Spectator.co.uk
The Tories can profit from Labour panic
In some alternative universe the Labour party, as under Tony Blair in the mid 1990s, is busily preparing for government, its confidence boosted by a massive lead in the polls over a shambolic Tory…
The motorway that contains 2.5 million Mills & Boon novels
The first one was too straight. In the absence of a speed limit, early motorists on the M1 used the long sections without bends as racetracks. The record was set in April 1964 by two drivers testing…
‘Panto pays better than being an MEP’: Ann Widdecombe interviewed
We could all forget about Ann Widdecombe for the past nine years while she was doing Strictly Come Dancing and panto and Celebrity Big Brother and the rest. But now she has risen from the political…
Dear Mary: How do I stop men sending me articles from the Guardian?
Q. It is difficult to know what to do when homeless people ask you for cash as you are leaving a supermarket all laden down, so may I pass on a tip to readers? Instead of claiming not to have any cash…
End this hate speech against my community
I am a football fan. Each fortnight I go to watch my club and, like the overwhelming majority of the football–supporting community, I do so peaceably, giving offence or threat to nobody. Sometimes I…
I love Boris for not firing me when I wrote a play about his sex life
Fourteen years ago, almost to the day, Lloyd Evans and I received a note from Boris. It was the press night of Who’s The Daddy?, our play about the various sex scandals that had engulfed The Spectator…
Can Boris Johnson make Anglo-American relations great again?
It seems a fitting end to an ill-fated premiership. As Theresa May prepares to leave No. 10, a major quarrel erupts between her government and its most powerful ally, the United States of America.
Anglo-Saxons deserve reparations for the Norman Conquest
Restorative justice for the victims of colonialism is an idea whose time has come. A few years ago, the Indian diplomat Shashi Tharoor suggested Britain pay India compensation to atone for centuries…
The most important decision that Boris has to make
After being backed by a majority of Tory MPs, Boris Johnson now looks set to win over party members by an even larger margin. Surveys suggest he will hoover up between two thirds and three quarters of…
The tragic story of Witold Pilecki, whose reports from Auschwitz fell on deaf ears
On 14 October 1942, the 23 Swiss members of the International Committee of the Red Cross met in Geneva to decide whether or not to go public with what they then knew about Auschwitz and the Nazis’…
The forgotten joy of soap
Is there any invention as ancient and as fundamental as soap? Traced to Babylonian civilisation around 2,800 bc (handy for scrubbing down after all that gardening), it almost certainly goes back…
Single women are happier – here’s why
As I get older I find the idea of wanting to be in a couple more and more bizarre. I’m not talking about sex — which anyway often becomes less frequent after years of familiarity — or marrying for…
What Sir Ivan Rogers gets wrong about Brexit
When so much of the Brexit debate has consisted of slogans and unexamined assertions (‘cliff edges’, ‘crashing out’ and the rest), it is welcome that a more substantial argument has been made by Sir…
The Democratic debates are proving to be the perfect advert for Trump
I have plenty of shamefaced company in having rashly predicted, as pundits are warned never to do, that Donald Trump wouldn’t win the White House in 2016. I don’t plan on repeating that mistake.
Scotland and Wales have much to learn from England’s education reforms
I’ve contributed a chapter to an education book published this week by the Institute of Economic Affairs. I was asked by the editors, Pauline Dixon and Steve Humble, to assess the impact of Britain’s…