Current issue

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Labour’s U-turn on social housing for non-immigrants is welcome but too late

Rod Liddle says that metropolitan liberal ideology is too deeply ingrained in local councils, social services and the judiciary to be overturned by one panic measure driven by Labour’s sudden fear of the BNP

To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with

Cass Sunstein — co-author of the hugely influential Nudge and an adviser to President Obama — unveils his new theory of ‘group polarisation’, and explains why, when like-minded people spend time with each other, their views become not only more confident but more extreme

A splendid lunch with Jimmy McNulty

In the first of an occasional series of interviews over meals, Deborah Ross talks to Dominic West about The Wire and the challenge to an Old Etonian of playing an American cop

What Jacko needed was someone to say ‘No’

My defining memory of Michael Jackson — vulnerable, brilliant, otherworldly — is of watching him dance to the soundtrack of a movie.

Michael Jackson Notebook

The news cycle of a dead celebrity is a curious thing.

The secret Iraq deal that bought Mandelson’s loyalty to Brown

John Kampfner unveils the ignominious truth about Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry and reveals Peter Mandelson’s demand, when Brown’s future hung in the balance in early June, that the hearings be held in private. Even now Mandelson’s priority is to protect Brand Blair

Letters

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Peerless

The Spectator on the spat between the Prince of Wales and Lord Rogers of Riverside

The gym where they teach you how to beat up chavs

Brendan O’Neill is not impressed by a class of paranoid white-collar workers learning how to head-butt imaginary assailants and defend themselves with their laptops

Fathers have become second-class citizens

Toby Young says that Father’s Day is nothing to celebrate: today’s neutered dads have become overworked assistants to their children rather than paternal role models