British families are forecast to spend £1,284.54 per person on this year’s summer holiday. That’s up more than £200 on what they forked out last year, says charitable shopping website Give as you Live. And with inflation gathering momentum and the pound still weak, many of us will feel we’re not getting a lot of
Before Theresa May revealed her plans to call a snap election, there was much speculation over what her surprise announcement might be. With hacks simply told that she would be making a statement outside No 10, theories doing the rounds ranged from royal drama to ill health relating to the Prime Minister. When Adam Boulton raised
The Conservative Manifesto 2017: Our Plan for a Stronger Britain and a Prosperous Future The next five years are the most challenging that Britain has faced in my lifetime. Brexit will define us: our place in the world, our economic security and our future prosperity. So now more than ever, Britain needs a strong
Tehran Waiting to vote in Iran’s parliamentary election last year, Navid Karimi told me about his plans: to get a well-paid job with his recently acquired engineering degree, go on a road trip in the US and avoid dying fighting in Syria. Fifteen months on, as the country votes in a presidential election, I met
If you want to imagine the future of British politics, consider the tale of Kristy Adams, the Conservative candidate in Hove. Her campaign is an insult to the electorate, but it is hardly alone in that. After the crash, the expenses scandal, Savile and phone hacking, it became a cliché to say that trust in
The Conservatives are going to win the election — that much we know. The question is what kind of opposition Britain is going to be left with. If a slew of moderate Labour MPs are swept out, the Corbynite grip on the party will strengthen. The leader will not go and Labour will take a great
Never has the Conservative party been more confident about winning a general election. Theresa May’s popularity ratings have broken all records; her aim in this campaign is not just to defeat the Labour party but to destroy it. The Tory MPs who talk about ten years in power are the more cautious ones; some talk
Once, politicians remained in their safe spaces and elections were fought in a handful of swing seats. This time Theresa May is campaigning in Labour heartlands, pitching herself at people who have never considered voting Conservative before. Tories are targeting seats they have not held since the 1930s and social class seems almost irrelevant. Pollsters
From ‘The New Reform Bill’, The Spectator, 19 May 1917: Though we used to be opposed to the suffrage for women, and have only accepted it in view of the great upheaval of the war, we feel most strongly that it had better be ‘a clean cut’ and a generous cut. Just as we opposed it
Wrexham, North Wales To window cleaner Andrew Atkinson, Theresa May’s ‘blue-collar Conservatism’ is not just a slogan. It’s what he is. For the duration of the general election, gap-toothed, 32-year-old Atkinson has hung up his chamois leathers and water-fed poles and taken to campaigning on doorsteps in a bid to become Wrexham’s first Conservative
We love Amy Schumer. Fact. And we love Goldie Hawn. Fact. But can we love Snatched? Not so much, if at all. Perhaps the addition of ‘if at all’ is unnecessary, and rather mean. But it’s done now. There are a couple of decent jokes, it’s true, but they are 1) all in the trailer
Jez Butterworth’s new play The Ferryman is set in Armagh in 1981. Quinn, a former terrorist, has swapped the armed struggle for a farming career and now lives with his sick wife, their countless kids, his sister-in-law and her only son. But the IRA, who murdered his brother as punishment for his disloyalty, are due
I’ve often thought that a good idea for an authentic TV cop show would be to portray the police as neither dazzlingly brilliant (the traditional approach) nor horrifically corrupt (the traditionally subversive one) — but just a bit hopeless at solving crimes. There is, though, one thing that prevents the idea from being as original
‘That sweet enemy, France.’ It takes a poet to summarise centuries of military and diplomatic history. On a prosaic level, if we consider Anglo-French relations over many centuries, all the evidence vindicates Sidney’s judgment. Although there is much that each nation admires and respects in the other, we have never been natural allies. For hundreds
When a composer begins an opera, they create a world. You don’t need a full-scale overture: the tear-stained violins that Verdi drapes over the opening bars of La traviata do the job perfectly. The orgasmic upswing that launches Der Rosenkavalier, the cosmic hum that sets the Ring on its course — those very first notes
When you get into a taxi, there’s usually a framed sheet of paper describing what you pay for your trip: the cost of every mile travelled at different times of day, and the price of waiting time. As digital screens become ever cheaper, it won’t be long before someone suggests that there is no need
Two extremes of the listening experience were available on Monday on Radio 4. The day began conventionally enough with Start the Week, chaired by the deceptively genial Amol Rajan (now in charge of The Media Show), whose warm, inviting voice fronts a keen, intense intelligence. He guided his guests through a conversation about our post-truth
When Theresa May went off to Switzerland on a walking holiday last August, she said it was the ‘peace and quiet’ that drew her there — but I can’t help thinking there’s more to it than that. The Swiss are famous for their efficiency — and if there was ever a Brit who would appreciate
What is it about Yorkshire, particularly Leeds, that it has bred or trained such a succession of famous modern sculptors? Moore, Hepworth, Armitage and, although it stretches the point, Hirst. All attended Leeds art schools and Armitage was born there on 18 July 1916. Everyone knows Moore, Hepworth, Hirst. But Armitage? How many under 60
Photography has many genres, even more than painting, and most photographers achieve fame by focusing on one of them. There are technical reasons for this. Armed only with a bunch of brushes and a palette of colours, a painter can achieve a variety of effects — close-up, distance, soft or sharp focus, motion — for
