The Bleak Midwinter Messages: a Conservative ghost story for Christmas - December 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - December 24th, 2023

“Gentlemen,” began the Baron to his two companions, faces flickering in the guttering coals, “I beg your indulgence on a very peculiar matter, and I would ask you not to mock me, nor worse, to think me quite mad, until you have considered fully the whole of my sorry tale. For if what I am…

Sunak has supersized his lies, from WhatsApps to Rwanda - December 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - December 17th, 2023

It’s a privilege to write funny columns about the news for the Observer, and every Sunday I wake excitedly to see what flows from the slushy pen of our illustrator, David Foldvari. But writing these means I have to read the news every day, a weather eye on the endemic corruption of untouchable ministers, and…

At £38,700 for a foreign-born spouse, how many could the Tories afford? - December 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - December 10th, 2023

Without the foreign genes of foreign husbands and foreign wives to strengthen the British gene pool, the tragic mental deficiencies that caused 52% of the country to vote for the idiocy of Brexit will only become more pronounced, consolidating the irreversible death spiral of our already internationally pitied realm. The perma-patsy home secretary, James Cleverly,…

Nigel Farage shouldn’t be in the jungle – get him out of there! - November 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - November 26th, 2023

In 2011, Nigel Farage co-chaired the Europe of Freedom and Democracy grouping with Italy’s Francesco Speroni, who described the Norwegian white supremacist mass murderer and unlikely celebrity Top Gear fan Anders Behring Breivik as someone whose “ideas are in defence of western civilisation”. Farage has received £1.5m to appear on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity ……

I’m not sure I feel comfortable pinning a poppy to my cagoule this year - November 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - November 12th, 2023

Well done, rightwing culture warriors! I’ve worn a poppy with pride every year since I was a choirboy, singing around Solihull war memorial on Remembrance Sunday in the suede denim 1970s, where the solemnity of the situation and the stark beauty of the Last Post momentarily softened even the talented young choirmaster’s yearnings. But I…

The Tory MP protecting Ipswich, Twix by Twix - October 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 29th, 2023

Stop me if I’ve told you this one before, but 20 years ago, a BNP-supporting aunt of mine forwarded me a document, purporting to be a scholarly explanation of why Muslims were inhuman, by a particular academic from a particular university. Even back in the pre-Cambridge Analytica days, I still did a quick fact check,…