My straighter writing: a selection of recent pieces, and some of my older work that I’m proudest of. You can find my political sketches for The Critic here, and full-on satirical pieces here.
Sadly, the internet has lost some pieces, including Gordon Brown’s printer-smashing and Cherie Blair calling Brown a liar. But they live on in the hearts of those who remember them.
This article is taken from the July 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. In an age when my phone can tell me exactly…
Read More“Can he come back?” There’s some kind of madness that overtakes people when they think about Boris Johnson. He resigns from Parliament, and ITV’s political editor immediately starts asking…
Read MoreBoris Johnson is right. Nadine Dorries is right. You can’t trust Sue Gray’s report into Partygate. You could never trust it. Some of us said this at the time. It was always a stitch-up — but it wasn’t…
Read MoreThere’s a concept called “moral luck”, describing how sometimes what we think of as our own virtue is simply good fortune. We never are in the situation where we’re faced with the difficult choices…
Read MoreRishi Sunak has made two big decisions in his political career that were all his own, at moments when an alternative course was possible. The first, in 2016, was to support Brexit. The second, in 2019…
Read MoreThis article is taken from the October 2022 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. Does every Johnson get a Boswell…
Read MoreThe week my mother died, we took the kids to Legoland. We’d booked the trip months before, and there seemed no point in cancelling. Emotions were mixed, of course, but what would have been the benefit…
Read MorePoor Simon Case. The Cabinet Secretary’s defence of himself and the civil service this week was, in essence, that MPs had put Boris Johnson in Number 10, and so could hardly complain that standards of…
Read MoreWho is my neighbour? Or to put the question a different way, who is my cleaner? The BBC had to apologise this week for suggesting that Emanuel Gomes, a government cleaner who died in the first wave of…
Read MoreShort of cash as the Labour Party is, they probably don’t want suggestions for things to spend money on. But if they can find any pennies, they’d be well advised to donate all of them to Boris Johnson’…
Read MoreRob Hutton reviews The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya
Read MoreThe ideal political scandal to be embroiled in is one that no one understands. The journalist setting it out for the busy reader knows they’re losing as they begin the second paragraph of explanation.
Read More