Ross Clark

Ross Clark

Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. His books include Not Zero, The Road to Southend Pier, and Far From EUtopia: Why Europe is failing and Britain could do better

Jean-Claude Juncker has helped Boris immeasurably

As of this afternoon, we really are getting close to the endgame. Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters today: ‘If we have a deal we have a deal and there is no need for prolongation. That is the British view and that is my view too.’ According to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, when asked what would happen if

‘Remain or Leave?’ is no longer the key Brexit question

In an astonishing interview on the Today programme this morning, Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson tried to explain why she was tabling an amendment which would force a referendum on any deal the government presents to the House of Commons on the grounds that we should ‘let the people decide’. She then asserted that the

The myth of Britain’s air pollution pandemic

It is a good thing that there is an air pollution bill in the Queen’s Speech today. We should not have to tolerate foul air. But the suggestion that this will be addressing some dramatic and growing crisis is misplaced. The idea that Britain is in the midst of a ‘silent pandemic’ of air pollution

Don’t blame oil and coal companies for climate change

This year’s Nobel Prize for the silliest piece of scientific research must go to something called the Climate Accountability Institute, for revealing to the world that 35 per cent of all global carbon and methane emissions since 1965 can be traced to just 20 global companies. This week they were named and shamed in the

An inheritance tax cut would backfire on the Tories

Just when you thought that the Tories were getting into a position where they might be capable of winning the formerly Labour-leaning seats in the Midlands and the North – which they will need to snatch in order to survive after next election – along comes a minister to chuck a spanner in the electoral

Jeremy Corbyn would destroy the market for specialist medicines

Amid Labour’s jubilation over the Supreme Court decision yesterday it would have been easy to miss Jeremy Corbyn’s latest attack on the market economy. But it shouldn’t go unremarked because what Corbyn proposed would seriously damage the pharmaceuticals industry – either meaning that taxpayers would have to bear the enormous costs of developing drugs, or

Why the Court’s ruling may help Boris Johnson

In one respect Gina Miller is right. Today’s Supreme Court decision is bigger than Brexit. We are now in a civil war without bullets – between two sides who both claim to be fighting for democracy but who have very different ideas of what it entails. In the one corner are those who believe that

Bailing out Thomas Cook would have been a mistake

The biggest victim of the failure of Thomas Cook is the worldly reputation of its eponymous creator – a sober cabinet-maker from Leicestershire whose pioneering and fantastically successful package tours used a network of temperance hotels.  His name is now synonymous with a company whose senior executives paid themselves millions while it crashed and burned.

Ross Clark

The EU has failed again to strike a free trade deal

So once again we learn just how committed the EU is to free trade. A trade deal with the South American bloc Mercosur – comprising Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay – has been under negotiation for 20 years. The icing appeared to be on the cake, the ribbon about to be cut – but at

School climate strikers should answer these two questions

“The Earth is dying”, “the world is on fire”, we’re undergoing an “environmental extinction”: just three of the sentiments which have been expressed by today’s climate “strikers” and which, unlike even moderate expressions of scepticism on matters of climate science, seem to escape without challenge. While it is tempting to think of today’s climate “strike”

The hypocrisy of those outraged on behalf of Ben Stokes

I can understand why Ben Stokes and his mother would rather not be reminded of the murder of the cricketer’s half-siblings by their father in New Zealand in 1988, three years before Stokes was born. His reaction, calling the Sun’s publication of the story as ‘immoral and heartless’ and ‘contemptuous to the feelings and circumstances

The BBC’s latest attack on Netflix is galling

Lord Hall of Birkenhead is feeling pretty bullish about the quality of the organisation he leads. “We’re not Netflix, we’re not Spotify. We’re not Apple News,” the BBC’s director general will apparently tell the Royal Television Society on Thursday. “We’re so much more than all of them put together.”     To which the obvious answer is:

The legal war of attrition against Brexit

Another week, another step along the road to Britain’s transformation into a kritarchy – rule by judges. Last week, the Court of Session in Edinburgh and the High Court in London both ruled that Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament for five weeks had been lawful. But if you thought it was all over you

Ross Clark

Do Remain MPs understand the mood of the country?

That the obsessions of Westminster do not necessarily coincide with those of the country has been obvious for a long time, but even so, the dislocation between last week’s news and this weekend’s opinion polls looks bizarre. The government looks in a greater shambles than any in history. We have a Prime Minister who has

Remainers may regret not backing an October general election

So there goes the reputation of Boris Johnson’s henchmen as cunning operators. It has been a bad week for Dominic Cummings and others in the Downing Street bunker who were widely assumed to have gamed every possibility and to have some genius strategy for delivering Brexit by 31 October, in spite of the assembled forces

The rebel MPs don’t know what they want

Was there ever such a principled stand over a such a feeble cause? If today’s Tory rebels were intent on overturning the 2016 referendum result because, in all their conscience, they could support a policy of leaving the EU, I would not agree with what they were doing, but I would have some grudging respect