Berne, Switzerland Before we vote Brexit I thought I’d pop over to Switzerland — courtesy of Die Weltwoche, the nearest local equivalent to The Spectator — to see how life will be once we escape the EU. Can confirm: it’s going to be great. We’ll be richer, freer and the views are fantastic: lakes and
On Thursday last week, as the baby and I were moving in our usual slow circles around the house, from changing station to feeding station to the place of dreaded midday nap, my husband, Dom, called to say he and all his colleagues were coming over. Dom is employed by Vote Leave, the group campaigning
The Spectator Podcast Christopher Meyer, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the first 100 days of Brexit At 5.15 a.m. on Friday 24 June 2016, David Cameron calls Michael Gove and concedes defeat in the EU referendum. The conversation is brief. With nearly all the results in, it is clear that Remain cannot overturn Leave’s
Have you got your names down yet for the Bunyadi? I’d hurry, if I were you. There’s currently a waiting list of more than 40,000, most of them homo-sexual Camden cyclists, I would guess. The Bunyadi is the country’s first nude restaurant and is, of course, in London. You go in, take all of your
Once upon a time, I didn’t really care about politics. Not viscerally. Growing up in a political family, I suppose, you go one of two ways. You know those kids you’ll sometimes see being paraded around by political parents in facepaint and rosettes, waving from shoulders as though born into a cult? I wasn’t like
I’ve noticed for some time now that thin people, genuinely slim ones, have a secret loathing of fatties. Kindly though they may otherwise be, the sight of rolls and overhangs, jowls and bulges, makes them angry. One extremely thin woman I know finds it hard, she told me, even to have fat friends. Another shivers
To go fishing on the Itchen in mayfly season, you either have to be very, very rich or very, very lucky. That’s why I’m so grateful to have a friend in Mike Daunt, arguably Britain’s best-connected angler, certainly the most foul-mouthed, who invited me up for the day on to a particularly juicy beat of
Complaining about the EU referendum campaign has become an integral part of the referendum; even Delia Smith has got in on the act. But politicians on both sides who pretend that the choice is simple, despite having agonised over it themselves for years, are only partly to blame for the dire state of the debate.
A long and arduous flight back from the Caucasus, but worth it nonetheless for the meaningful protest we had staged in the fragrant and lovely Georgian capital, Tbilisi. They have opened a vegan restaurant there called the Café Kiwi — an affront not just to ordinary Georgians, but to all right-thinking people, surely. A bunch
A depression has settled on the Liddle household ever since Norbert Hofer narrowly failed in his bid to become the president of Austria. I like a man who keeps a Glock pistol in his jacket pocket, and there is something noble in the cut of his jib. Norbert was thwarted by the voters of Red
Westminster has a tendency to get ahead of itself. MPs want to discuss the aftermath of an event long before it has happened. They play never-ending games of ‘What if?’ At the moment, the political class cannot stop discussing, in great detail, what the post-EU referendum political landscape will look like. The speculation is, in
I once went mad in Africa and it was no fun at all. I was snorkelling off the coast of Zanzibar and I dived a little too deep, and something in the middle of my head went click. And then I came up and fell on to a boat that took me back to the
It may be too late. But with only about three weeks before our referendum on EU membership I am itching to take the leadership of the Leave campaign. I could do them a power of good. Two serious objections may be raised to my bid. First, I couldn’t chair a parish meeting, let alone a
Who’d have thought that one of Obama’s last great battles would be over toilets? Last week he issued a strict warning to schools saying that transgender pupils must be allowed to use whichever loo they choose. Girls or boys who feel they’re trapped in the wrong body have, in some states, been required to widdle
Like a lot of keen games-players I’m a stickler for the rules. This is not because I’m an especially honourable person; merely a recognition that without a rigorous structure and a sense of fair play, a game can be no fun and winning can afford no satisfaction. I feel much the same way about politics.
As the Queen read out her government’s agenda on Wednesday morning, David Cameron could have been forgiven for thinking about his place in history. What will he be remembered for, other than having held the office? The so-called ‘life chances’ strategy is intended to be a central plank of his legacy. He wants to be
I got an email this week, from a chap called Harry, which began as follows: ‘I am writing to inform you that I will be carrying out the investigation on behalf of the Labour party into the circumstances that resulted in your suspension from the party.’ Harry went on to say that he will be ‘conducting
By now, Labour should be rather good at post-defeat inquests. Plenty have been conducted over the years and the drill has become familiar. The party goes into an election promising a certain vision of the future only to find out that it leaves the voters cold. A senior figure is then commissioned to state the
Gussie is the name of a grumpy and ill-natured llama, her coat largely white and somewhat unkempt, and much given to aggressive expectoration. When there’s corn in a bucket, it has been her habit greedily to spit other llamas away, not because she wants corn but to stop them getting any. And Gussie is also
Probably you never visited the flats of middle-class student drug dealers in the 1990s, because crikey, neither did I, and look, let’s just move along. Even so, were there ever to be found a Platonic form of such a place, or, as the beer adverts might put it, If Heineken Did the Flats of 1990s