The Conservative party is out of power – and that’s not easy if you’ve been in power for more than a decade. Even after a short spell in government there are certain aspects of life that you miss. The drivers and others who used to manage your life and get you around. The legions of
I was on the bus recently and bored when I decided not to ignore but to answer one of those online questionnaires about adult ADHD. It was on Facebook, I think. Question 1) Am I easily distracted? Well, yes. 2) Am I often late? 3) Do I regularly forget appointments? Yes and yes. By the
Ed Davey owes much of his election success to Boris Johnson – and in more ways than one. The slide-loving, bungee-jumping, paddleboard-slipping Lib Dem leader has, like Johnson on his zipwire, learned how to capture media attention while evading being placed on a conventional political axis. One day he’s intoning soulfully on social care in
Ihave spent most of the morning trying to convince people online that Huw Edwards’s conviction does not mean that all, or even a majority, of Welsh people are sexually attracted to children. ‘We thought it was just sheep. It isn’t,’ one furious interlocuter named only as ‘Ned’ posted with what I assume he thought was
In February there was a commotion at Canterbury Cathedral. Or, to be more precise, there was a silent commotion. The cause was a ‘silent disco’ which took place in the nave over two nights. For anyone above the age of 12, a silent disco is where everybody has headphones on and is in their own
My friend Tim Leunig is a cerebral thinker of the best kind. Though not party-political, he has worked for Tory chancellors and would give the same advice to governments of any stripe. Wikipedia calls him a prize-winning economist and that’s right, but he has a gadfly instinct and a remorselessly rational intellect that takes him
Last week, there was a surprise visitor to the Treasury: Gordon Brown. The former prime minister and chancellor secretly returned to his old digs for the first time since he left office 14 years ago. According to onlookers, Brown visited his old office as he caught up with the new chancellor – and his friend
In the long and illustrious history of race chancing, there must have been many more egregious examples than that of Noel Deans’s recourse to court because a colleague ‘fist-bumped’ him rather than shaking his hand, but I can’t think of any right now. Certainly not over here in the UK, where we still lag a
There are a number of joys in life that do not get enough attention. One is the sheer, unadulterated pleasure that can be gained from watching a politician speak about something they know nothing about. This season Kamala Harris is giving especially abundant material for connoisseurs. Recognising that there is plenty she doesn’t know about,
Earlier this summer, my son and I biked over to fashionable east Hackney where it’s normal to pay £4.20 for a coffee and £3 for a croissant and everybody complains about the cost of living. The croissants, by the way, must come from the Dusty Knuckle bakery. I don’t know if it’s the same in
I suppose there must be someone somewhere in this nation of ours who was surprised by the news that our fellow citizens have a much lower sense of pride in our country than has ever previously been the case. This apparent fact was reported by the National Centre for Social Research, whose representative did not
What should the Tories do about Nigel Farage? The leadership candidates have made many speeches and written many columns explaining how they would answer this question. Yet at Kemi Badenoch’s campaign launch on Monday, she dismissed it. Instead, there was another contingent of new MPs she was more concerned with: the pro-Gaza independents. ‘When everyone
I am not yet eligible for the winter fuel allowance. Nor am I especially in favour of it, regarding it as one of those times when the government bribes the public with the public’s own money and expects gratitude for doing so. Like anyone who pays taxes, I rather resent a government of any stripe
This I began writing two weeks ago as an overnight guest in a cosy cabin on a farm beside an endless dirt road in the most remote part of the north-western Cape Province in the country of my birth, South Africa. To many eyes this might seem a landscape of utter desolation: hot, dry and
Conservative MPs who hoped for a relaxing summer break have had a nasty shock: their phones have been ringing on repeat. With just 121 MPs in their corner, the Tory leadership candidates are fiercely competing for each one’s backing. ‘They call on bank holidays when I’m with my partner,’ complains one old-timer. ‘I’m trying to
Police are hunting a ‘hooded figure’ who sprayed ‘no whites’ on the wall of a primary school in Birmingham. The coppers presumably have racial hatred in mind, but there could be a much more innocent explanation for that which otherwise would be simply a case of vandalism – or even one of laudable graffiti art
What a thrilling number of glass ceilings have been broken this century – with more still to come, apparently. In 2008 America elected its first black president. In 2012 Barack Obama was re-elected and so became the first black president to win re-election. In 2016 America had a chance to elect its first female president
Can you tell the difference between an extreme misogynist and a moderate misogynist? Hating women has always seemed, to me anyway, a rather extreme position on its own. The label ‘extreme misogynist’ is surely repetitive. A moderate misogynist is an oxymoron. But then the Home Office announced this week that ‘extreme misogyny’ could be added
Are radical lesbians dictating what we can and cannot eat, through the offices of this very magazine? It would certainly seem to be the case. A year ago this month, Julie Bindel wrote on The Spectator’s website disparaging sourdough bread with even more venom than she reserves for her more usual targets, i.e. those men-lady
On Tuesday afternoon, a familiar figure pulled up at a Westminster café to plot the Tories’ downfall. Nigel Farage beamed from the back of his black Range Rover as he arrived to welcome Reform’s latest recruits. The purpose of the Old Queen Street summit was to plan the party’s path to next year’s local elections
