Melanie Phillips

Right everybody, excitement over, nothing to see, move along there. After the visit to Israel by new, improved, Israel-loving President Obama, which was hailed almost as Theodor Herzl's second coming, it's back to more of the same old same old.

Published in: Jewish Chronicle

You really do have to pinch yourself. No really, you say, this must be a joke, surely? Alas, it is all too true.

Published in: Daily Mail

Does the Labour Party really believe it was entirely right and proper that Mick Philpott, who has been jailed for life for the manslaughter of six children – five of them his own -- should have been subsidised on welfare to the tune of upwards of £60,000 per year? It certainly looks as if it does.

Published in: Melanie's Blog

As everyone knows, the NHS is Britain's sacred cow because it stands for certain values that the public believe form the essence of a decent and civilised society.

Published in: Daily Mail

There must surely be many who are mystified by the Prime Minister's pistols-at-dawn challenge to Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband today over the issue of press freedom.

Published in: Daily Mail

How very disappointing. It appears that the arrival of a new head of the Church of England has not managed to prevent the collective clerical knee from jerking in the same old way over the poor.

Published in: Daily Mail

Phew! Thank heavens the Israeli film The Gatekeepers failed to win an Oscar. Maybe the Almighty is a cinema-goer and also felt like throwing up when he saw it.

Published in: Jewish Chronicle

Jutting out his chin after a humiliating defeat in the Eastleigh by-election, David Cameron declared yesterday that ‘there will be no U-turns’ and no ‘lurching to the Right’ (but not, alas, ‘no cliches’).

Published in: Daily Mail

Is the United States about to become a laughing-stock to the rest of the world? It seems to have accrued a Defence Secretary who is the toast of Iran, and a Secretary of State who is a blithering idiot.

Published in: Melanie's blog

You can almost set your clock by it. Whenever a scandal erupts, it’s generally the cover-up that does the real damage, not just to the miscreant’s reputation but over a steadily widening area like a pebble rippling through a pool.

Published in: Daily Mail

The movie Lincoln, which I have just seen, is a magnificent piece of cinematic theatre, with a mesmeric performance by Daniel Day Lewis which deserves all the plaudits headed upon it.

Published in: Melanie's blog

By discharging the jury which had failed to reach even a majority verdict in the Vioky Pryce case, the judge, Mr Justice Sweeney, did not hide his astonishment and dismay at the way it had behaved.

Published in: Daily Mail

The 'subscribe' button on my home page, which enables readers to receive email updates of my work on this site, is now operational again following a technical hiatus. Apologies to all those who subscribed for this service but received no updates in recent weeks; please re-subscribe for the restored update service.

Published in: Melanie's blog

If anyone still doubts that European culture is suffering from a terminal sickness, and that the poison in its bloodstream is oozing out foully to pollute the atmosphere as it steadily disintegrates, what has happened to Lars Hedegaard stands as a graphic corrective.

Published in: Melanie's blog

Another week, another scene-change in the long-running farce of Britain’s catastrophic entanglement with human rights law.

Published in: Daily Mail

Today, the government is due to unveil its proposals for dealing with the vexed and emotive issue of how to pay for long-term care for the elderly.

Published in: Daily Mail

The Tories are in ferment. Plots against David Cameron appear to be seeding like dandelion spores. Rebellion looms in the division lobbies.

Published in: Daily Mail

Israel has not yet got over its astonishment at the result of the general election, which saw the propulsion to power of the political neophyte Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party.

Published in: Jewish Chronicle

The agony of the US Republicans, engulfed by an existential crisis since the second term victory of Barack Obama, reminds me so much of the UK Conservatives’ similar crisis after the accession of Tony Blair to power in 1997.

Published in: Melanie's blog

With the row then still raging over the Lib Dem MP David Ward’s attack upon Jews for not learning the lessons of the Holocaust and oppressing the Palestinians, the Sunday Times published last weekend a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a demonic builder walling up Palestinians with cement stained red with their blood.

Published in: Melanie's blog