‘As the Petraeus story develops, I am left wondering: is the new American morality that one should love the sin, yet hate the sinner?’

'A disciple of Terry Eagleton objects to a culture of "dead white men". Would she sneer at a culture of "dead black men"?'

'Sayeeda Warsi is a textbook lesson of what happens when you promote someone too fast, too early and for the wrong reasons'

'A widow of the Munich Olympic massacre asked Jacques Rogge if he would have refused to commemorate the victims if they had not been Israelis. "difficult question," he replied

'My recent book wasn't shortlisted for the Orwell Prize but nor was Christopher Hitchens's — the judges must be mad'

'After the elections in France and Greece the idea of Ed Miliband as prime minister is moving from late-night fear to probability'

'While discussing sex education it emerges that Doncaster has the highest rate of STIs in the UK. I turn down an offer to hit the town'

‘The law of the land should just allow any two people who wish publicly to commit to each other to do so. It is called civil marriage’

‘There is only one thing the Leveson inquiry needs to discover: how did the law come to be broken repeatedly and publicly, with impunity?’

'Backward-leaning leftist populism is on the rise. All the old slogans of the 1980s  — "Tory scum" and so on — are making a return'