All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Among lively responses to my recent item on executive pay and the possibility of using state-owned RBS as an experiment in reducing it, this one from a senior City whistle–blower: ‘Are you aware that the situation is even more absurd than you say? Since the EU bonus cap [introduced in 2014, limiting bonuses to 100
The parliamentary move against democracy is gathering strength. The notion that parliament might vote down the results of the referendum is being backed by some serious, intelligent politicians (and Labour’s Chris Bryant). My old boss Patience Wheatcroft is leading the attempt in the Lords, hoping to stall it until such times as another referendum could
An increasing number of women are entering into the institution of marriage with their dream partner: themselves. In her cover piece this week, Ariane Sherine investigates the women who have brought a new literalism to saying, ‘I do’. But is this just a quirky fad? Or are we witnessing a profound social change? Lara Prendergast
I’ve always hated the beach. The water? Great. The sunshine? Terrible. It starts with the hot trek across the sands to find a square of free ground – loaded up with factor 60, several books, a comedy floppy hat, two towels, three bottles of water and the rusty family parasol. Then there’s the bodily anxiety.
A shift in house price momentum is underway in the UK, as southern cities start to slow down with the north taking their place at the top of the leaderboard. The Telegraph reports that Glasgow has emerged as the city with the fastest growing quarterly house prices, according to Hometrack’s monitor of the biggest 20 cities in
When Andy Coulson stepped down as David Cameron’s director of communications in 2011 over phone hacking allegations, it made front page news. In the subsequent trial, Coulson was sentenced to 18 months for conspiracy to hack phones. So as Coulson embarks on a new chapter in his life, Mr S was intrigued to read an interview
Today, in a highly unprecedented move, the Labour party actually managed to achieve something. It has just signed a deal with a security firm, OCS, for its autumn conference in Liverpool. This is a huge relief to those in the party with a sense of professionalism, like its General Secretary Iain McNicol, who had feared
In the runup to the referendum, we heard repeated warnings that, whatever the outcome of the actual vote, the damage to the UK economy had been done. The Bank of England, whose governor has been accused of becoming something of a fellow traveller for Project Fear, warned in its Monetary Policy Committee meeting in March that: ‘There
You can’t fool all of the people all of the time, said Abraham Lincoln. Theresa May faces a different question: for how long can you string along an entire electorate? She has been a defender of the pledge to cut net migration below 100,000 – a pledge that was adopted in a different era, before
So far in the course of the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has been labelled ‘crooked’ and had her political rival Donald Trump suggest that she ought to be in jail. However, has the worst insult only just arrived? Following Nigel Farage’s speech in support of Trump, Clinton took the unusual step of speaking out to discredit
Owen Smith desperately needs to make up ground in Labour’s leadership contest (bookies’ odds, perhaps more reliable than the polls, suggest Corbyn has an 84 per cent chance of winning next month). What’s more, with voting soon drawing to a close, he has less and less time to do so. Which all explains why last
‘I’m not loaded, I’m just ordinary,’ protested a wealthy friend of mine, when another chum teased him about his money. ‘Oh yes,’ his tormentor responded wryly, ‘you’re one of those ordinary millionaires, not one of the rich ones.’ It made me smile, and it also made me think. Many of us, like my well-cushioned chum,
A subscription to The Spectator buys you more than just full access to the world’s greatest magazine. It also means a ticket to our subscriber-only events and debates, and our next one is in a few weeks: a debate about Clinton vs Trump, moderated by Andrew Neil, on Tuesday 18 October. Conrad Black, formerly publisher
May I interrupt, for a moment, the howls of anguish from those liberals in uproar at the news that authorities in France are banning burkinis on their beaches? I’d like to relate an incident that occurred earlier this month in France. It involved my girlfriend, who was on her way from Paris to visit her grandmother
It’s exactly one month until Labour conference and the party’s security shambles just got a whole lot worse. After the NEC voted to boycott G4S, the only firm willing to do the job were Showsec, a non-unionised security firm. This option was deemed unsatisfactory and so the party have had to go ‘cap in hand’ to
After a difficult few days for Jeremy Corbyn following ‘traingate’, the Labour leader has reason to smile again. Today, Corbyn has put his Virgin drama behind him and boarded one of the company’s trains to get to Glasgow for tonight’s debate. What’s more, he has a seat! My kids just got on @VirginTrains from Euston
The good news for the Government is that net migration is down. The bad news? It’s down by so little (a fall of 9,000 to a total of 327,000) that you won’t hear anyone crowing about today’s figures. That the ‘tens of thousands’ target made by the Government still hasn’t been met is no surprise
On Wednesday, Jeremy Corbyn appeared rather rattled when a Sky News reporter asked him about ‘traingate‘ at a campaign event on the NHS. The Labour leader huffed and puffed before explaining that while there were a few empty seats on the train he had wanted to sit next to his wife. Unfortunately, this remark contradicted
Congratulations to all those free schools who got their GCSE results this morning. We don’t yet have the full picture, but early reports are good. Top marks to Tauheedul Islam Boys’ High School in Blackburn, a free school that opened in 2012. Ninety-five per cent of its pupils achieved five A* to C grades in
Which do you think are the issues that tend to dominate MP’s postbags? Brexit? Immigration? The state of the NHS? All likely contenders – but a more surprising suggestion might be the state of Britain’s broadband service. Up and down the country people struggle to get a decent connection – something that in the 21st
Just before The Spectator went to press yesterday, my colleague Emily Hill pointed out that I’d just taken away the only male name away from the cover: all seven of our coverlines were stories written by women. Did I really want that? I hadn’t thought about it until then, and for a while I did
Of all the guff churned out about Isis, the refrain that we are engaged in a ‘clash of civilisations’ and ‘battle of ideas’ is uniquely moronic. Isis doesn’t want civilisation. As for a battle of ideas – what ideas? Isis doesn’t have any, unless you count an apocalyptic fight to the death in Dabiq or
The Edinburgh Fringe festival is drawing to a close. Female comics including Bridget Christie, Jayde Adams, Zoe Coombs-Marr, Kate Lucas and Michelle Wolf have been receiving scores of five-star reviews. Coombs-Marr, Wolf and Adams are nominated for Edinburgh Comedy Awards this year, Sofie Hagen won Best Newcomer last year, and Bridget Christie won the main
Pensions: about as easy to understand as the theory of relativity. Successive governments have pledged to simplify and clarify the UK pensions system. Each one has failed. If anything, the financial ins and outs of our retirement have become ever more complex. Now the powers that be have made changes to the state pension. If,
Some people are being hit with an unexpected tax bill after unlocking their money from a pension pot, according to Citizens Advice. Others are facing reductions in welfare payments owing to the income received by releasing the funds. ‘Pension freedoms’ began in April 2015. Since then, anyone aged 55 and over has been free to withdraw as
An increasing number of women are entering into the institution of marriage with their dream partner: themselves. In her cover piece this week, Ariane Sherine investigates the women who have brought a new literalism to saying, ‘I do’. But is this just a quirky fad? Or are we witnessing a profound social change? Lara Prendergast
As everyone in Britain knows, Brexit became a real possibility only once Nigel Farage was elbowed out of the leadership by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. But you can forgive Farage for pretending otherwise in his six-minute speech to the Trump rally as he tried to make out that Brexit and Trumpism are the same kind
‘More work needs to be done,’ is what people say whenever some unachievable social goal is shown to be another 200 years away. And it was said a lot this week after it emerged that women still earn 18 per cent less than men on average. As the Guardian reported: The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)
Last week Donald Trump managed to leave hacks and commentariats confused when he took to Twitter to declare that he would soon be referred to as ‘MR BREXIT!’. While many interpreted this to mean that he would win an election against the odds — just as the Leave vote did in the referendum — Mr S was curious to
This time two years ago, the United Kingdom stood on the brink of dissolution. The referendum on Scottish independence hung in the balance and momentum was with the nationalists. The optimism and energy of Alex Salmond’s campaign stood in admirable contrast to the shrill hysteria of Project Fear, the name given to a unionist campaign
Just three years ago, the Scottish government enjoyed claiming that an independent Scotland would be one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Perhaps even the sixth wealthiest, as measured by GDP per capita. Sometimes the claims made were a little more modest. Scotland might be only the 14th richest country on earth. But, however
This morning Jeremy Corbyn has woken up to find his face plastered across the front pages of the Daily Mail and the Times following ‘traingate‘. After Corbyn appeared in a video calling for the railways to be re-nationalised while sitting on the floor of a ‘ram-packed’ Virgin train, the company hit back. On Tuesday, Richard Branson’s team released a press release and
Jeremy Corbyn’s embarrassing train row is a gilt-edged opportunity for his rival to try and make up ground in the party’s leadership contest. Instead, Owen Smith is more intent on alienating Labour voters by setting out how he wants to block Brexit. It’s a foolish move on Smith’s part. So why has he done it?
What follows is an appeal to Jeremy Corbyn supporters to think again. It’s from Chris, a Labour party member, who does not want to give his full name for fear of abuse. He has compiled a vast, but by no means exhaustive list of the moral and political failings of the Labour leader. He told