Columnists
Europe’s reckless caution over AstraZeneca
The first smear campaign against AstraZeneca, when Emmanuel Macron falsely claimed at the start of the year that the jab…
How to kill the English language
Probably, most of you will have only the dimmest idea what a ‘fronted adverbial’ is. I used one in the…
The West has lost its moral high ground
International travellers running the gauntlet of English airports must already test negative for Covid before the flight, and on return…
Are Wall Street’s ‘Spacs’ about to make waves in the City?
This column generally takes a sceptical view of financial novelties and gimmicks. So my antennae have twitched in recent days…
Are Harry and Meghan legally married at all?
I have been slow in the uptake. When I saw the Duchess of Sussex complain in her interview clips about…
Why Elon Musk should fly me to the moon
I have just applied to fly around the moon. My chances of being selected are slim, but is it impossible?…
‘My’ truth about Meghan and Harry
Caroline Rose Giuliani, the daughter of the former mayor of New York, Rudy, has been talking to the press about…
Is Sturgeon losing support for Scottish independence?
Every politician likes to say that they don’t pay attention to opinion polls. In my experience, this is almost universally…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Will social kisses survive Covid?
There is a ‘pervasive presence of Chinese military-linked conglomerates and universities in the sponsorship of high-technology research centres in many…
The car industry is accelerating towards an electric future
Back in November, when Downing Street’s pandemic responses looked daily more incompetent, the announcement of a ban on sales of…
Beware the linguistic Trojan horse
It’s the bane of many an author these days: those newspaper-filler Q&As. One I recently filled out included the question:…
The 31 inventions that Britain really needs
‘Get Brexit done, then Arpa’ read Dominic Cummings’s WhatsApp profile. Arpa was what’s now the American Defense Advanced Research Projects…
In defence of Piers Morgan
The Liberal Democrat party’s foreign affairs spokesgoblin, Velma from Scooby-Doo — or ‘Layla Moran’ as she is known to close…
What will life look like after 21 June?
‘Alas’ is a word used many times by Boris Johnson during the pandemic. It is how he prefaces announcements that…
The City is losing its battle with Brussels and Amsterdam
No sign of progress towards a workable deal with the EU for financial services, on which news is due next…
Where will vaccine passports take us?
Desperate to find someone to commemorate with a statue for having done great things, but who isn’t a white male,…
The unintended consequences of the Macpherson report
Sir William Macpherson of Cluny has died. His obituaries praise him for his 1998 inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence case.…
The case for immunity passports
For more than 20 years, I’ve been raging away at pointless rules. When my blood’s up, there’s not a foam-flecked…
Will freedom always be just over the horizon?
We should talk about horizons, and the setting of desirable ones. A newspaper gave it a go the other day…
