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James Forsyth

Remember, remember, the first of November

The United Kingdom is a country governed, in large part, by convention —but in the heat of the Brexit debate, those conventions are beginning to evaporate. The Speaker of the House of Commons overturned long-standing procedure to limit Theresa May’s room for manoeuvre. The opposition used a humble address to the sovereign to force the

Like so many parents, I’m a panic junkie

On that record-breaking, sweltering day at the end of July, my three-year-old son did a pirouette in the paddling pool — ‘look at this Mama!’ — then tripped, slid under the surface and lay there on his back staring up at me through two foot of water. I was in the pool too, just an

A gang of sheep rustlers is stalking our county

Though autumn is happily still some way off, we’ve already reached that stage in the shepherd’s calendar when full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn. In fact they now look bigger than their mothers. The easiest way of differentiating the ewes from the lambs is that the latter still have their fleeces while the former

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes | 8 August 2019

Who wrote ‘Our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country … creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly over-harvesting resources … the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people,

Any other business

Should we be sad or happy that the pound has buckled?

A wave to the FT team whose weekend feature on how the pound has been hit by fears of no deal began with this arresting sentence: ‘Sterling has finally buckled.’ I almost spilled my café crème as I read that in a sunlit French square and contemplated JP Morgan’s ‘conservative’ forecast of a $1.15 no-deal