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The Spectator![]() |
All year Keir Starmer has been using a reassuring phrase about his inevitable Downing Street tenure in a bid to calm the nerves of those not...
As someone who was around pop stars from a very young age, I’m not inclined to get over-excited about them. I learnt to play it cool the day the...
‘They tried to stop us and look what it did. The thing I love most is being a yid.’ So chanted the Tottenham Hotspur fans 44 seconds into their...
The actions of the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, will deprive Israel of its sovereignty and undermine the West’s...
To Labour’s backbench, where the spotlight is on Jess Phillips and her rather extraordinary revelation. It transpires that in a recent ‘in...
I am not yet eligible for the winter fuel allowance. Nor am I especially in favour of it, regarding it as one of those times when the government...
A gendarme was killed in France on Monday evening when a driver ran him over at a routine roadside checkpoint in Provence. The driver of the BMW...
There are quite a few ‘theories’ (what the middle classes call gossip nowadays) about why Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have sundered their union...
Employees will have the right to ask their employers to compress their hours into four days a week rather than five, but employers will not be...
As the SNP gathers for its conference in Edinburgh this weekend, its membership nearly halved from a peak of 125,691, there is a palpable sense of...
As the SNP conference weekend kicks off, another Scottish story is starting to take shape. It has emerged that detectives north of the border are...
The 1997 Christmas special of The Mrs Merton Show probably doesn’t feature in many people’s formative political memories, but it remains with me...
Forget two-tier policing – we need to talk about two-tier healthcare. Jess Phillips, Labour MP and Home Office minister, has reportedly said she...
Another day, another Sue Gray-related drama. Now Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff has come under fire over yet another prospective government...
CNN was the lucky winner of the first sit-down media interview with Vice President Kamala Harris since she was pushed to the top of the ticket...
In January 2022, the New York Times ran a piece that declared that smoking was back, quoting Martin Amis’s daughter saying it seemed like it...
The tasting menu has fallen from fashion, and this is good. They are a curio – a window to the chef’s soul – and they have always incited more...
The Japanese are battening down the hatches – again – as typhoon Shanshan wreaks devastation to the south-west of the country, with worse,...
Pray for Windsor. From today, Extinction Rebellion is descending on Windsor Home Park for ‘three days of creative, peaceful action to propose...
Tamfana is just the sort of short-priced favourite that I love to take on. Yes, of course she might win tomorrow’s Sky Bet Atalanta Stakes (Sandown,...
Priti Patel’s Tory leadership launch in Westminster this afternoon was an upbeat affair, featuring mango lassi and a tonne of merchandise. With...
Shock quickly turned to anger in Germany when a Syrian asylum seeker was arrested for the brutal knife attack in the city of Solingen last weekend....
For the moment, can there be anything new to say about Elizabeth II? In time, the archives will open up and more of her correspondence and any of...
‘Everywhere I could see India, yet I could not recognise it.’ So said India’s great national poet Rabindranath Tagore of South-East Asia,...
Is Lord Mandelson being ‘lined up’ as the UK’s next ambassador in Washington? The news that the Labour party’s arch-Blairite and one-time...
This I began writing two weeks ago as an overnight guest in a cosy cabin on a farm beside an endless dirt road in the most remote part of the...
God used to exist. He doesn’t any more, but back in the early 1970s he was a major presence in my life. The world at that time was run by...
In Michel Houellebecq’s satirical novel Soumission, the French elite submits to Islamic rule rather than accept a National Front government. Nine...
Recent acquisition of some insanely expensive hearing aids aimed at helping me out in cacophonous restaurants has set me thinking about the extent...
The news that a vast cache of material by and concerning George Orwell is about to be cast to the four winds in the wake of a corporate sell-off...
Pachinko is like an extended version of the Monty Python ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch (‘I used to have to get out of shoebox at midnight, lick...
The lunatics were once in charge of the asylum. The first six directors of the National Gallery were all artists: before art history became an...
The most angst-ridden sub-category of the very rich – admittedly a lucky bunch to start with – must surely contain those who have inherited a...
We were talking Spain and drinking Spanish. The UK and Spain are very different societies, but we did find points of comparison. As a very broad...
The Terminator is James Cameron’s first film, made a star of Arnold Schwarzenegger, is celebrating its 40th anniversary – there’s a 4K...
Keir Starmer’s government appears to have softened its stance on oil and gas. Back in June 2023, the Labour leader told an audience in Edinburgh...
Chekhov had no illusions about horticulture (‘It’s a nice, healthy business to be in, but there are passions and wars raging there too’) but...
Conservative MPs who hoped for a relaxing summer break have had a nasty shock: their phones have been ringing on repeat. With just 121 MPs in their...
Well, well, well. It seems Sir Keir Starmer wasn’t exaggerating about his ‘change’ agenda. It now transpires that the new Prime Minister has...
To Downing Street, where it appears the new Prime Minister isn’t having the most pleasant of premierships. Sir Keir Starmer has been in the top...
When Rishi Sunak announced his plan to create a ‘smoke-free generation’ at conference, some of his own MPs were bemused. It wasn’t just the...
It is hard to think of anyone in aviation history who has done more to degrade the passenger experience of air travel than the man who has run...
So much for building upon the legacy of the nation’s greatest ever sportsman. There will be no tennis balls hit at a proposed £20 million sports...
I was on my way to a Pilates class when I spotted Paul waving at me urgently from across the road at the bus stop. ‘Can you help, Miss,’ he said....
It’s a curious political world. Few who voted Labour last month actually wanted Labour policies, or for that matter had more than the haziest...
Anyone surprised by leaked documents showing smoking may soon be banned in beer gardens, small parks, outdoor restaurants, open-air spaces at...
For many years the academic sociologist Frank Furedi has been among the strongest conservative voices in the front line of the culture wars. The...
Can one have too many friends? I asked myself this question as we prepared yet another dinner party for ten people, at which I ate and drank far...
Joe Boyd’s masterly history of what some of us still defiantly call World Music – more on which later – takes its title from Paul Simon’s...
It’s a curious political world. Few who voted Labour last month actually wanted Labour policies, or for that matter had more than the haziest...
The longer it continues in office, the more reactionary and beholden to vested interests this government turns out to be. So far it has surrendered...
The most important thing to know about the filmmaker and writer Marguerite Duras is that she was a total drunk. ‘I became an alcoholic as soon as...
This is a magnificent book, regardless of whether the reader knows who it is about. I state this bluntly at the outset because I am keenly aware...
Last week, if you’d known what to listen for, you might have heard a chorus of miniature whistles in gardens across the UK. Other sounds too: the...
First Fred West, now Lucy Letby. At this rate, it won’t be long before Herefordshire has produced more serial killers than it has miles of dual...
It looks like there could be bad news again for smokers ahead of the return of parliament in September. Already Starmer’s stubbers have committed...
‘We need to deport, deport, deport!’ Björn Höcke, leader of the Alternative für Deutschland in Thuringia, emphasises each word with a clenched...
On the face of it, the ‘no limits’ partnership between Russia and China declared weeks before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022...
Grade: A- One of the best one-liners attributed to Sir Thomas Beecham refers to the stridently avant-garde Karlheinz Stockhausen: ‘I’ve never...
‘Boo!’ came a voice from the stalls. ‘Boo. Outrage!’ It was hard not to feel a pang of admiration. British opera audiences don’t tend to...
It’s boom time at Ofcom. In the past few years, what was until recently the government-backed regulator for broadcasting, telecoms and postal...
Higher-than-expected public sector pay deals, social security reform and the SNP’s freeze on council tax have all contributed to putting pressure...
It could be said that the last thing we need now is an Oasis reunion. I read somewhere that there are 56 conflicts in the world at the moment, and...
Britain will not be rejoining the EU, the single market nor the customs union – that ship has sailed, and all we seek now is a closer...
Whether one is a Leaver or a Remainer, for most Britons Brexit has not worked out the way they wanted. The blame for the imbroglio can be shared...
It must be the worst kept secret in the country. At almost every opportunity, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, and his Chancellor Rachel...
It is back to the drawing board for Emma Raducanu after her embarrassing first-round defeat at the US Open. Raducanu crashed out of the...
The video game Star Wars Outlaws is to be released this week. The game is set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi – so in the...
For most parents whose teenage years pre-dated Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, few things are as terrifying as the social media use of...
First, a little story. About three years ago I was given an eccentric but fun assignment between Covid lockdowns – I had to eat my way around the...
For a great many, their job is their vocation. It’s not just what they do for a living, it’s a key part of defining who they are as a person....
Britain’s prisons are full: over the August Bank Holiday weekend, there were fewer than 100 men’s prison places remaining. The number of spaces...
On the evening of 10 August 1996, I found myself lost in the grounds of a stately home in Hertfordshire, and very, very drunk. Everywhere I turned,...
Twenty years ago, I suffered through seeing Oasis perform at Glastonbury. It remains one of the worst, if not the worst, large-scale gigs of its...
Mark Haddon’s latest collection of short stories, Dogs and Monsters, uses myth and history as springboards into mesmerising accounts of...
It’s the Tory race on everyone’s lips. No, not the battle to be the next party leader but rather the contest to chair the Conservatives’...
At long last, it’s finally here. After five days of media trails, Keir Starmer’s equivalent of the Gettysburg Address will be made later today....
Who would bother to create jobs in modern Britain? Clothing retailer Next has done plenty of job-creation over the past few years – only to be...
Winter is coming. That’s the message from Keir Starmer’s set-piece speech this morning from the No. 10 rose garden. After a tricky few weeks for...
The Paralympics begin in Paris tomorrow but the feel-good factor generated in France by the Olympic Games at the start of the month has long since...
Keir Starmer is making a big mistake by cancelling the appointment of one of Britain’s top generals as national security adviser. General Gwyn...
Keir Starmer’s rose garden speech today should be seen as a companion piece to last month’s melodramatic Commons statement by Rachel Reeves on...
Last week, the London restaurant St John opened reservations for a celebration of its 30th birthday. For much of September, the Smithfield...
On Friday, a hostage crisis unfolded at the IK-19 prison colony near Volgograd, the southern Russian city once known as Stalingrad. Four convicts...
Carol Vorderman has given a speech to the Edinburgh Television Festival, in which she complains that the TV industry is too middle class. This is...
At a press conference in Kyiv today, Volodymyr Zelensky spoke about his strategy to end Russia’s war. He has a plan which he says he will present...