Melanie Phillips

Suddenly, a new ministerial shooting-star is born. Or should that be rather a new ministerial shooting-herself-in-the-foot-star, aka David Cameron’s latest self-imposed headache?

Published in: Daily Mail

Well, I now have a reply – of sorts – to the question I asked a day ago whether the new junior health minister Anna Soubry still believed, as she declared when she was only a prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate, that cannabis should be legalised.

Published in: Melanie's blog

David Cameron’s ministerial reshuffle this week has been greeted by the predictable cries of ‘a lurch to the right’ (a reaction otherwise known as a ‘jerk to the knee’).

Published in: Melanie's blog

Who could have watched Ellie Simmonds’s astonishing gold medal win at the Paralympics without a lump in the throat?

Published in: Daily Mail

Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that my Daily Mail column appeared this morning from the deck-chair. However, this was merely an intermission to the intermission, which now resumes until the end of the month.

Published in: Melanie's blog

What a manipulative, melodramatic, malodorous circus.

Published in: Daily Mail

I am off to put my feet up for much the rest of the month, so posts and articles will be light to non-existent -- although I may not be able to resist the odd tweet... I wish everyone a pleasant and peaceful summer.

Published in: Melanie's blog

As Team GB is cheered into the record books at the Olympics, I have been puzzling over whatever happened to Northern Ireland.

Published in: Daily Mail

Sometimes, a spotlight shone harshly into one private life can starkly illuminate a calamity for an entire society.

Published in: Daily Mail

Much anguish has been expended over Jews who detest Israel so virulently they are in the forefront of the delegitimisation campaign. Such people were devastatingly satirised by Howard Jacobson as ‘as a Jew’ Jews, who parade their identity solely to demonise Israel.

Published in: Jewish Chronicle

We appear to be in the middle of a raging freedom of speech firestorm — and no one seems to have a clue what to do about it.

Published in: Daily Mail

You really have to feel some pity for the poor foreign correspondents. By their own account, many of them found Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony at the Olympics utterly baffling.

Published in: Daily Mail

There is a degree of panic, and rightly so, over whether the Syrian tyrant Basher al Assad will use chemical weapons against either his own people or foreign attackers.

Published in: Daily Mail

Dr Vince Cable, the Lib Dem politician who oozes ambition from every pore, has made it clear that he wants to succeed Nick Clegg as leader of the party, and in passing has also taken a pop at the cult of youth.

Published in: Daily Mail

Might it be possible to kill someone with kindness? The fate of Eva Rausing suggests that this may indeed be so.

Published in: Daily Mail

Decent Christians are extremely upset, and rightly so, about the resolution passed at the General Synod a few days ago endorsing the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel.

Published in: Daily Mail

The relentless war against the family in Britain continues in the highest court of the land.

Published in: Daily Mail

The Conservative MP Louise Mensch raised eyebrows last week when she talked candidly on BBC’s Question Time about the effects of having taken hard drugs in her youth.

Published in: Daily Mail

Another day, another EU referendum promise. Or should that perhaps read another EU-turn?

Published in: Daily Mail

The fears I expressed in my Mail column two days ago appear to be proving justified. Or are they?

Published in: Daily Mail