The interesting thing about political pendulums is that they always over-swing. In the campaign for this week’s Gorton and Denton by-election, one of the main lines of attack on the Reform candidate is that he used to be an academic and is therefore ill-suited to being the area’s parliamentary representative. The candidate who has suffered
‘The Special Relationship only exists when the Americans want something,’ a former Downing Street aide observed after Donald Trump rejected the Chagos Islands deal. There are profound differences between London and Washington over military action against Iran while the fourth anniversary of the war in Ukraine this week has exposed further fault lines. The result
Sometimes things work out much better than one could have imagined, as if God, looking down, had decided that for whatever reason, a favour should be dispensed in my direction, a blessing. Perhaps occasioned by my diligence and faith, perhaps not. It is impossible to explain these benedictions. Sufficient to say that on Sunday night,
This is a two-parter, albeit linked. If you’re interested in the duplicitousness of British journalists, then keep reading. If you’re only interested in self-destructive British tax policy, skip to the middle. Burnt repeatedly by hacks who pretend to be enraptured by my latest novel while snooping through my cupboards, I long ago learned the hard
Is this Britain, 2026, or Spain, 1478? Our era begins to feel horribly like the latter. So, as the flames of the Epstein Inquisition burn higher, let me get my general confession into the public domain before the guardians of public morality come for me. Here begins my deposition. I, Matthew Francis Parris, do solemnly
So Thursday came and Oxford went to the pollsAnd made its coward vote and the streets resoundedTo the triumphant cheers of the lost souls –The profiteers, the dunderheads, the smarties.From Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice, (1938) The electorate quite often gets it wrong, even if we are not meant to admit as much. It certainly
There is an old joke about Nigel Farage, put about by former colleagues. ‘Why is Nigel like a beech tree?… Because nothing grows under him.’ The comparison to this acid-leafed tree which stifles all beneath it is one the Reform UK leader has never accepted. ‘I don’t fall out with people,’ he once said. ‘They
As I have suggested here before, there are few joys in life equal to that of watching the left fall out among itself. Whatever your political views, the whole Judean People’s Front vibe of the parties to the left of the Labour party brings a special type of comedy. If anybody remembers the recent Your
Sunday marks what would have been the 100th birthday of Kenneth Williams. It’s tempting to try to imagine what he would have been like had he lived longer, though the absurdity of our age might have been beyond even his acid observation. That’s perhaps the most interesting aspect of Williams: he can’t be imagined in
There have been numerous surveys over the years intended to prove that conservatives are more stupid than liberals and vice versa, so many that it is almost impossible to draw any meaningful conclusion. It is of course an important issue and so, in lieu of yet another survey, could I suggest that you watch a
What does a dying government sound like? At 12.08 p.m. on 4 February we got an answer. Keir Starmer admitted to the House of Commons that he knew about Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein when he made him ambassador to the US in 2024. There was a sharp intake of breath from the shocked
There is a moment in Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall which has been much on my mind lately. It is the bit towards the very end of the novel when our hero, Paul Pennyfeather, re-encounters the sinister modernist architect Professor Otto Silenus. By this point Pennyfeather has undergone all manner of travails. He has been
Every couple of years a columnist-cum-novelist will inevitably stoop to shameless self-promotion. In my defence, at least the novel released this month is germane to the political moment. Lest its simple title, A Better Life, come across as lame, I asked the designers of my British and American hardback covers to use imagery that conveys
In February 1974, a frustrated Ted Heath, unable to achieve anything in government against constant opposition by the mighty trade unions, called an election. One basic question was front and centre of the campaign: ‘Who governs Britain?’ Soon the answer came back: ‘Not you, mate.’ In fact, it would take Margaret Thatcher’s victory to clip
A fight between Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson? A difficult one to call, really. Like a war between Pakistan and Turkey: you kind of want both sides to suffer unimaginable losses. It happened fairly often, though, in that uniquely dysfunctional Blair government and before, when his cabal of liars and smarmers were preparing for power.
I think by now most of us can spot a double standard when we see one. So let me try two out on you. In what situation is it acceptable to denounce an MP or parliamentary candidate as ‘not very British’ or even someone who ‘doesn’t get our values, our culture, or our history’. When
British by-elections are often prolonged affairs, dragging on for months. Yet in the Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton – once home to Myra Hindley and the Gallagher brothers – campaigners are on a frantic dash to canvas the 82,000 voters before polling day on 26 February. ‘It is a proper three-horse race,’ says one.
The Catholic Church has always been remarkably relaxed about sin. It becomes distinctly jumpy, however, when it encounters any challenge to the Church’s designation of what is sinful. Human beings (it suspects) are and always will be sinners. The Church has no problem in dealing with sinners: they should confess. Absolution may be available, dispensed
‘It’s all about ABBA,’ a military acquaintance whispered when I mentioned the scandal of the British Army’s order of 589 Ajax armoured vehicles, for which -‘initial operating capability’ status has been withdrawn following multiple cases of soldiers suffering after-effects of intolerable noise and vibration. What could that possibly have to do with the great Swedish-songsters?
After my grandmother died a few years ago, we couldn’t bring ourselves to get rid of most of her possessions. What had started as a storage room at my parents’ house quickly morphed into a living, breathing pile. It gradually invaded the spare bedroom and was making encroachments into my mother’s study. Answering the call