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The Spectator |
Labour’s new ‘stop the boats’ policy is a risible exercise in deception that will only ever fool the truly gullible. The centrepiece, announced...
Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro has terminated diplomatic relations with Israel and described the country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu...
There is so much to like about Chester’s three-day May meeting ending today: a unique course with an atmosphere to match, quality racehorses,...
The eco-activists of Just Stop Oil have often been caricatured as a group of middle-class students with too much time on their hands. Their latest...
Donald Trump made headlines this month when he claimed that London and Paris are no longer recognisable because ‘they have opened their doors to...
We haven’t heard much from Dominic Cummings since he walked out of No. 10 Downing Street in November 2020. Now the cerebral Vote Leave mastermind...
There may be a new First Minister in the driving seat but can the SNP overtake Labour’s lead in the polls? Just this morning, Savanta revealed...
The new hunting year formally began last week. Should I resubscribe? Politically, the outlook is bleak. In February, Steve Reed, the shadow...
This morning the Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed that the UK confined its technical recession to 2023. The economy grew by 0.6 per...
David Lammy has never been much of a diplomat. The veteran Labour MP is fond of lashing out at his critics, but now, as shadow foreign secretary,...
A young Israeli woman warned to stay in her hotel room. A baying mob on the streets outside hollering slogans and abuse. Death threats piling up....
Today is one of those rare occasions in British politics – a day when Rishi Sunak’s government has a bit of good news. Figures released this...
Perhaps it was the anachronistic use of the term ‘gentlemen’ that finally put paid to the idea of the gentlemen’s club. If only these...
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed this morning that the UK confined its technical recession to 2023. The economy grew by 0.6 per...
There are moments when you realise the world is a more complicated place than you had previously thought. I had such moment earlier this week when...
Back in February, a friend forwarded me a profound and joyous article written by Simon Boas about his terminal cancer diagnosis. (I knew Simon a...
There’s no escaping Christopher Wheeldon – a modest, amiable fellow from Yeovil of whom anyone’s mum would be proud. Reaching outside the...
Prince Harry’s visit to London this week, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Invictus games, was largely overshadowed by the news that his...
Liz Truss calls them the ‘deep state’, Dominic Cummings ‘the blob’ and for Sue Gray they are simply former colleagues. But most of the public...
President Biden doesn’t give many sit-down television interviews, but when he does, he tends to make news. This week he sat down for an on-air...
Will the last Tory MP to leave please turn out the lights? Nadhim Zahawi today becomes the 67th Conservative to announce they are standing down at...
Can nothing protect us from a plague of plastic tree protectors? They’ve descended on us like locusts, covering our hills, dales and roadsides with...
Has Keir Starmer made a tactical mistake by recruiting the Tory MP Natalie Elphicke as his latest Starmtrooper? That’s the question being asked...
I am looking for a way to get £80,000. The sum would come in handy. I could put it towards buying a cottage on Saint Helena, a seat in the House...
‘I looked at a picture of him today and thought: “Why are you wearing those expensive clothes, you twit?”’ Plum Sykes is in the Claridge’s...
Minority Report is a plodding bit of sci-fi based on a Steven Spielberg movie made more than two decades ago. The setting is London, 2050, and...
There was plenty for Rishi Sunak and his cabinet to discuss on Tuesday morning. The Conservatives had lost half of the seats they defended in the...
Another week at the opera, another evening with an elitist and ethically dubious art form. I love it; you love it; but the authors of the Arts...
What would C.J. Sansom have made of the Disney version of his novel series about 16th-century crookback lawyer Matthew Shardlake? Sadly, because...
Angus Colwell has narrated this article for you to listen to. On the grass in front of UCL’s main building, on Sunday night, there were about 30...
You’re pushing 60 and an important patron asks you to repeat an artistic feat you accomplished in your thirties. There’s nothing more daunting...
In ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, Sherlock Holmes mentions ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’. ‘But the dog did nothing...
I originally intended to observe that American universities’ anti-Israel protestors and Hamas terrorists deserve each other, because they’ve so...
The hip end of the folk spectrum is in rude health right now. Dublin’s mighty Lankum lead the way, but plenty of other interesting artists are...
As the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) announces its interest rate decision today it has the chance to reverse the damage caused...
One of us must once have told a political pollster: ‘I really have no idea at all who I’m going to vote for.’ A moment of mild exasperation put...
Nobody claims Beryl Cook was an artistic genius, least of all the artist herself. ‘I think my work lies somewhere between Donald McGill [the...
The love affair between so many Americans and their guns – long a source of international fascination – appears to be getting more painfully...
Grade: B- In 2022 the South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim became, at 18, the youngest winner of the Van Cliburn competition, displaying a virtuosity...
A woman who shouted and waved at a cyclist, causing her to fall in front of a car, has had her manslaughter conviction overturned. Auriol Grey, who...
Rishi Sunak has been widely ridiculed for trying to spin the local election results as bad news for Keir Starmer. While acknowledging they were ‘...
Drink and longevity: there seems to have been a successful counter-attack against the puritans, prohibitionists and other health faddists. Indeed,...
Volcanoes, volcanoes, volcanoes. You wait years for a good book or a film about volcanoes to come along and then they blow up all at once. In 2022,...
Five years ago, a documentary about the Duchy of Cornwall featured the then Prince of Wales in tweeds and jaunty red gauntlets laying a hawthorn...
Jerusalem For weeks the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had been preparing for an assault on Rafah. Yet when the order finally came on Monday night, it...
Poor Rishi Sunak is not having a very good week. After a bruising set of local elections and two defections to Labour in a fortnight, the latest ...
When it rains for the Tories, it pours. Now Tees Valley’s Conservative mayor Ben Houchen hits out at his party’s leadership – just 24 hours...
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has voted to hold interest rates for the sixth time in a row. Members of the MPC voted 7 – 2...
The World Health Organisation (WHO) hardly distinguished itself during the Covid 19 pandemic. It was slow to declare an emergency, then tried to...
Westminster is full of clever people who spend a lot of time stupidly making simple things complicated. The story of Nathalie Elphicke’s defection...
Stepping out onto Red Square for today’s Victory Day parade in Moscow, it was clear to see that Vladimir Putin was in a good mood. Arms swinging...
At 7 o’clock on a bleak February morning in 1542, King Henry VIII’s fifth wife Katherine Howard, so enfeebled by fear and misery that she could...
Svitlana Morenets has narrated this article for you to listen to. For weeks, the Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi has looked like a battlefield....
It was only a matter of time before America’s student protests spread to the UK. In Oxford, tents have been pitched on grass that, in ordinary...
Apple has a reputation for advertising that not only sells their products effectively, but sets a standard few of their competitors could ever hope...
‘You grab that table, I’ll get the drinks.’ I did as bid. A couple of minutes later, Paul was back, beers in hand, and we started chatting. Soon...
Another one bites the dust. The second Tory to defect to Labour in as many weeks is none other than Natalie Elphicke, MP for Dover. In a shock...
Another day, another BBC slip-up. This time the much-lauded public service broadcaster has been dragged back into the spotlight after an...
Eight months ago, Robert Jenrick and Neil O’Brien were serving ministers under Rishi Sunak. But both are now out of government and keen to show...
Questions from backbenchers dominated PMQs. Sir Edward Leigh is keen to end unfettered immigration and he announced a way to stop the boats that...
If Natalie Elphicke’s defection had much of an effect on the mood of Tory MPs at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, it was largely to leave...
John Swinney, Scotland’s new first minister, has appointed his inaugural cabinet – and it’s almost unaltered from the team headed by Humza...
Last year was the year the scales tipped in the global job market. Layoffs in consulting and investment banking that started in early 2023 have...
The Prime Minister has summoned the vice chancellors of several universities to Downing Street to read them the riot act over pro-Palestine...
Why did Stormy Daniels testify in court yesterday about her allegedly sexual encounter with Donald Trump? Anybody who has followed the Donald Trump...
With the best will in the world, it is hard to see the defection of Natalie Elphicke MP to the Labour party as a noble deed. You could paper the...
Some prisoners will be freed up to 70 days early to ease overcrowding in jails. This isn’t the first time the government has resorted to letting...
Shortly before Prime Minister’s Questions today, Labour dropped a bombshell. Natalie Elphicke, one of the most hawkish Tory MPs on migration, has...
So much for Scotland being the home of ‘radical’ progressive politics. After almost two decades of the Scottish National party saying that Scots...
The Fall Guy, starring Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling, is a gloriously fun, screwball action film that pokes fun at action films and this, I now...
It takes some brass neck to cross the floor, but to do it in the manner of Natalie Elphicke also requires considerable levels of delusion. A year...
Thousands of Serbs gathered outside the Palace of Serbia today to welcome the Chinese president Xi Jinping, chanting ‘China, Serbia’. Addressing...
The Green party has no problem getting attention these days – but it’s for all the wrong reasons. A second Green councillor is now being...
Queues that stretch for hours. Technology that doesn’t work. And a system so poorly designed that this isn’t the first time it’s broken down....
Prince Harry’s occasional visits to Britain are regarded by many with the sense of unease that most people reserve for unexpected tax bills,...
The personal details of members of the UK’s armed forces appear to have been the latest target of China’s prolific cyber spies, with the Ministry...
Some time in the Noughties I sat next to a guy at work who told me he’d just had a holiday in a village on the outskirts of Amalfi. The village...
In 2020, the year of coronavirus, I came to a fork in the road. I’d just turned 50, a moment of looking back over your life, realising what...
Much has been made in recent weeks, and especially in recent days, about the degrees of ignorance often displayed by those protesting for the...
Conventional wisdom has it that Britain faces an awkward dilemma on legal immigration: either we cut migrant numbers to keep faith with voters...
Among the many appreciations of C.J. Sansom, the author of bestselling historical mysteries who died last week aged 71, one of the most eloquent...
Oh dear. The Green party is in hot water after it emerged that one of its newly-elected councillors labelled a rabbi a ‘creep’ and a ‘kind of...
Since coming to office in December, Javier Milei has won right-wing fans across the world for his bombastic rhetoric and fervent championing of...
Try as he might Emmanuel Macron and his party are unable to arrest the popularity of the National Rally. A month out from the European elections,...
I had taken a friend out for a significant birthday, to a high-end French joint in London. We ordered the tasting menu, an eight course...
UK university courses on race and colonialism are facing the axe due to cuts. ‘There’s not very much about race and colonialism on the curriculum...
As George Orwell astutely observed, England is a nation of hobbyists – and their sometimes eccentric private pursuits are one of the reasons that...
In the penumbra cast by the light of my phone, I can dimly see the wreckage of a night with a newborn baby: half-drunk bottles of milk, the...
Gordon Brown is a historian by education, so he might just appreciate the fickleness of posterity. Over a decade at the Treasury from 1997 to 2007,...
Accepting the leadership of the SNP on Monday, John Swinney said his political priority as Scotland’s seventh First Minister would be the...
A grassroots campaign group called ‘The Muslim Vote’ is aiming to capitalise on the success of pro-Gaza candidates at the local election by...
What comes around goes around. John Swinney has this afternoon become Scotland’s seventh First Minister after being appointed, unopposed, as SNP...
These days it seems there’s little you can’t blame on Brexit. From low ratings to school bullying, Britain’s departure from the European...
With Labour on course to win the next election, it’s worth asking again: why is it the only major political party in the UK never to have had a...
Rachel Reeves may have been getting attention for her accusation that the government is ‘gaslighting’ the public over the state of the economy,...
It’s all but certain that the UK’s exit from recession will be confirmed at the end of this week. Preliminary Q1 data, released on Friday, is...
It’s been a while since the Commons has had so much anger in it as it did during the urgent question on Gaza. The anxiety and criticism of Israel...
Amidst the golden splendour of the Kremlin’s Hall of the Order of St Andrew, Vladimir Putin was once again inaugurated as president of Russia...
Blaming Brexit for everything has become a kind of tic among the great and good. Like the buck-passing politicians who used to blame everything on...
Stephanie Clifford, the adult film star and director who performs under the name Stormy Daniels, took the stand in Donald Trump’s ‘hush-money’...