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The Spectator![]() |
Some vintage blue-on-blue today over at the European Scrutiny Committee (ESC). Kemi Badenoch, the Business and Trade Secretary, was up before MPs...
What a surprise: the ultimate Whitehall insider looks set to be cleared by Whitehall. Sue Gray, the keeper of ministers’ secrets, caused outcry...
So. Farwell then. Margaret ‘plague’ Ferrier. The least-loved Covid carrier in all of Westminster today suffered the ignominy of watching her...
Even with the force of the mighty SNP establishment behind him, Humza Yousaf’s premiership is still struggling. So when your own side fails you,...
You can’t leave Scotland alone for five minutes without another front opening up in the gender wars. Between legislating for doctor-free gender...
As Rishi Sunak faces concern at home that his five priorities are slipping out of reach, he is flying to Washington tonight for another foray on...
Today is the 79th anniversary of D-Day, 6 June 1944, when Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy to begin the liberation of Nazi-occupied...
Prince Harry is on a mission. ‘How much more blood will stain their typing fingers before someone can put a stop to this madness’?’ Harry asks...
What’s wrong with the government’s AI strategy? Labour has been claiming today that it is ‘already out of date’, with shadow culture secretary...
Holly Willoughby returned to the This Morning sofa yesterday with a brief scripted statement on the fall of her long-time co-presenter Phillip...
If you thought American book-banning couldn’t get any more ridiculous, think again. A school district in Utah, one of the most religious states in...
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Such is the axiom underpinning North Korea’s (DPRK) approach towards its nuclear and missile...
Margaret Ferrier has received a 30-day suspension from the Commons for breaching the Code of Conduct for MPs when she broke Covid rules. As the...
It’s forty years since the Smiths released their first single ‘Hand In Glove’. We’ve already seen a slew of articles on the anniversary, and...
Has there ever been a positive sentence that contains both ‘the SNP’ and ‘waiting lists’? New data reveals that list lengths for children and...
Want a taste of the Andes without forking out for the trans-Atlantic flight? There is a herd of delightful llamas to be found in the fields behind...
I was just arriving at El Vino on Fleet Street for a leaving do when my phone rang. It was my wife, sounding frantic. ‘Where’s that box?’ ...
Here is the full text of Prince Harry’s witness statement for his case against the publisher of the Daily Mirror. You can follow proceedings...
Prince Harry is in the High Court today, being cross-examined as he sues the publisher of the Daily Mirror over alleged phone hacking (you can...
Tilting a statue. That’s the solution now. At least, that’s what a jury appointed by Vienna city council has recommended as the best way to deal...
Hours after the Ukrainian army finally launched its long-awaited counter-offensive, Russia has hit back. Early this morning, Russian forces blew up...
If you think nothing works in Britain now, just wait. Wait, that is, until a future government (I’ll guess a Labour one, but can never tell with...
Is Rishi Sunak stopping the boats? He’d certainly like us to think so. He spent much of yesterday in Dover parading the news revealed on The...
For a man who says that his ‘life’s work’ is to change the British ‘media landscape’, Prince Harry has a funny way of showing it. The Duke...
If politics is showbiz for ugly people, then showbiz is surely just politics by uglier means. By media standards, Mr S has barely covered the...
‘I was in two minds about accepting this acknowledgment,’ says the now Dame Jacinda Ardern, reflecting on how ‘humbled’ she feels today to...
Has the BBC been taking diversity hiring tips from the RAF? Leaked emails released last week showed RAF officials urging the recruitment of fewer...
I’d kind of hoped, until recently, that Phillip Schofield would not trouble my consciousness in any big way again. I had vague memories of his...
According to Moscow, Ukraine’s long-awaited counter-offensive has begun, and has begun badly for Kyiv. Of course, we need to treat the Russian...
I was in my fondly forgotten twenties when I made it to 53 Christopher Street, site of the 1969 Stonewall riots and, since 1994, the second most...
When Rishi Sunak replaced Liz Truss in Downing Street last autumn, fundamentalism gave way to incrementalism. So far, the results have been...
Recently, much light has been shone on the way LGBTQ campaign groups have been able to influence school sex and relationships classes. Lurid...
How many memorable quotes has the Russia-Ukraine war produced so far? Along with Snake Island’s defiant ‘F*** you Russian warship’, we’ve...
I love my adopted hometown of Brighton and Hove – I moved here in 1995 and I still feel like I’m on holiday. I love everything about living here....
These days our sex scandals seem like another symbol of Britain’s national decline. They are diminished, petty and tawdry, certainly compared to...
Since my squatting experience back in the 1980s, the practice has gone somewhat out of fashion. Squatting laws in the UK have become much stricter,...
John Edmunds was, with Neil Ferguson, one of the main advocates of lockdown but has been remarkably silent about how this hastily-assembled theory...
The England cricket team was once greeted at an Ashes test by an Australian banner with the immortal words ‘WOTHAM IS A BANKER’, the simple genius...
Everybody in racing is looking for an edge. With 7-4 the field, the punter is looking for a 2-1. The racecourse executive wonders which pop group...
A friend of mine, an inspirational teacher, says that one of the best things parents can do is to allow children to believe that their dreams can...
The Cabinet Office is trying to weaponise the law against a former prime minister. They have threatened to withdraw funding for his legal fees...
‘Like a child in a fairy tale’, 14-year old Mina Mendel walks into a Latvian forest one day in 1913. With her basket and shawl, she looks like...
‘When everyone appears to be of one accord in thinking the right thing, go the other way.’ This was, broadly speaking, the maxim by which J.C....
Q. My wife has for some time been a member of a fashionable members’ club. A dear friend and ex-colleague recently approached me to ask if he...
Suella Braverman was completely wrong to ask her civil servants to investigate the possibility of arranging a one-on-one speed awareness course....
As the war in Ukraine spilled into Russian territory, with shelling in the Russian city of Belgorod, President Vladimir Putin was busy explaining...
It is difficult, given what Silicon Valley has become, to convey exactly what it was like in the 1970s and ‘80s. It was a remarkable centre of...
You may have noticed over the last decade a steady increase in the promiscuous use of the word ‘trauma’. A word that once referred exclusively...
‘Why are you broadcasting what you’re broadcasting? There’s bigger things to worry about.’ In that respect at least, ‘Mizzy’ – the 18...
The Daily Telegraph, where I worked for a decade, has launched a campaign for the abolition of inheritance tax (IHT). It’s backed by at least 50...
‘The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.’ Those are the words of Sir Robert Peel, widely regarded as...
France, Sweden, Italy, Finland and now Spain. The demise of the left in western Europe continues apace and yet their only solution is to seethe...
The women’s football World Cup will kick off in under 50 days’ time in Australia and New Zealand, and England is among the favourites to lift...
House hunters nearly always have to make a compromise to suit their budget – the size of the garden, say, or those dated avocado bathroom suites,...
There’s never been an older generation that didn’t complain about the younger one. Parents tut and fuss over errant youth. That’s the way of it....
President Biden continues to project strength ahead of the 2024 election — by tumbling on stage at the US Air Force Academy Graduation. The...
Oh dear. It seems our beloved national broadcaster has slipped up again. Flicking through the channels last night, Mr S was perplexed to see...
Huzzah! The momentous day has arrived at last: finally Britain can reap the Brexit benefits and enjoy some delicious free-trade Tim Tams. For today...
Liz Truss’ fallen star has been rising again of late (at least a few degrees above the horizon) as gilt yields return to the heights they reached...
Another week, another extravagant claim for climatic doom goes unchallenged. Speaking on the Today programme on Wednesday morning, Dale Vince –...
Some years ago, on a trip up America’s Pacific Northwest, I spent a night in Portland in a hotel that was depressing in the way that...
When it comes to seafood, Britain is a curious place: surrounded by water, in which you can find some of the best fish and shellfish money can buy,...
The 1930s saw Walter Benjamin write The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Marlene Dietrich rise to fame in The Blue Angel and...
French President Emmanuel Macron tends to rock the boat whenever he opens his mouth, saying hard truths that many of his European colleagues, both...
I’ve been following Luton Town FC since the singer Helen Shapiro was ‘walking back to happiness’ in the 1960s. Luton is the bungee club of...
Should ‘misgendering’ someone be a disciplinary offence? One Oxford college seems to think so. Yesterday, Regent’s Park College posted a...
Last month hundreds of Westminster street signs were auctioned off. Their design with san-serif capital letters was the work of Sir Misha Black in...
Thursday evening saw the extraordinary sight of a government suing a highly respected retired judge from our Court of Appeal, who also now sits in...
It is usually the Grand National at Aintree that throws up a delightful human interest story for the media to relish. Think Devon Loch throwing...
Russia fired more than 576 missiles and drones against Ukraine last month; Kyiv was shelled two days in three. Ukrainian air defence works...
Most people who have been following the controversy over Kathleen Stock’s speech at the Oxford Union, and who have been observing this debate...
It’s no secret that I’m not a personal fan of former president Donald Trump – but through the years I feel I’ve been mostly fair to him,...
Towards the end of the first century AD, the Emperor Domitian rebranded the month of October as ‘Domitianus’. It will have troubled him that...
NHS Scotland has been hit with more bad news as new figures reveal that 18,390 patients died last year while stuck on NHS waiting lists. The...
‘I do not think we do our children any favours by pretending that slavery didn’t exist,’ wrote Royal Academy of Dramatic Art chair Marcus Ryder,...