Columns
Rishi’s smoking ban inspired me to light a cigarette
What has Rishi Sunak’s government achieved in its first year? The highlights include a renegotiated Brexit policy and setting more…
Does the Met know what jihad means?
Ever since the atrocities in Israel more than two weeks ago, I have had one main thought. Yes, Israel has…
Facebook’s not-so-secret police
I was greatly tempted by Sam Leith’s suggestion in a column on The Spectator’s website this week that we should…
The SNP’s reckoning is coming
The SNP party conference in Aberdeen this week wasn’t the nationalist jamboree activists had hoped for. Even though it was…
Keep your politics à la carte
It’s a truism that the Anglosphere has developed a ‘tribalism’ that rivals the divisions between the Kikuyu and Luhya in…
The four big questions our politicians need to answer
Anyone would think (anyone, that is, who has followed our three main annual party conferences this autumn) that Britain’s principal…
Why do we allow protests that glorify slaughter?
There are times when you wonder how history happened. And other times when you realise how it did. The past…
What are the Tories for if not lower taxes?
‘I didn’t come into politics to raise taxes on working people,’ said the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves in Liverpool this…
I stand with Israel
I had a brief exchange of messages with a British Muslim bloke on social media who had asked me, very…
I regret not having more children
Life doesn’t always work out perfectly. You can make the wrong decisions. You can leave things too late. I wish,…
What ‘populist’ really means
Two months ago, in these pages, I predicted that Robert Fico’s Smer-SD party would win the Slovakian elections and everybody…
The folk wisdom that’s just wrong
I was only a boy when I first began protesting against the idiocy of so much of the folk wisdom…
I’m leaving Britain – and I feel guilty
I’m torn between headlining this column ‘Why I’m moving to Portugal’ and ‘Why I’m leaving the UK’. Exhausted, shadowed by…
Do I have a ‘work addiction’?
What follows may suggest that I require an ‘intervention’. Readers might even interpret this column as a cry for help.…
The rise of the groupthink podcast
A long tradition in the Liddle household on a Saturday morning is to read aloud sections from the Guardian Weekend…
Emergency on Planet Biden
‘If aliens attacked Earth, do you think we would be safer under Joe Biden or Donald Trump?’ That’s a question…
How do I know I’m an adult? I’m given unsolicited feedback
Adulthood was once determined by age, but now we’ve extended childhood far beyond the teenage years. If the government gets its…
At least Britain isn’t that corrupt
Long-time readers may recall that I take a special interest in the art of corruption. And this week America has…
Sunak’s new strategy: hard truths
The last time Tory activists and MPs gathered for their annual party conference, it didn’t end well. Liz Truss had…
The inequality of sex
As we all shroud ourselves in grief at being unable to watch Russell Brand any more on terrestrial television stations,…
Politicians can’t win on illegal migration
It is eight years now since The Spectator sent me to Lampedusa to see the boats coming in. That was…
Shoplifters need to feel shame
This is my brother’s story and, like many telling stories, it’s small. Tim lives in Iowa, as our mother’s family…
Australia’s disastrous indigenous voice referendum
My partner and I have just returned from the most magical trip. As guests of Western Australia’s tourist board we’ve…
How America’s 2024 election will affect Britain’s
There were many potential titles for Liz Truss’s memoir: 49 Days that Shook the World, perhaps, or simply What Happened,…
Covid’s back. Don’t panic!
How terrified should we be of the new Covid variant nicknamed (on Twitter) ‘Pirola’? Out of our wits? Or should…
