Columnists
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…
The timeless sophistication of the Beano
The pattern of Israeli/Palestinian conflicts is always forced by coverage into what people call a ‘narrative arc’. The attacks are…
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 Spectator’s Notes
In 2014, Rolf Harris was convicted of sexual offences against girls. I wrote in this space that this would have…
