Stephen Pollard

Would you share a house with someone black? Even to pose the question, let alone to say no, is to invite – quite rightly – the accusation of racism. But it’s a different matter when it comes to Jews. The Union of Jewish Students (UJS) has today published a report on campus anti-Semitism in Britiain. Of all

In 1997 the doyen of Democrat political columnists in the US, E.J. Dionne, published They Only Look Dead. He argued that while the received wisdom was that the Republicans were set to dominate politics for a generation, there were underlying factors which pointed to a Democrat revival. Dionne was both completely wrong but also completely

The latest set of antisemitism figures from the Community Security Trust covering 2025 are depressingly predictable. Last year, saw 3,700 instances of anti-Jewish hate across the UK, the second highest annual total ever reported – second only to the 4,298 antisemitic incidents in 2023. The figures have rightly been described as appalling by ministers. But

The political focus is, quite rightly, now on Sir Keir Starmer. You hardly need me to point out how tenuous his hold on office now is, or why. But there is one key aspect to that ‘why’ which has been relatively unremarked on. Yesterday Kemi Badenoch scored a direct hit on the Prime Minister when

It’s the fag end of January, so that means it’s time for Davos – the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) gathering in the Swiss mountains, when the world’s smuggest men and the occasional woman come together to play dinner companion one-upmanship. Davos has always enraged a certain type of equally smug leftist – and now

Robert Jenrick isn’t often compared to Groucho Marx, but there’s something apposite about the latter’s line, ‘I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member’. Clearly Jenrick, who was sacked by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch yesterday before being unveiled as Reform’s latest recruit, does want to be a member

The most important thing about Robert Jenrick’s sacking isn’t Robert Jenrick. It’s that it is yet another demonstration of Kemi Badenoch’s increasing stature as Tory leader. The Tory leader was presented with a gift – a sacking that was both necessary, obvious and politically useful to her, further cementing her standing as leader For most of her

What is it going to take for the British government – any British government, of any party – to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood?  It was revealed today that the UAE is now limiting the number of students it will enrol at British universities because of the prevalence of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) influence on campuses. The

Hugh, meet Claire. Claire, meet Hugh. Claire has some guidance that might prove useful for you, Hugh. Should, that is, you not want to come across as any more of an ignorant buffoon than you do already. The problem for Bonneville is that details do matter. And there is a big issue with the detail

Call me an old cynic, but I knew from the moment that the Alaa Abd el-Fattah affair blew up what the next stage would be. The single most predictable thing in the entire farce – a Whitehall farce indeed, albeit very much not in the old Brian Rix mould – was that when el-Fattah made

Everyone is familiar with the old insult that you can tell when a politician is not telling the truth because his lips move. Be that as it may, a variation of this has emerged, but this time when someone from West Midlands Police is giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee. Did West Midlands Police

I’ll fight you if you contradict my assertion that The Producers is the funniest film ever made. It’s celluloid perfection. And the musical – now running in the West End, do go – is almost as wonderful. But what I hadn’t realised until this weekend’s inaugural Your Party conference is that there are some people

It’s difficult to recall any minister in recent years, let alone a Home Secretary, who has been lauded with such praise for command of their brief as Shabana Mahmood over the past week. Even those who are far from convinced that her plans to reform the asylum system will do the job intended are mostly

The most apposite comment on Shabana Mahmood’s proposed reforms to the asylum system came from Kemi Badenoch during yesterday’s Commons statement on the plans: ‘The Home Secretary has done more in 70 days than her predecessor managed in a year.’ On one level that was damning with faint praise, given that Yvette Cooper’s tenure in

I’m not going to rehash here the details of the memorandum by Michael Prescott, the former independent editorial standards adviser to the BBC, which has now led to the resignations of both Tim Davie, director-general, and Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News. You’d have to have been in a cave for the past week –