Melanie Phillips

Sometimes, you can gauge someone’s quality from the enemies they make. By that standard, the embattled Education Secretary, Michael Gove, is a person of the highest quality.

Published in: Daily Mail

Truly, it seems that scarcely a day now passes without our being informed of yet another celebrity accused of sexual depravity.

Published in: Daily Mail

A group of sex education ‘experts’ has suggested that pupils should be taught in school about pornography, on the grounds that it is not ‘all bad’ and can even be ‘helpful’ to them.

Published in: Daily Mail

When the journalistic world protested almost as one after the publication of the Leveson proposals to regulate the Press, others dismissed these objections on the grounds of: ‘Well, they would, wouldn’t they?’

Published in: Daily Mail

Yesterday's BBC Radio 4 Today programme informed us that Brighton's local public health agency may introduce what is euphemistically called a drug 'safe consumption room', otherwise known as a 'shooting gallery'.

Published in: Daily Mail

As David Cameron prepared for the funeral of one of his greatest predecessors, there was another, less advertised but also significant, signalled exit from the political world last week.

Published in: Daily Mail

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

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

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

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

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

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

The chief operating officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, decided last week to use the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos to make some observations about women in the workplace.

Published in: Daily Mail

The immediate response to the Sahara atrocity must be revulsion, and deep sorrow for the families of those British and other hostages who were murdered in cold blood or killed in the rescue attempt.

Published in: Daily Mail

More than five years ago, the death of 17-month-old Peter Connelly, identified at first only as Baby P, shocked the nation.

Published in: Daily Mail

This is the year when I’ll definitely, absolutely and without any shadow of a doubt finally learn to swim.

Published in: Daily Mail