almost always is, four left-wing ratbags moaning to one another. As I’ve

There is no justification for supporting the IRA

Roy Greenslade held a number of prominent positions in Fleet Street over the course of a long career. But he spent the largest part of it at the Guardian, where he berated other journalists for their writings. A similar stance was adopted by him from his position as professor of journalism at City, University of

The war on cars is backfiring

For most London-based politicians, there’s a threat that’s worse than Covid. You’ll begin to notice it as we ease out of lockdown. It’s not the Brazilian variant that keeps them awake at night, or collapsing hospitals. Nope. What really worries them is the thought of cars. Watch them pale as they mutter the words ‘car-led

The Spectator's Notes

Emmanuel Macron’s vaccine muddle

In 2000, this magazine dipped its toe in murky Irish water. Stephen Glover wrote three articles, one provocatively entitled ‘The Republican cell at the heart of the Guardian’. (For more detail, see Douglas Murray’s article.) One of the IRA supporters identified was Roy Greenslade, the paper’s media commentator. Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian’s editor, wrote angrily

Any other business

The case for keeping business taxes low

Why should business pay tax at all? That’s a provocative but forlorn question to ask in Budget week. Business pays corporation tax on profits because that’s what voters expect, partly because many are conditioned to believe profit is a sin and partly because all would prefer to pay less tax themselves. Investors pay tax on