The Spectator
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Politics, culture, cartoons and more.
Having got the ball rolling, it would be ironic if it was the more centrist wing of Labour that finished off the job. ✍️ James Heale spectator.com/article/star...
Starmer is shedding support across Labour
By inclination, tradition and design, the Labour Party is much less prone to toppling leaders than their Conservative counterparts. There is no equivalent to the 1922, Sir Graham Brady’s grin and the…
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For a leadership election to be set in motion, 20 per cent of Labour MPs – 81 people – would have to back a single challenger. Can West do that? ✍️ James Heale spectator.com/article/labo...
Labour MP: I’ll challenge Starmer for leader
Former minister Catherine West has this afternoon announced that she is prepared to challenge Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership.
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In the four years since invading Ukraine, the Victory Day parade in Moscow has gone through various iterations that have reflected the Russian army’s performance on the front line in Ukraine. This year was distinctly different. ✍️ Lisa Haseldine spectator.com/article/puti...
Putin’s paranoia was plain to see at Moscow’s Victory Day parade
According to multiple reports, Putin has grown increasingly paranoid in recent months over the possibility of an assassination attempt.
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What all these framings capture is a sense that an elite class has tried to tell us little people how things should be done. ✍️ Ameer Kotecha spectator.com/article/the-...
The simple truth at the heart of Reform UK’s success
People want a politics grounded in home, not a Prime Minister in it for a leaders’ family photo and a chilled glass of Chasselas.
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Dr. Frankenstein would understand that it was his duty to put down the hideous creature his foolishness and vanity unleashed on the world. ✍️ Stephen Daisley spectator.com/article/will...
Will Labour ever admit that Scottish devolution was a mistake?
They had opposed the creation of a Scottish parliament, predicting that it would become a bulwark of nationalism and undermine the Union.
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If they want to continue to win Red Wall seats, Reform UK can forget about some of the policies their top people have dabbled with in the past. ✍️ Ross Clark spectator.com/article/nige...
Nigel Farage has inherited Boris Johnson’s Red Wall problem
The instincts of Farage, Richard Tice, Danny Kruger and others are far less aligned with the people who are voting for their party.
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When it isn’t desecrating houses with cheap, misunderstood versions of what they think children will like, the National Trust is literally wrecking them. ✍️ Harry Mount spectator.com/article/poke...
The National Trust’s Pokémon hunt is a new low
Some of the greatest combinations of house and landscape on the planet. Now just ace settings for children’s games.
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All of this would matter less if Putin were popular. He is not – or at least not as he was. ✍️ Alexander Kolyandr spectator.com/article/what...
What Putin’s Victory Day says about war-time Russia
That is still less than 1.5 per cent of the 67 trillion rouble household deposit base across Russia's banks, but the pace is rising.
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Did European rule in Asia and Africa really make colonised people poorer? ✍️ Tirthankar Roy spectator.com/article/did-...
Did European rule in Asia and Africa really make colonised people poorer?
Few questions in economic history generate more heat than asking if European rule in Asia and Africa made colonised peoples poorer
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‘Purdah’ purged from Whitehall. ✍️ Steerpike Article | spectator.com/article/official-purdah-purged-from-whitehall
In his never-ending mission to reboot his premiership, Keir Starmer has found a great new cause: Europe. ✍️ Steerpike Article | spectator.com/article/starmers-hypocrisy-on-henry-viii-powers
The supermarket has suffered quite a public relations blow recently with its actions involving its former employee, Walker Smith. ✍️ Alexander Larman Article | spectator.com/article/will-genteel-customers-desert-waitrose
There has been a surge in fuel theft at forecourts since the US-Iran war, according to a report in the Times this weekend. ✍️ Patrick West Article | spectator.com/article/why-...
Over the past few months, I’ve been training for the London Marathon, so most weekends I’ve been out running more than 20 miles at a stretch. ✍️ Chas Newkey-Burden Article | spectator.com/article/why-exercise-music-stops-you-from-throwing-in-the-towel
Samuel Beckett, with his quizzically peering gaze and handsome, hawk-like appearance, has long been the academic’s pin-up. ✍️ Ian Thomson Article | spectator.com/article/samuel-becketts-bleak-humour-lives-gleefully-on
You set off on a spring morning, windows down, full of hope. Sunglasses, flasks of tea and a picnic rug are packed. ✍️ Simon Heptinstall Article | spectator.com/article/the-british-road-trip-is-tourism-without-the-infrastructure
Even if the risks can never be totally eliminated, the Grand National is a life-enhancing event. ✍️ Neil Clark spectator.com/article/we-m...
We must never ban the Grand National
The modern Grand National is still a race worth defending against the (sadly) increasing numbers who would like to ban it.
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The voters of Stoke Newington should perhaps know more about Shaheen before they make up their minds. ✍️ Andrew Gilligan spectator.com/article/why-...
Why is Ifhat Shaheen a Green party candidate?
Let me introduce you to Ifhat Shaheen who is likely to become a Green party councillor in Hackney next month.
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These were never ‘peace talks’ – they were just another pressure point. ✍️ Jonathan Sacerdoti spectator.com/article/wash...
Washington and Tehran are locked in a jungle fight
These were never ‘peace talks’. For both the US and Iran, they were just another moment, another strategy, another pressure point.
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In these quieter corners of local government, some of the more curious examples of public spending can be found. ✍️ Matthew Bowles spectator.com/article/the-...
The curious case of the £10 toilet
I was sent documents suggesting that a single visit to a local public toilet in West Oxfordshire cost the taxpayer £8.69.
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As is often the case, advertising's decline was slow, then sudden and mostly self-inflicted. ✍️ Paul Burke spectator.com/article/is-t...
Is this how the ad industry dies?
Advertising's decline was slow, then sudden and mostly self-inflicted. From the 2000s, the business has been stifled by dullards.
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To assume Iran would ever agree to Washington’s terms strains even Gottfried Leibniz’s optimism. ✍️ Irwin Stelzer spectator.com/article/of-c...
Of course these peace talks would fail
The US and Iran have failed to reach an agreement after peace talks. But we didn’t have to wait for them to finish to guess the outcome.
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Reputation is measured by deeds rather than an accident of birth at this school. ✍️ Ivo Delingpole spectator.com/article/why-...
Why Prince George should go to Eton
After three years of theatrical um-ing and ah-ing, the Waleses have seemingly acceded to the obvious: Prince George is going to Eton.
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Back in 2023, the resistance was pushing the military to the brink. But now there's a different feeling. ✍️ Caleb Quinley spectator.com/article/on-t...
On the road with a Myanmar revolutionary leader
Since 2023, I’ve spent months alongside Khu Reedu, living among a platoon of his men and women who had been with him since the beginning.
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‘Harry might be wondering where it has all gone wrong over the past six years.’ ✍️ Alexander Larman spectator.com/article/why-...
Why is Prince Harry being sued by Sentebale?
It must be unpleasant to be Prince Harry at the moment. Not only is he waiting on the judgement of Mr Justice Nicklin for his class action lawsuit for privacy infringement against Associated…
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‘This is a pause, not an end. Parliamentarians should press the government to abandon its policy altogether.’ ✍️ Richard Ekins spectator.com/article/this...
This isn’t the end of the Chagos debacle
The policy that seems closest to the government’s heart – the surrender of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius – is in real trouble. The treaty with Mauritius, signed in May last year, cannot be ratified…
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‘We clever and logical Terfs will not be taken out by the likes of Bash Back. We will live to fight another day.’ ✍️ Julie Burchill spectator.com/article/bash...
Bash Back are thugs posing as victims
There are times when it seems that violence against women and girls – forever these days being hand-wrung over by useless politicians as their alleged absolute priority – is like a game…
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‘It’s often said in Spain that you need only scratch the surface to uncover Civil War-era grievances: the Guernica dispute shows how true this is.’ ✍️ Mark Nayler spectator.com/article/pica...
Picasso’s Guernica has reopened old wounds in Spain
A row has erupted in Spain over what to do with Pablo Picasso’s 1937 Cubist masterpiece ‘Guernica’. Since 1992, this gigantic black-and-white painting – which depicts the bombing of the Basque town…
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