Ross Clark 
The strange death of individualism
Hell, as one of Jean-Paul Sartre’s characters said, is other people. Unless, that is, you happen to be British and born after about 1980, in which case hell is the… Read more
Leave us to mind our own business, please
The most excruciating advert I have ever seen was a British Leyland one from the 1970s featuring a crowd of Lederhosen-clad Germans, together with an assortment of other European stereotypes,… Read more
Investment special: Sell your Ferraris
Here is a paradox. Study the photographs of the flats and houses being sold in London’s prime property boom and you see one minimalist interior after another. The huge, empty… Read more
The equal pay bomb that could wipe out public sector jobs
I have just decided that my work is of equal value to that of the feminist supermodel Cameron Russell. Neither of us, admittedly, is quite as useful as a plumber,… Read more
Power struggle
It is ‘immoral’, asserted Michael Fallon at this week’s Spectator energy conference, to force basic-rate taxpayers to subsidise wealthy landowners’ wind turbines and the solar panels of well-off homeowners. It… Read more
End of the party - how British political leaders ran out of followers
If Cyril Northcote Parkinson was still around he would devise a law for party political conferences: that the significance of what is discussed in the conference centre is inversely proportional… Read more
Why some of Britain's top schools are replicating themselves in the Far East
In China you can see replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the Great Pyramid, St Peter’s Square and a large slice of Amsterdam. But more remarkable than any of them in… Read more
Welcome to Ryanair Britain
Which businessman is the most influential in the making of government policy? The answer came to me when I received a letter fining me £80 for forgetting to renew my… Read more
As high speed rail is being dropped in California and France, it's time for Britain to take the hint
In June last year I predicted in these pages that the government would allow High Speed 2 to die a quiet death. Although the government has since reaffirmed its commitment… Read more
Wasted! How 'Austerity Osborne' is still squandering billions
When the Chancellor stands up to present his spending review next Wednesday it will be with the reputation of a crazed axeman. Much of the country, whether it thinks it… Read more
Why are lefties so sycophantic to Margaret Thatcher?
I’ve been scratching my head for the past half hour trying to work out how I would react if I were a Conservative MP and a BBC reporter stuffed a… Read more
Why I fear for my daughter
To listen to many disability pressure groups, adult social care for people with learning disabilities is being slashed by a heartless government. What few of them want to tell you,… Read more
David Cameron's sex problem
This week David Cameron lectured a business audience in India on how far Britain has yet to go in getting women into the boardroom. ‘My wife likes to say,’ he… Read more
Sickness in the health service
A former editor of this magazine, Nigel Lawson, once described the NHS as ‘the closest thing the English have to a religion, with those who practise in it regarding themselves… Read more
Paying Osborne’s bills
In her early campaigning days as Conservative leader, Mrs Thatcher had the gift of being able to relate the national economy to the domestic finances of ordinary voters. The battle… Read more
Up in the air
Like the War of Jenkins’ Ear in 18th-century Anglo-Spanish relations, Heathrow is becoming something of a totem in the fight for the soul of the Conservative party. Whether you prefer… Read more
Our China syndrome
The prominent story of London 2012 has been that of a country which was once an underachiever in the Olympic games but which, through sheer hard work on the part… Read more
The Tory delusion
Many a Conservative MP will spend the summer dreaming happily about what the party should do in office once it has freed itself from the shackles of coalition. Few even… Read more
Paying for PFI
There is nothing as dangerous, they say, as the zeal of the newly converted. So it was when Labour under Tony Blair suddenly discovered capitalism. What had been a small-scale… Read more
The train to nowhere
The fact that you cannot perform a U-turn in a train is one of the limitations of that form of transport. When the line ahead is blocked, locomotives form long… Read more
The price of gold
On 27 July millions will drown in syrup as Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee, delivers his usual platitudes about international togetherness and sport without boundaries. He might,… Read more
Cameron’s tragic flaw
The PM’s problem is not poshness, but impoliteness Premierships do not end in failure, as Enoch Powell once asserted, but in tragedy. They start with a beaming figure disappearing behind… Read more
Cameron’s follies
Was a political brickbat from the left ever more elegantly lobbed than J.K. Galbraith’s jibe that conservative governments create ‘private affluence and public squalor’? It came to sum up perfectly… Read more
Crossed wires
Chris Huhne wants to know why we don’t shop around more for our utilities. I’ll give him one reason. The liberalisation of utility markets has created an impression of bewildering… Read more
The free market in danger
Young people say capitalism has failed them. They’re right. We must change the system to save it It would be easy to attack the London spin-off of the Occupy Wall… Read more
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Cartoons
‘What’s happened to us? We never says LOL any more.’
‘That’s Pope Innocent X — he was framed.’
