Peter Hitchens

Following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, Hitchens advocated a negotiated peace, challenged NATO enlargement and accused Western powers of using Ukraine as a strategic instrument. In 2025, he continued to describe the conflict as a 'moronic' and 'needless' war.

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Peter Hitchens has publicly questioned the safety of Lucy Letby's convictions, citing the absence, in his view, of direct evidence, aspects of the statistical and medical reasoning and the institutional handling of the case.

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In 2001, amid the MMR controversy, Hitchens defended parents' right to refuse vaccination out of caution over the then widely publicised fears of a link with autism. This became one of his most disputed positions after the study that initiated the MMR scare was discredited as fraudulent.

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Early in the pandemic, Hitchens opposed British lockdowns, describing them as 'mass house arrest', challenging the models guiding public decisions and accusing the authorities of creating disproportionate panic.

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Hitchens conducted a highly visible campaign challenging the Church of England's handling of a historical sexual abuse allegation against Bishop George Bell. The Carlile report subsequently concluded that the Church's process had been seriously deficient and had rushed to judgment.

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In 'The Phoney Victory', Hitchens challenges the British narrative of the 'good war', argues that the United Kingdom entered the war at the wrong time and criticises, among other things, the bombing of German civilians. The book prompted intense historical debate.

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In 2013, Hitchens delivered a lecture at the University of Bristol entitled 'Why I Like Vladimir Putin'. In later writing, he defended certain aspects of post-Soviet Russia and denounced what he views as simplistic Western hostility.

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Following the referendum held in Crimea in March 2014 under Russian control, Hitchens argued that most Crimeans probably wanted to join Russia and raised the issue of self-determination in comparison with other territorial precedents.

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In 'The War We Never Fought' and interviews, Hitchens maintains that he does not believe addiction exists in the medical sense, emphasises free will and argues that drug possession and use should genuinely be punished to deter them.

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Since the 1990s, Peter Hitchens has advocated an argument in favour of capital punishment, which he presented as a 'liberal case for the death penalty', while acknowledging the risk of miscarriages of justice and making any restoration conditional on far-reaching procedural safeguards.

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