Matthew Parris is a columnist for The Spectator and The Times.
My first encounter with a plan to hold not one but two referendums on Britain’s European Union membership happened more than three years ago. At least two individuals were actively entertaining the idea. Both were Leavers. Dominic Cummings had proposed it in one of his blogs. Boris Johnson had not publicly endorsed such a thing,
My first encounter with a plan to hold not one but two referendums on Britain’s European Union membership happened more than three years ago. At least two individuals were actively entertaining the idea. Both were Leavers. Dominic Cummings had proposed it in one of his blogs. Boris Johnson had not publicly endorsed such a thing,
A pale sun had emerged from wintry clouds and the hillsides were topped snowy white. But all around me was the workaday bustle of Beirut streets still wet from overnight winter rain. This was the Armenian quarter, near the docks, at morning coffee time. I was standing on the Rue Qobaiyat, opposite a downtown petrol
The three most popular justifications for punishment under the law all (as it happens) begin with R. They are retribution, rehabilitation and removal. But the fourth and to my mind the most important seems to have fallen rather out of public consideration. Yet that fourth, deterrence, is by far the best reason for the investigation
‘Don’t even try,’ said the man on the car deck as Brittany Ferries’ Finistère tied up on the dock in Santander, late because of the winter storm. ‘You’d be lucky tonight to get through the snow to Valladolid. Find a hotel here and try tomorrow morning.’ He was one of those confident Englishmen you meet
There’s a famous (or infamous) method of negotiation or interrogation called ‘Good cop, bad cop’. You’re probably familiar with the idea. An individual whose cooperation is sought is approached by an apparently reasonable negotiator whose friendly advice is to co-operate because if he doesn’t then his colleague, who has a nasty temper, may fly into
There’s a famous (or infamous) method of negotiation or interrogation called ‘Good cop, bad cop’. You’re probably familiar with the idea. An individual whose cooperation is sought is approached by an apparently reasonable negotiator whose friendly advice is to co-operate because if he doesn’t then his colleague, who has a nasty temper, may fly into
When intelligent, informed and rational people make a choice that onlookers can see confounds their own declared interests, we are wise to look to psychiatry for an explanation. This is where my thoughts turn, now that Tory Brexiteers have conspired to block Theresa May’s road from Chequers to the deal the Commons so spectacularly rejected
Long-suffering Spectator readers deserve a seasonal break from yet another Remoaner diatribe from me. My last on this page, making the outrageous suggestion that the populace may sometimes be wrong, is now being brandished by online Leaver-readers of my Times column as proof that I am in fact a fascist; so there isn’t anywhere much
It was late, and a friend and I were left to talk Brexit. He’s a keen and convinced Tory Brexiteer MP but to stay friends we have tended to steer off the topic. This, however, felt like a moment to talk. The conversation taught me nothing about Brexit, something about him, and a lot about
For any bosses from the Singapore education department reading this, I have a message. It comes from (I’d guess) most of your schoolchildren. They detest their education system. They burn with resentment at the way their schooling tries (they think) to shackle their imaginations, their individuality, their free spirit. They hate being forced to compete,
Catching a train last week at London’s St Pancras I encountered a man playing a piano. You can do this at St Pancras: there’s an old Yamaha chained to the ironwork just by the lift serving the upper platforms for Sheffield and Nottingham. The instrument is somewhat out of tune but serviceable, and placed there
Reader, may I call you John? Now imagine, John, that you are my employer and I know (or claim) that you made an inappropriate sexual advance towards me in the workplace. So I approach you. ‘John,’ I say, ‘you groped me in the lift. Give me £5,000 or I’ll make this public.’ That is blackmail.
As I write, the sneering at Nick Clegg has started. The first cuckoo I’ve heard in this chorus is calling from the left. Last week Nesrine Malik in the Guardian launched a scornful attack on Mr Clegg’s decision to quit public life in Britain and join Facebook in America. ‘Thanks for nothing,’ she says. I
I met the late Darcy ten years ago, and wrote about him. I was 59 and he was 12. I was a Times columnist, and he was an Australian sheepdog. ‘Kelpies’ they call them: black and tan, in build and temper not unlike our border collies, energetic, intelligent, irrepressible but trainable, and occasionally neurotic. Darcy
‘Wherever Sir Stafford Cripps has tried to increase wealth and happiness,’ wrote the Conservative Scottish journalist Colm Brogan, ‘grass never grows again.’ But Roundup has its uses. When Brogan made this comment, Sir Stafford was Britain’s postwar ‘austerity’ chancellor of the exchequer, a post he held from 1947 to 1950. Dry as dust, Cripps had
I’ve always respected Alistair Darling and cannot imagine him saying anything ill-considered. But listening to him interviewed last Monday on the Today programme I heard him offer, as though it were obvious, an assumption so much less obvious than he appeared to recognise, that it set me thinking: not about the admirable former chancellor but
If I were Benjamin Netanyahu (and I’m not) I would be thanking whatever gods there be for sending me, at a tricky time, the most useful ally it is possible to imagine in UK politics. To Bibi’s aid has come probably the only man in Britain capable of single–handedly silencing public criticism of the Israeli
Timeless in its wisdom, the book Parkinson’s Law is of course famous for Parkinson’s law itself: that ‘work expands to fill the time available for its completion’. But scattered through the now 60-year-old book’s pages of tongue-in-cheek social science and cod-mathematical equations are remarks that lodged themselves deep in my thoughts when first I read
‘The return of Ukip’ declared the headline on our cover story last week. The polling boffin Matthew Goodwin to whose analysis this referred was in fact more careful. Professor Goodwin did argue, however, that the potential may be there for a Ukip revival. So it may. But the figures for new recruits that he cites
