Andrew Neil

Andrew Neil’s uncompromising takes on the big issues of the day have made his Daily Mail column required reading. From the upheavals at Westminster to the geopolitical crises threatening his readers’ everyday lives, his laser-like focus is shown in three columns that exemplify his determination to speak truth to power.

At the beginning of the year, he dismissed the apocalyptic warnings of Doomsday Clock scientists who say that the threat of war on multiple fronts means we are on the verge of global catastrophe. ‘The gloom and doom should not be swallowed wholesale,’ he argued but warned that dictators smell weakness and that we are in danger of repeating the lessons of the 1930s when the woeful state of our armed forces meant they were seen as no deterrent by Hitler.

With Britain spending barely 2 per cent of its GDP on defence, Neil suggested that democracies on both the Left and Right were too quick to pocket the proceeds of the peace dividend in the aftermath of the Cold War, oblivious to new threats that were rising, from Russia to Iran to China and North Korea. ‘In a conflict-strewn world which is likely to become even more perilous, it would be an unforgivable folly to repeat the mistakes of nine decades ago — especially since this time there might be no coming back from it.’

In May, in the week that Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico survived an assassination attempt, Neil offered one of his many insightful historical perspectives, pointing out that Neville Chamberlain dismissed the Nazi’s annexation of the Sudetenland as ‘a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing’. ‘Events in little known nations have a habit of blowing up into major conflagrations,’ he wrote. ‘Slovakia 2024 is not, in my judgment, Sarajevo 1914. Nevertheless, our age is fraught with danger.’ ‘As Europe’s foremost military power, we should be in a position of some leadership. But Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seems to have little interest in defence or foreign affairs and none of the leadership qualities the situation demands. ‘Instead we’ll debate endlessly about gender self-ID, which the dictators take as a sign of our decline.’

With Labour taking power in July, Neil turned his attention to ‘one-man wrecking ball’ Ed Miliband and the energy and climate crusade which, Neil warned, ‘will hinder growth, discourage investment, destroy jobs and increase fuel bills — while despoiling the countryside, just for good measure.’ While the former Labour leader claimed that his policy of refusing new oil and gas licences in the North Sea will ensure the UK no longer remains at the mercy of dictators controlling fossil fuel markets, Neil pointed out that ‘as is often the case in Mili-World, the opposite is true’ and that ‘the petrostate dictators must be laughing all the way to their multi-billion sovereign wealth funds. It is stupidity squared (but perhaps par for the Miliband course).’