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This post was first published on Slipped Disc On the first night of the BBC Proms, the German-based pianist Igor Levit played Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in Liszt’s solo-piano reduction as a token of his opposition to Britain leaving the EU. His was a reasoned and reasonable gesture by an artist who has strong views
As Isabel reports, after a week of briefing and backstabbing among the Cabinet, there is a growing feeling from Conservatives that Theresa May needs to stamp what little authority she has left on her party. In this vein, May is expected to tell ministers to keep a lid on it at tomorrow’s Cabinet meeting. But
I was on the radio this morning with David Mellor who accused the Cabinet of being appallingly ill-disciplined because of ‘leaks’ in the weekend press. James Forsyth revealed on Saturday that Philip Hammond had told Cabinet that being a train driver is so easy that ‘even’ a woman could do it. Yesterday, Tim Shipman revealed in the
The question of whether assisted suicide should be legalised is back before the courts. The High Court this week is being invited to declare that the Suicide Act 1961, which prohibits assisted suicide, is incompatible with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects the right to respect for private life. Whatever
There is, let us be honest, a certain kind of England supporter who derives some cheerful satisfaction from disaster and weak-minded capitulation. Many England cricket supporters – for it is summer and time to put away minor matters such as Brexit and concentrate instead on more substantial civilisational matters – are naturally crepuscular, forever looking
Byng was the name of the unfortunate admiral executed in 1757, in the words of Voltaire, “pour encourager les autres” after the fall of Minorca. I fear that poor old Michael Byng might be about to go the same way. Having put out a report estimating that the first phase of HS2 could cost £48
You know, the quality on which the British pride themselves, pragmatism, has its limits. There’s a case for abstract moral thinking and it’s especially true when it comes to the fraught moral question of euthanasia, assisted suicide, right-to-die, whatever. And essentially the distinction is between actively killing someone, or allowing them to die – of
Although an MP is supposed to act in the best interests of their constituents, Emma Dent Coad appears to have missed the memo. The new MP for Kensington appeared at an anti-monarchist Republic event over the weekend – where she wasted no time in laying into the residents of Kensington Palace. The Labour politician said
Last month, David Davis warned that a Tory leadership contest would be ‘catastrophic’ for the Brexit negotiations. But as the Brexit secretary heads to Brussels for the second instalment of talks, the jostling among MPs to be the next party leader is well underway. The weekend papers have been filled with Cabinet members briefing against one
For months now, it’s proved a daily challenge trying to work out what exactly Labour’s position on Brexit is. While the 2017 manifesto said the party wanted to retain the benefits of both the single market and the customs union, a lot of confusion follows when one tries to pin down whether that means staying
Philip Hammond – Public sector workers paid ’10 per cent premium’ Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has landed himself in hot water after he apparently claimed that public sector workers were overpaid during a recent meeting of the political cabinet. Andrew Marr challenged Hammond repeatedly over what he did in fact say, and gave
This one is priceless, believe me. Truly priceless. For a long time now I’ve been buying The Guardian for its unintentional hilarity. Not just the columnists, but even more so the letters pages. This is from their fatuous Saturday family section: yes, it is a minor miracle that such a reactionary receptacle still exists at
After an agonising year-and-a-bit wait, Game of Thrones, the biggest TV show on earth bar none, returns in the early hours of tomorrow. Given the prolonged gap between the seasons – necessitated by storylines that have now outrun George R. R. Martin’s source material – here’s a pre-release primer on the situation around Westeros, now
‘We need to talk about why the internet is falling in love with Jacob Rees-Mogg, because it’s not OK,’ warns a recent post on the Corbynista website The Canary. Its anxiety is not misplaced. Polite, eloquent, witty, well-informed, coherent, principled — Jacob Rees-Mogg is the antithesis of almost every-thing the Labour party stands for under
Be fair. Theresa May’s plan actually half-worked. No, there was a plan. I know the consensus now seems to be that the entire election was motivated by little more a succession of senior Tories saying ‘Gosh yes, everybody loves you!’ to the Prime Minister while Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy stood behind her chair, slapping
The latest challenge asked for a sonnet that takes as its opening line Keats’s ‘Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:’ (This was a sonnet Keats chose not to publish but transcribed into a long letter he wrote over a period in early 1819 to George and Georgiana Keats, his brother and sister-in-law.)
The May-Davis partnership used to be one of the strongest aspects of the government. She had brought him back from the political wilderness to be Brexit Secretary, and he was loyally working on the strategy for the negotiations. Even after the election went so wrong, Davis raced down to London to see her. But, as
Philip Hammond has a bit of a political tin ear. He can be very unaware of how he sounds to other people. This is what lay behind the extraordinary sexism row at Cabinet on Tuesday which I write about in The Sun today. Hammond’s tin ear has already caused trouble for the government. In the
The great physicist Richard Feynman warned of the perpetual torment that lies in wait for people who try to understand quantum mechanics. Modern physics cannot be understood. It can only be observed. ‘I am going to tell you what nature behaves like,’ Feynman said. ‘Do not keep saying to yourself, “but how can it be like
Who will be the next Tory leader? I keep asking the senior contenders over breakfast after the show or at those now notorious summer parties. And they all say the same thing: she will stay for a couple of years and then it will be somebody we haven’t thought of yet. It’s already too late,
Frankfurt ‘This is not about punishing Great Britain,’ declared Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s interim foreign secretary, on his recent visit to London. I fell about laughing, because this is precisely what’s going on. It is as obvious to us Germans as it is to the Brits: the EU cannot tolerate the thought of a successful United
When Theresa May invited Donald Trump to London, shortly after his inauguration, the howls of the bien-pensant commentariat could be heard from Islington to Brighton. Yet when Emmanuel Macron invited the American president to Paris to stand by his side on Bastille Day, there was barely a peep. How to explain this? Sophie Pedder, Paris
Here we go again. NBC News is reporting that Donald Trump Jnr. somehow forgot to mention that a former Soviet counterintelligence officer was also present at his pow-wow with a Russian lawyer. The man in question, Rinat Akhmetsin, has denied ever being affiliated with Russian spy agencies. But as NBC politely put it, “the presence at the
It was The Spectator’s summer party last night, the high point of Westminster’s social calendar. We had the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary – and Lady Nugee (aka Emily Thornberry) apparently walking away in a fury when told her friend could not come in just because he had a peerage. We had a High
Does Labour want to leave the Single Market? Maybes aye, maybes naw, as we used to say in North Britain. Corbyn isn’t saying. It might be one of the biggest questions of public policy of this decade, but the man who now has at least a non-trivial chance of being PM one day isn’t saying
Demagogues have had a good run of late but the tide may be turning. Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen failed to pull off widely predicted electoral coups, while the Austrian far-right fell short in presidential elections. The SNP can no longer rouse a rabble like it once did and Ukip, out-Kipped by Labour and
There are so many people angling for the Tory leadership now that it really is easier to list those who haven’t yet written an attention-seeking op ed or been spotted plotting in a shady spot in Westminster. It’s not just the ones who fancy the job for themselves, or the little nascent campaign teams that
In this week’s Spectator Books podcast I’m joined by Naomi Klein, the activist journalist who gave articulate voice to the anti-globalisation movement in books such as No Logo and The Shock Doctrine. In her latest work, No Is Not Enough: Defeating The New Shock Politics, she gives an urgent account of how — as she
Wimbledon wouldn’t be Wimbledon without strawberries and cream, Pimms and…John Bercow in the Royal Box. The speaker of the House of Commons has been something of a permanent fixture over the last few years indulging his love of watching the tennis among the great and the good. Since 2015, he’s managed to get his mitts on
You’d think a government wouldn’t launch its flagship bill that takes Britain out of European Union legislation without first being clear what taking Britain out of the EU would actually look like. Apparently not: the once Great Repeal Bill – now just plain old European Union (Withdrawal) Bill for less triumphant times – was published
The Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) makes a point in its Fiscal Risk Report today that ought to be obvious and yet which hardly ever seems to feature in debate over the public finances and ‘austerity’. It is virtually certain that sooner or later the UK economy will suffer another recession which will cause tax receipts
After David Lidington complained about ‘warm prosecco’ fuelling Tory leadership plotting, the Cabinet stepped things up a gear on Thursday as they made their way to 22 Old Queen Street for some chilled champagne at The Spectator summer party. After a difficult few months which saw Theresa May lose her majority in Parliament, the Prime Minister
On this week’s episode, we look at the runners and riders in the Tory leadership race, the latest development in the Trump/Russia brouhaha, and the British(ish) woman who might be about to win Wimbledon. Speculation has abounded in Westminster about the next Conservative leader, ever since Theresa May’s disastrous election showing last month. As her potential
It’s exactly one year to the day since Theresa May became Prime Minister. To mark the occasion, she has given a lengthy interview to Radio 5Live’s Emma Barnett. Unfortunately for May, it wasn’t the interview she would have envisaged giving a year ago when she entered No 10. Rather than talk of the achievements so