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The Spectator![]() |
The day after Mark Zuckerberg said fact-checkers ‘have destroyed more trust than they have created’ I experienced why he has a point. I had done...
I read recently that this month marks 40 years since Britain’s first mobile phone call was made. It was in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1985...
When you hear the term ‘grooming gang’, what comes to mind? ‘Grooming’, as I have long said, is a euphemism for targeting, raping, and...
When passions are aroused, all of us are liable to overstate our case. Dan Hicks, a curator at Oxford’s extraordinary Aladdin’s Cave of...
The new president of the United States believes in fairness, and says the running of the Panama Canal has been very unfair. Even though President...
What is prison for? I’ve wondered that a lot, these past five years. In February 2020, just a few days after the UK left the European Union, and...
The year was 1982. Prime minister Margaret Thatcher rerouted an RAF Hercules over foreign territory and requested the scrambling of jets and...
To the US, where President Trump is busy making the most of his return to the top job. At his inauguration on Monday, the Republican president was...
Another day, another set of poor poll results for Labour. At the start of its 2025 conference, the Institute for Government think tank has unveiled...
To London, where the Institute for Government’s 2025 conference is in full flow. This afternoon the think tank hosted a wide-ranging conversation...
It’s a day ending in ‘y’ – so of course Keir Starmer is spinning like a top. Donald Trump’s inauguration this week has sparked a raft of...
It wasn’t so long ago that political commentators and Tory MPs alike were confidently predicting that Rishi Sunak would leave No. 10 and head...
Well, well, well. Just when the Scottish government thought it had steadied the SNP ship after two rather tumultuous years, another scandal has hit...
Sir Keir Starmer has promised an inquiry into the events around the Southport murders committed by Axel Rudakubana, saying there are questions...
We’re not even 24 hours into the second Donald Trump term and already there’s a ‘New Nazis’ panic. Only this time it’s not The Donald...
After coming under criticism for not announcing a national inquiry over the grooming gangs scandal, Keir Starmer moved quickly on Monday to announce...
Joe Biden left it until the last minute to issue a pre-emptive pardon of Anthony Fauci for any offence committed since 2014 in his work on ‘the...
Rachel Reeve’s £25 billion National Insurance rise is beginning to bite. According to the latest data on our labour market, released this...
Cast your mind back eight years. The day after Donald Trump’s first inauguration, hundreds of thousands of women marched on Washington in...
The assailant in the Southport massacre has pleaded guilty to the murders of three children in the town last year. Keir Starmer has leapt with...
In the 1920s, Marcus Mosiah Garvey was the most famous black man on the planet. The Jamaican-born black nationalist led the Universal Negro...
Remember how the first incarnation of a Trump presidency was supposed to be pretty well curtains for Planet Earth? Well, don’t worry: we are all...
The PM’s warm words will count for little. Starmer’s pledge is reminiscent of the one made by Theresa May in June 2017 Keir Starmer has pledged to...
After last week’s bond market jitters, the Chancellor pledged to go ‘further and faster’ to improve the UK’s anaemic economic growth. An early...
This morning Keir Starmer implied but did not categorically say that Islamist ideology was not the motivation of the dreadful Axel Rudakubana. The...
I suspect Adam LeBor and his publishers must have struggled to come up with the title The Last Days of Budapest: Spies, Nazis, Rescuers and...
It’s fitting that Donald Trump’s inauguration day coincides with the first day of the World Economic Forum’s infamous Davos conference. The new...
Like Ronald Reagan in 1985, Donald Trump is bowing to the elements and moving his inauguration indoors to the Capitol Rotunda, where only 500...
Him again? Donald Trump’s back in the White House. Those who thought his first term in office was an aberration – a dismaying blip in the long arc...
Five years ago, Reform UK had no presence in Scotland. Its Facebook and Twitter pages emerged during the latter half of the pandemic and despite...
When Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies of the Spring was published in 1923, a post-first world war mass wishful belief in fairies was at its...
At around 9 p.m. on 5 March 1953 Sergei Prokofiev died of a brain haemorrhage on the sofa of his Moscow flat. He was 61, and had struggled for...
A poll published last week by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found that much of the world is relishing the return of Donald Trump...
Biblical weather outside the rally for the sixtieth presidential inaugural in the Capitol One Arena in downtown Washington yesterday: hail plonked...
I was a late starter at everything. After drifting through my youth, and numerous false starts in life and work, I only found a committed...
The vice-presidency of the United States has always been the butt of jokes. ‘I don’t plan to be buried until I’ve died,’ quipped Daniel...
Vice President Vance, Speaker Johnson, Senator Thune, Chief Justice Roberts, justices of the United States Supreme Court, President Clinton,...
‘The golden age begins right now’ said the 47th President of the United States as he began his inauguration speech in the Capitol Rotunda. What...
Yvette Cooper has this evening announced that the government will be setting up a public inquiry looking for ‘answers’ on how the Southport...
Joe Biden is out, Donald Trump is in, and ‘the golden age of America has begun.’ Trump’s second inaugural address on this frigid January...
The temperatures at game time in Kansas City and Buffalo this weekend were in the high teens and the low 20s, respectively, before both sank even...
The abiding question for the 47th President of the United States of America is whether he now, after running against everything that counts as...
If Donald Trump, as Scott Jennings observed on CNN, is at the ‘apex of his political power,’ then what comes next? In his inaugural address,...
To Liverpool and the case of the Southport murders. Today, 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana pleaded guilty to murdering three young girls in a knife...
‘Lunch?’ growled Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. ‘Lunch is for wimps.’ Yet for half of Westminster the noble art of lunching is as much a part...
Back to Scotland, where SNP health secretary Neil Gray is in the spotlight over some rather curious expense claims. The nationalist minister has...
The new year is three weeks’ old – but some Tories are determined to stick to their resolutions. An impressive number of ex-MPs are keen to make...
One of the worst ways to form a good first impression of someone is when they’re chasing the same woman as you, so in the interests of total clarity...
Donald Trump is back. Later today, Trump will once again take the oath of office and be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. A host...
Dear, oh dear. Will David Lammy never get it right? This morning he told the Today programme that Donald Trump is ‘funny, friendly and warm’, that...
As President Trump takes office later today, Keir Starmer has assembled his top team, tasking them with landing a trade deal with the United...
The Village People joined Donald Trump on stage at the conclusion of his pre-inauguration rally last night. ‘You won’t recognise them, they’re...
There is a perverse congruence of interests between the British and Russian governments, as both sides seek to talk up London’s level of influence...
On his record, Novak Djokovic deserves to be rated as the greatest singles tennis player of the last 50 years. Twenty-four Grand Slam titles. An...
Help the aged. Really, someone should help the aged. By this I don’t mean the poor pensioners who’ve been hit by the cut to their winter fuel...
Difficult, I know, to spend your life dreaming of having gone to Oxford. This year’s offers have just been announced and Cambridge’s are imminent....
Last week, the government made two major announcements on science and innovation. With backing from the Prime Minister and Chancellor, Science...
Joe Biden has bowed out of the White House with a slew of presidential pardons. Today they have been awarded to Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley,...
Tulip Siddiq and the Labour government would like to think that her resignation as a minister earlier this week will end the controversy...
I’m sure my mum would forgive me for saying this, but cooking is not one of her many strengths. Raising three children, and with a husband who...
A few months ago, I spoke to a man halfway through a life sentence for murder. We first met 12 years ago when I was a prison officer. We mused on...
If you fancy watching a live performance of Fleetwood Mac’s hits, there’s plenty of choice in tribute band land: Fleetwood Shack or Fleetwood...
The Daily Mail has got a world exclusive on its hands. In great excitement it is publishing the secret diary of Unity Valkyrie Mitford, the star-...
This week nine more charges of sexual abuse were levelled against Abbé Pierre, the late French Roman Catholic priest who for decades was regarded as...
Hundreds of millions of Americans will have a new president tomorrow. Depending on where you land on America’s increasingly hyper-partisan...
They do say you shouldn’t take anything for granted and it seems Peter Mandelson is beginning to realise that too. He may have thought that his...
The Daily Mail has got a world exclusive on its hands. In great excitement it is publishing the secret diary of Unity Valkyrie Mitford, the star-...
Fleeing the United States ahead of a ‘fascist takeover’ by Donald Trump on 20 January has been the talk of liberal circles, and nowhere more than...
Lahore, Pakistan Pakistani-origin men are up to four times more likely to be reported to the police for child sex grooming offences than the...
Earlier this month, the UAE announced it was sanctioning 11 individuals and eight rather obscure organisations for alleged connections to the...
A couple of weeks ago, a friend voiced a sentiment that I wasn’t expecting. ‘I think your values are quite Christian, Sonia.’ What I found even...
Five years ago, Reform UK had no presence in Scotland. Its Facebook and Twitter pages emerged during the latter half of the pandemic and despite...
John F. Kennedy opted to serve New England lobster, Ronald Reagan a California-inspired garden salad – and James Buchanan 400 gallons of oysters....
The former US president Jimmy Carterdied, at the age of 100, just before news of an imminent deal to free the last of Israel’s hostages in Gaza....
The signs are not good. The much-anticipated Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal is a horribly complicated construct which seems almost...
A few months ago, I spoke to a man halfway through a life sentence for murder. We first met 12 years ago when I was a prison officer. We mused on...
The ceasefire in Gaza, scheduled to begin this morning, has been anything but straightforward. As the agreement unfolds, many have rushed to...
When Hamas launched its war on Israel in October, 2023, it did so on the basis of a clear analysis of Israeli society, according to which it hoped...
Millions of Americans will have tried to follow their routine this morning: turn off the alarm, grab the phone, start to scroll. For TikTok users,...
A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas tentatively came into effect at 9.15 a.m. UK time, following a three-hour delay caused by Israel not receiving...
Hundreds of millions of Americans will have a new president tomorrow. Depending on where you land on America’s increasingly hyper-partisan...
What’s the greatest divide in life? Is it between the dumb and the clever, the rich and the poor, the ugly and the beautiful? All have their...
Will we ever tire of the Cambridge spies? Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Burgess and Maclean – and to a lesser extent John Caincross, the fifth man in...
For Scottish Labour’s significant crop of new MPs, the heady summer of electoral triumph is already a distant memory. In the days following the...
‘There are only two families in the world, as a grandmother of mine used to say: the haves and the have-nots.’ Sancho Panza’s line in...
Of the many characters created by the peerless Victoria Wood, one creation in particular lingers in the mind: namely the immaculately polished, but...
Of the many characters created by the peerless Victoria Wood, one creation in particular lingers in the mind: namely the immaculately polished, but...
Will we ever tire of the Cambridge spies? Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Burgess and Maclean – and to a lesser extent John Caincross, the fifth man in...
When one of your favourite filmmakers dies, it is hard not to feel a deeply personal sense of loss; the punch in the viscera with the knowledge...
Partridges, purveyor of ‘nice things for the larder’ to the well-heeled, will close the doors of its Chelsea shop for the last time next month....