Janet Daley

Not to be confused with Janet Dailey.

Janet Daley
Born	(1944-03-21) 21 March 1944 (age 81) Boston, US
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley University of London
Occupation	Journalist
Notable credit	The Sunday Telegraph

Janet Daley (née Klatskin; born 21 March 1944) is an American-born conservative journalist based in Britain. She is a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph.^[1]

Early life and education

Daley is Jewish.^[2] She studied philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, following which, in 1965, she moved to Britain, where she received an MPhil in philosophy at the University of London.^[3]

Career

Teaching

Daley then taught philosophy at the Open University, the University of London and the Royal College of Art. While teaching philosophy, she developed an interest in the philosophy of design and in 1982 published Design Creativity and Understanding Design Objectives for Design Studies (Vol. 3, No 3).^[4] She contributed to what later became recognised as an influential conference on design methods held at Portsmouth Polytechnic School of Architecture in 1967,^[5] which led to the book Design Methods in Architecture (1969), edited by Geoffrey Broadbent and Anthony Ward.^[3] Her contribution, titled "A philosophical critique of behaviourism in architectural design", was an early critique of the then much favoured architecture theorist Christopher Alexander.

Journalism

Daley left academia in 1987 to become a journalist.^[6] She wrote for The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent and The Spectator. In 1989, she became a columnist for The Independent, followed in 1990 by The Times, before moving to The Sunday Telegraph in 1996.

Political views

During the 1960s, while a student, Daley identified as a Marxist.^[7] During the 1980s, she was a member of Hornsey Labour Party.^[8]

In a 2003 article titled "Up from Liberalism", she relates how her political views shifted from a leftist to a conservative viewpoint based on her early years in the UK. Of great significance in her ideological shift was the class structure in the UK, something she had not encountered in the United States, and exemplified she believed by a working class with limited aspirations. She noted, for instance, that "the left-wing elite castigated teachers for attempting to correct the working-class accents and dialects that help trap children in the limitations of their own backgrounds."^[7]

Daley opposed reducing the age of consent for homosexuals to that of heterosexuals. Writing in The Times, she described gay life as "aggressive freemasonry", and argued that homosexuality led to "childlessness, instability and mortal danger from Aids."^[9]

Daley supported the Leave campaign in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum.^{[citation needed]}

She was a vocal supporter of the Conservative Party in the 2019 United Kingdom general election.^{[citation needed]}

She has described the Trumpist interpretation of "political power and its uses [as] not just controversial [but] stark staring mad."^[10]

Personal life

Daley married in 1967 and has two daughters.^[6]

She became a British citizen, which necessitated her giving up her US citizenship.^[11]

Works

• Daley, Janet (1987). All Good Men. ISBN 070113156X.
• Daley, Janet (1989). Honourable Friends. ISBN 0297796143.

References

1. "Janet Daley". The Telegraph. Retrieved 26 May 2019.
2. Daley, Janet (15 February 2009). "The more we discuss religious differences the safer we will be". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 18 October 2025.
3. Geoffrey Broadbent and Anthony Ward (eds), Design Methods in Architecture, Lund Humphries, 1968. OCLC 563507884
4. "Philosophy of Engineering: Volume 1 of the proceedings of a series of seminars Archived 5 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine held at The Royal Academy of Engineering, 2010, ISBN 1-903496-38-1
5. Michael Brawn, Architectural Thought: The design process and the expectant eye, Architectural Press: Oxford, 2003, p.27-28.
6. McCoughry, Roy (April 1998). "Roy McCoughry talks to Janet Daley". The Third Way. 21 (3): 18 – via Google.
7. Daley, Janet (2003). "Living with European socialism turned this Berkeley girl into a conservative". City Journal.
8. Daley, Janet (3 February 2018). "The far Left's hounding of a council leader brings home bad memories". The Telegraph. Retrieved 26 May 2019.
9. Faye, Shon (19 April 2018). "Today's anti-trans rhetoric looks a lot like old-school homophobia". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 May 2019.
10. Daley, Janet (27 September 2025). "The political battle of our age is not between Left and Right, but sane and insane". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 27 September 2025. Retrieved 18 October 2025.
11. Daley, Janet (27 August 2016). "I became British because I love this country and its values - why can't other immigrants do the same?". Retrieved 18 October 2025.