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Why isn’t the BBC telling us what caused the Ballymena riots?

Does anyone know what’s actually happening in Ballymena, in Northern Ireland? If you’ve just been following the news on the BBC, it’s actually...

yesterday 20

The Spectator

Melanie Mcdonagh

How to game the social housing system

Westminster council has announced that every single social housing tenant in the borough will receive lifetime tenancies. No test of need. No...

yesterday 20

The Spectator

John Power

The Renaissance master who rescued polyphonic music

Last month I watched conductor Harry Christophers blow through what sounded like an arthritic harmonica but in fact was a pure-toned pitch pipe,...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Philip Clark

The depressing rise of ‘direct cremations’

Twenty per cent of last year’s funerals in Britain were direct cremations – up from 14 per cent in 2020. Numbers are continuing to rise, fast, for...

yesterday 8

The Spectator

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

A lament for the lads’ mags

Do you remember the lads’ mags? I do because I worked on them for years. FHM, Maxim, all those gloriously disreputable titles. I helped dream up...

yesterday 7

The Spectator

Sean Thomas

OnlyFans is giving HMRC what it wants

Fenix International occupies the ninth floor of an innocuous office block on London’s Cheapside. The street’s name comes from the Old English for...

yesterday 7

The Spectator

Michael Simmons

Summer opera festivals have gone Wagner mad

Another week, another Wagner production at a summer opera festival. This never used to happen. When John Christie launched Glyndebourne in the...

yesterday 7

The Spectator

Richard Bratby

The charm of Robbie Williams

What could it possibly feel like to be a sportsperson who gets the yips? To wake up one morning and be unable to replicate the technical skills...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Michael Hann

How do you exhibit living deities?

The most-watched TV programme in human history isn’t the Moon landings, and it isn’t M*A*S*H; chances are it’s Ramayan, a magnificently cheesy...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Sam Kriss

Why disaffected actors often make excellent playwrights

Actors are easily bored on long runs. Phoebe Waller-Bridge once revealed that she staged distractions in the wings to amuse her colleagues. On the...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Craig Raine

Ingenious: the Globe’s Romeo & Juliet reviewed

Cul-de-Sac feels like an ersatz sitcom of a kind that’s increasingly common on the fringe. Audiences are eager to see an unpretentious domestic...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Darkly comic samurai spaghetti western: Tornado reviewed

Tornado is a samurai spaghetti western starring Tim Roth, Jack Lowden and Takehiro Hira (among others). Samurai spaghetti westerns aren’t anything...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

The lure of St James’s

Procrastination may be the thief of time, but in the right circumstances, it can be fun. The other day, I was enjoying myself in St James’s, my...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Bruce Anderson

Above the law / How to ruin a city

Why would you choose to make a city crappy? Plenty of cities don’t have much going for them. But when they do, it takes a certain amount of skill...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Douglas Murray

The Spectator’s Notes / The BBC’s Israel problem

Intrepidly, the BBC dared recently to visit Dover, Delaware – source, it implied, of starvation in Gaza. I listened carefully as its State...

yesterday 8

The Spectator

Charles Moore

Books / Who started the Cold War?

Over a few short months after the defeat of Nazism in May 1945, the ‘valiant Russians’ who had fought alongside Britain and America had...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Owen Matthews

Nigel Farage was the spending review’s real winner

When chancellors approach a major moment like a Spending Review, they tend to have a figure in their mind’s eye – someone who embodies the type of...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Sophia Falkner

Why OnlyFans has young British women in its grip

The porn star Bonnie Blue offers a straightforward explanation for her decision to join OnlyFans. She was in her early twenties, married to her...

yesterday 70

The Spectator

Louise Perry

Reform gains another councillor in blow for Scottish Tories

Dear oh dear. With just days to go until the Scottish Conservative conference, party leader Russell Findlay will have been hoping for a quiet news...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Steerpike

Economist accuses Reeves of ‘making up numbers’ in spending review

While certain government departments celebrated Rachel Reeves’s spending review – Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner even threw a party the night...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Steerpike

How good was Brian Wilson?

I recently did an online quiz to name the 100 biggest selling pop and rock acts in the USA. The Beatles came top – the Rolling Stones, Led...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Politics / Rachel Reeves, the Iron Chancer

Gordon Brown may not be every teenager’s political pin-up. But as an Oxford student, Rachel Reeves proudly kept a framed photo of him in her...

yesterday 20

The Spectator

James Heale

Victory for disorder / Has deporting illegals become illegal?

The circus around Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia – whose full name the New York Times likes to trot out as if citing an old-school English aristocrat...

yesterday 20

The Spectator

Lionel Shriver

Westminster must fall

Dominic Cummings delivered a Pharos Lecture in Oxford this week on why western regimes are in crisis. Here is an edited transcript of his speech:...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Dominic Cummings

Is Israel preparing to strike Iran?

While much of the Western debate remains trapped in tired slogans and false moral narratives, events on the ground in the Middle East have taken a...

yesterday 5

The Spectator

Jonathan Sacerdoti

I love sausages!

‘Sausages,’ my son says to me, leaning forward from the back of the car, with the authority and confidence only a three-year-old can truly muster....

yesterday 4

The Spectator

Olivia Potts

The Wiki Man / In defence of the Trump playbook

The standard explanation for why charges for plastic bags reduced waste is economic. People were reluctant to pay 10p for a bag and so brought...

yesterday 4

The Spectator

Rory Sutherland

Frozen out / Is Xi Jinping’s time up?

Stories about Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun, are blowing up on social media. He died in 2002, so why the interest in him now? The weird fact is...

yesterday 4

The Spectator

Francis Pike

The tragedy of Brian Wilson’s life

The late Brian Wilson, who has died aged 82, once had his songs, which included modern-day classics such as ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘Good Vibrations’,...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Alexander Larman

Could Donald Trump scrap Aukus?

America’s policy undersecretary of defence, Elbridge Colby, is one of the brightest brains in Donald Trump’s administration. Having served in the...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Terry Barnes

Rachel Reeves’ spending plans are already in doubt

Rachel Reeves delivered her spending plans for the next three years less than 24 hours ago, but already the credibility of the Chancellor’s plans...

yesterday 1

The Spectator

Michael Simmons

Will the L.A. immigration riots reach Europe?

The pro-immigration protests that erupted last week in Los Angeles have now spread across the United States. On Tuesday there were confrontations...

previous day 8

The Spectator

Gavin Mortimer

Spin doctors / The pretentiousness of the pop critics

Pop music criticism, said Frank Zappa, was the work of people who can’t write, about people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read. Half a...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Michael Henderson

No, Nato: Brits had not ‘better learn to speak Russian’

It seems conventional wisdom by now that the public can only be convinced by hyperbole. As Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte implies that Britain...

previous day 20

The Spectator

Mark Galeotti

David Lammy has scored a win against pro-Gaza civil servants

Not for the first time in Whitehall, we are seeing a power struggle between elected government ministers and civil servants under their control...

previous day 20

The Spectator

Andrew Tettenborn

Khan takes a pop at Reeves over spending review

There were always going to be winners and losers in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s spending review and it appears that Sadiq Khan’s London has pulled...

previous day 7

The Spectator

Steerpike

US urges UK to U-turn on Israeli sanctions

As if the Labour government didn’t have enough on its plate with Rachel Reeves’s spending review to be announced at midday, it is also facing...

previous day 7

The Spectator

Steerpike

Football / England’s defeat to Senegal might be their worst ever performance

“England, the lions of Autumn are but lambs come the Spring”. That quote is often attributed to Michel Platini, but I remember hearing it still...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Rachel Reeves’s Spending Review is a recipe for trouble

Rachel Reeves will apparently tell us today that she has chosen stability over chaos. It is one of the Chancellor’s standard lines, but it is very...

previous day 4

The Spectator

Ross Clark

Starmer returns to his favourite PMQs subject: Liz Truss

‘Mr Speaker, he loves talking about Liz Truss – why? Because he wants to hide from his economic record.’ Kemi Badenoch didn’t need to do much...

previous day 5

The Spectator

Isabel Hardman

RSVP rage / Rules for my dinner party guest

I love having friends over for dinner, and like to think I’m rather good at hosting. And while I always strive for a relaxed atmosphere and dislike...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Julie Bindel

Britain doesn’t need more affordable housing

This afternoon’s spending review mostly consisted of rehashed announcements, and in fact Tory plans that had been quickly rebadged. But there was...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Matthew Lynn

Britain’s sanctioning of Israeli ministers is a grave mistake

The United Kingdom’s decision this week to impose personal sanctions on two Israeli cabinet ministers, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir...

previous day 9

The Spectator

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Blob PLC / Why corporate wokery refuses to die

Everyone thinks they know what the Blob is. A great wobbly blancmange of Sir Humphreys and (these days) Lady Tamaras: a public sector elite, slow...

previous day 9

The Spectator

Rupert Redwald

Swinney stages reshuffle amid SNP infighting

It’s a busy day in politics and the SNP is keen not to be left out of the action. As Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveils her spending review in...

previous day 7

The Spectator

Lucy Dunn

Low spirits / When did we become so boring?

Recently, I found myself trying to explain to a much younger colleague who Oliver Reed was. We’d got on to the subject of the hell-raising actor...

previous day 9

The Spectator

G.v. Chappell

No sacred cows / Should we be above cancelling the cancellers?

I’ve been mulling over Marco Rubio’s latest salvo in the Trump administration’s assault on the Censorship-Industrial Complex. The US Secretary of...

previous day 6

The Spectator

Toby Young

Books / Everyone who was anyone in Russia was spied on – including Stalin

Vasili Mitrokhin was a KGB colonel smuggled out of Russia by MI6 in the early 1990s with a treasure trove of notes from the KGB’s archive. The...

previous day 3

The Spectator

Alan Judd

SNP plotters should think twice before moving against John Swinney

For those who feel Scottish politics has become a little dull of late, fear not: a rebel faction within the SNP is plotting to make things very...

previous day 5

The Spectator

Stephen Daisley

Sketch / The spending review was 45 minutes I will never get back

Rachel Reeves looked a little surprised at the cheers from the Labour benches that greeted her as she stood to give the Commons details of the...

previous day 4

The Spectator

Madeline Grant