Matthew Parris
There is no housing crisis. It would be easier if there were
Britain does not have a housing shortage. We have a problem with the cost not the availability of homes. This…
Nigel Farage is wrong: the French are doing us a big favour in Calais
Last week Nigel Farage described the deal we’ve done with France over the refugee camp near Calais as a ‘humiliating…
Victims of crime should not decide justice
Hard cases make bad law. The release on parole of the ‘black cab rapist’, John Worboys, is a hard case.…
Leave Brexit alone and get on with governing
I return often to Cambridge and was there recently. Julian Glover, my partner, was talking to the History Society at…
How I learned to stop worrying and love the monarchy
Prince Harry does not exist and soon Meghan Markle will cease to exist too. None of the royal family exist.…
The era when you could love a car is over
There are four of us in this relationship: my partner and I, his horse and my truck. His horse is…
The Westminster sex scandal is what psychologists call ‘displacement activity’
There are three reasons why Britain’s political and media world finds itself in the present ludicrous uproar over sexual misbehaviour…
What I learned going naked on the green mountain
The Japanese take a near-obsessive delight in washing, particularly in natural thermal baths
Why May must stay
As from the Manchester conference hall I watched Theresa May’s big moment falling apart, as I buried my head in…
At last! The subversion of Brexit has begun
The Brexit crowd are right to smell a rat. In any great national debate a columnist may feel tempted to…
The African bush took me back to my boyhood
Entering the Bulawayo Club, you step out of the blinding African sunshine on that safe and friendly city’s wide streets,…
May’s opponents are the mad and the bad
I first met Theresa May, or met her properly, way back in the last century. I’d been invited to speak…
In my other life, I’m a water engineer
Friends arrived last week to find me in a mudhole, inside a cave-like tunnel into the hill, fiddling around with…
We need ideology in politics
‘Studying history at Balliol,’ writes Chris Patten, ‘I knew that the one thing which made me uneasy was a grand…
We need ideology in politics
‘Studying history at Balliol,’ writes Chris Patten, ‘I knew that the one thing which made me uneasy was a grand…
Dear Leavebugs, it’s time to admit your mistake
‘Brexit,’ says my friend David Aaronovitch, ‘is dying.’ We Remainer irreconcilables certainly hope so. But there’s a slim chance the…
How not to handle an independence referendum
If David Cameron seeks any testament to his handling of Britain’s difficulties with Scottish separatism, the mess that Spain is…
What should party leaders be allowed to believe?
‘If he can’t be in politics,’ the Archbishop of Canterbury tweeted last week after Tim Farron resigned the leadership of…
The Tories have been diminished by this election
There’s an expression used in football to describe an approach to the game that discounts the virtues of elegance, style,…
A dementia tax would be a euthanasia bonus
Had Theresa May not on Monday summarily abandoned her manifesto threat to raid the savings of those who end up…
Why it’s obvious that morality precedes religion
At a beautiful church service recently I encountered again a Gospel parable that left me, again, torn between sympathy and…
What would Darwin make of trainspotters?
Why are men so much more likely to be interested in trains than women? I believe this to be a…
Give me the Anglican option
The Algerian government’s official tourist guide describes ‘the walled town of Beni Isguen — normally closed to foreigners — where…
Our dangerous impulse to make sense of murder
‘On Friday noon, July the 20th, 1714,’ begins the small, perfect 20th-century novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, ‘the…
You don’t have to be good to do good
I am a regular listener to the Sunday morning service just after eight on BBC Radio 4. It’s a habit…
