All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It’s no surprise that the Tories held their seat overnight in the Witney by-election. Yet what seems remarkable (at least on the face of it) is the extent of the swing back towards the Lib Dems. The party saw its share of the vote jump from seven per cent two years ago to nearly a
In the apartment block next to mine in Paris there are two Muslim families. One I see often: the dad dresses in jeans and a t-shirt, and when the weather is good he’s in the park playing with his kids. So, too, the mum: a stylish woman who matches her headscarves to whatever else she
I’ve always been somewhat bemused by the concept of ‘hate crime’ – a phrase which first came into use in the US in the 1980s and into practice in the UK in 1998. I must say that the idea that it is somehow worse to beat up or kill someone because you object to their
OK, I’ll admit it. I don’t like Margaret Atwood’s writing. In some circles, this is akin to saying you’re a devil worshipper who spends their weekends ensconced in a dungeon of pain with other ostracised members of the community. Yes, I know she’s a multi-award winning author. Yes, I’m aware she has sold millions of books.
Cristina Odone, former editor of the Catholic Herald, is encouraged to receive Holy Communion in one Kensington parish but not allowed to do so in another. And she says Pope Francis has made her situation worse, by hinting – but only hinting – that Catholics like her, married to a divorced partner, can make up their own minds
Fears that workers’ savings have been put at risk in unsustainable and potentially fraudulent pension schemes have prompted the Government to rush through tougher rules designed to tackle rogue operators. After revelations by The Times, the Pensions Schemes Bill has been introduced to address concerns that the biggest change to workplace pensions in generations could
This week saw the controversial move by RBS to freeze the bank accounts of the broadcaster Russia Today. The decision has subsequently been reversed, but the relationship between NATO and Vladimir Putin remains tense. This is the subject that Paul Wood and Rod Liddle tackle in this week’s cover piece, and which is addressed on the podcast
Donald Trump grabbed the headlines in last night’s debate by refusing to say whether he’d accept the result in the presidential election if he lost. But who actually came out on top in the showdown between Clinton and Trump? On Coffee House, Freddy Gray says Trump failed to land the knockout punch he needed –
Much has been made of Donald Trump’s character but the big problem is not that he is a bad person who might turn the Oval Office into a locker room. ‘We need good principles rather than good people. We need fixed rules, not fixers’, as FA Hayek pointed out. And that’s the problem with Trump,
Donald Trump needed to win bigly, as he would put it, in Las Vegas. He didn’t, and his campaign is still a disaster. The major news line from the final presidential debate is Trump’s hint that he may not accept the election result – to which Clinton replied that he is ‘talking down democracy.’ But Trump’s
Sir Philip Green might not be a ‘Sir’ for much longer. MPs have just backed a motion calling for him to be stripped of his title. For now, he remains a ‘Sir’, as the vote today doesn’t have any immediate effect, and MPs are powerless to actually take his title away. Only the Honours Forfeiture
Although Chuka Umunna was widely tipped to succeed Keith Vaz as chair of the home affairs select committee, in the end it was Yvette Cooper who proved triumphant. In fact, Umunna came a distant third in the election — with Caroline Flint coming second. So, what went wrong? The word being put round Westminster is that the
Imagine in later years being able to move to your ideal village, a bespoke village, which has everything you want for a great quality of life. So, just a stone’s throw from your front door, there’s a swimming pool, gym, top-class restaurants, hairdresser, golf course, cinema, green spaces and a 24-hour concierge service. Your typical UK retirement village
Is satire dying? Zoe Williams asks in the Guardian whether the shrinking of permissible speech is killing comedy. To make her point, she wonders if the mid-1990s satire The Day Today would be tolerated in 2016 and whether ‘its surrealism belongs to another age’. The spoof news show, which in some ways seems slightly prophetic 20 years later, was sometimes
Middle-class families are paying a ‘stealth tax’ of £10,000 a year for places in care homes for the elderly, according to The Times. The extra charge is being used to subsidise residents who cannot pay themselves and have to rely on council funding, the first detailed analysis of fees has found. There are about 400,000
Hennessy, the best-selling cognac of all, is giving two lucky Spectator readers the chance to win a bottle of Hennessy XO – the first ever XO Cognac, originally created in 1870 – and two tickets to the 60th running of the legendary Hennessy Gold Cup on Saturday 26th November at Newbury Racecourse. As the longest-standing
Did you think, after the second presidential TV debate last week, that democracy couldn’t sink lower? Well, think again. Tonight’s clash between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in Las Vegas — already dubbed ‘fight night’ — looks certain to mark a new low for civilised politics, and a new high for elections as trash entertainment.
Right-wing Americans see liberal conspiracies everywhere. Often their claims are fatuous — Donald Trump has just announced that the 2016 presidential election has been ‘rigged’ — and sometimes they incorporate poisonous myths about Jewish puppet masters. But liberals, like activists across the spectrum, do occasionally engage in co-ordinated plotting. The question is: what would a
Spare a thought for Russell Brand. Although the comedian-turned-revolutionary-turned-comedian-again has made clear that ‘profit is a filthy word‘, in recent years this hasn’t stopped Brand from making one himself. Last year, Mr S had to break the sad news that the annual accounts for his company Pablo Diablo’s Legitimate Business Firm showed a healthy profit of
There are some crushes that ought to be crushed. When I was about nine, I fancied our village vicar — he had a pleasant, boring face and would throw Mars bars into the congregation during sermons. Things came to a halt after I saw him by chance at a local swimming pool. Underneath his cassock
98 days into the Theresa May government and Philip Hammond is the Cabinet Minister under the most scrutiny. The reports of tensions both between him and the Cabinet’s Brexit Ministers, and him and Number 10, mean that his words are parsed particularly carefully. In front of the Treasury select committee today, Hammond refused to say
Although Jeremy Corbyn has managed to tempt some MPs who resigned from his shadow cabinet back to the frontbench, there are still many with ministerial experience who are too proud, principled or outspoken to return. So, with that in mind, today’s select committee elections offered a way for moderates to make their mark without having to compromise their
Polls have made miserable reading for Jeremy Corbyn ever since he won his first leadership election last year. And the bad news for the Labour leader is that they seem to be getting worse. The latest Ipsos Mori survey out today hands the Tories an 18 point lead, giving them a 47 per cent share
Today we saw government without opposition. At least without opposition in the hands of the Opposition leader. Rambling, disorganised Jeremy Corbyn spent his six questions getting nowhere over the health service. Familiar catcalls were heard on both sides. ‘You wasted billions.’ ‘No we invested billions.’ Mrs May attempted to break the record-book by insisted that
Today’s PMQs marked a return to old form for Jeremy Corbyn. After two reasonably successful bouts against the Prime Minister, the Labour leader appeared to struggle as he failed to land any knockout blows. Corbyn focussed on the NHS, beginning with mental health. While he claimed the NHS has gone into its worse crisis in its history, May managed
Theresa May’s track record of telling jokes in the Commons isn’t good. Last month at Prime Minister’s Questions, her wise cracks went down badly and she was criticised by a Labour MP for telling ‘silly jokes when asked serious questions’. At today’s PMQs, she was at it again – and Mr S is pleased to
So, inflation has gone up. Unexpectedly, it rose to a 22-month high of 1 per cent this week, with the full force of a weak pound and other rising prices fuelling the leap. This means more bad news for savers who are already concerned about the eroding power of inflation on their cash. The rise caused
You just have to look at the faces of the migrant ‘children’ who have begun to arrive in Britain over the past couple of days from the Jungle in Calais to realise that many are not children. Just as I did when I visited the illegal shanty-town a couple of weeks ago and met a man
The Treasury’s decision to abandon plans to let pensioners raise money by selling their annuities has been welcomed by the pensions industry. The controversial idea was first aired in March 2015 by the then Chancellor George Osborne as part of his plan for ‘pension freedoms’. Despite deciding last December that the plan would go ahead next
If you happened to be standing today on the reddish sand of Meridiani Planum – a vast, flat, expanse just south of the Martian equator – you might well spot a dark spec in the distance against the peach-coloured sky, moving towards you. In the next few hours, the European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli probe will
As the sun set over the frontline in northern Iraq on the first day of the long anticipated Mosul offensive, Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi army soldiers began to celebrate the first victories over Islamic State. Almost a dozen villages had been taken yesterday, and more than 77 square miles liberated southeast of the Isis stronghold. The offensive
After years of delays, point-scoring and heel-dragging, the government will next week announce which airport — or airports — will get the green light for expansion. While it’s a decision that eluded Cameron during his premiership, Theresa May’s spokesman confirmed today that the outcome is now imminent. However before anyone gets their hopes up that the airport saga
I first started tracking the farmland market in the UK at the turn of the century when I joined Farmers Weekly magazine as its property editor. Back then decent farmland was priced at around £2,500 an acre. Fast forward to the present day and land routinely changes hands for more than £10,000 an acre. According
Scotland may have a second referendum within three years, as many Remainers correctly predicted. If the British government makes a mess of Brexit, the Scots may be inclined to leave the sinking ship and rejoin the EU. If Britain succeeds in going it alone outside a larger federation and doesn’t suffer a huge economic setback
