All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The invitation to submit a conversation between St Peter and a well-known figure who is demanding admission to heaven. Although the brief asked for a dialogue, Janice Harayda’s Donald Trump made the cut despite St Peter not getting a word in edgeways. Given that Trump doesn’t come across as the greatest listener — when asked
There are certain things about political conventions you only notice when you are watching on TV – like Bill Clinton seeming to fall asleep momentarily during his wife’s speech last night. And there are things you only notice when you go along to conventions and spend your afternoons out on the street, under the hot sun,
Spy novels and James Bond movies; post-war Vienna and East Berlin; Manchurian candidates and Third Men. The pop culture of the Cold War era created a set of stereotypes about hostile foreign intelligence services, especially Russian intelligence services, and they still exist. We still imagine undercover agents, dead drops, messages left under park benches, microphones
During Steve Hilton’s time in 10 Downing Street, David Cameron’s former director of strategy’s reputation for ‘modernising’ the Conservative party inspired the creation of PR guru Stewart Pearson in The Thick of It. However, while Brits may now be used to Hilton’s penchant for casual-wear and ‘blue sky thinking’, across the pond it’s a different story. Word reaches Steerpike
For all Gordon Brown’s economic mistakes, he at least tried to build confidence in the British economy. In the build-up to the European Union referendum, David Cameron and George Osborne did the opposite. Osborne, as Chancellor, ignored the good news, accentuated the bad and tried to portray Britain as an economic weakling propped up by
During the EU referendum campaign, there was much unfavourable comment (usually justified) about foreign entities or leaders who intervened to try to frighten us into voting Remain. Virtually all did so — Nato, the IMF, the World Bank, President Obama. But one important voice was silent — that of the European Central Bank. Its president,
Once again, an American police officer has been killed in the line of duty. This time, a policeman in San Diego was shot dead, and his colleague wounded, in a gun attack which happened after the two officers stopped a car. It is, of course, too early to tell exactly what happened, but the horrific pattern
It’s been a tumultuous month for Her Majesty’s Government — and that’s just regarding their pets. As well as an ongoing turf war between No 10’s cat Larry and the Foreign Office’s chief mouser Palmerston, there is now a third feline on the scene. The Treasury have today announced that they have fostered their own cat,
The Times has investigated train fares and found that millions of passengers have been paying more for a whole journey than they would for its constituent parts. The findings come as rail company bosses set up meetings with the Department for Transport to seek approval for a new airline-style booking system. ‘Any measures to address
Yesterday was supposed to be the day the nuclear button was finally pressed – a vote by the board of French energy company EDF to go ahead with Hinkley C power station was assumed to be the moment at which the project would finally spring off the drawing board. Instead, business secretary Greg Clark announced
Mostly I wouldn’t suggest that too many of us pay any attention at all to letters noting minor looking changes to the terms of conditions of corporate deposit accounts at Natwest and RBS (which owns Natwest). Not so this week. This week we all need to pay a lot of attention. The letter in question
One of Hillary Clinton’s biggest problems when she took to the stage last night was who had come before her: Barack Obama gave a belting speech at the Democrat convention, which Freddy Gray said was like a band playing back some of their old hits. The audience lapped it up. And her husband Bill’s number
After the Brexit vote, we at Index Ventures had been operating under the assumption that the new government would be sensible and not seek to dismantle one of the best things to have happened to London over the last 20 years — namely its transformation into a premier base for entrepreneurs starting and building innovative,
There may be confusion about the role of EU immigrants in Westminster, but there’s none in Scotland. Our message is clear: this is your home, you are welcome here, your contribution is valued. Scotland needs immigration, and we’ve been delighted to welcome EU citizens here over the last few years and decades. They are the
I am still angry at the exaggerations made by the Leave campaign, but even they did not stoop so low as to question whether EU migrants already in Britain should be somehow deported. It would be an unthinkable act of self-harm not to let EU nationals stay and continue to contribute to our economy —
Brits had been told that we’d be cooking our turkeys on power generated at Hinkley Point by next Christmas. It’s clear that for those still holding on to that promise, cold lunches will be on the menu. But nonetheless the drawn-out, long-running saga of Hinkley Point should at least reach some kind of conclusion today.
The Labour donor Michael Foster has lost his High Court case attempt to force Jeremy Corbyn to get 51 nominations from MPs and MEPs to be a candidate in the Labour leadership race. The Judge upheld the Labour National Executive Committee’s decision that Corbyn, as the incumbent, should automatically appear on the ballot. Today is
During the Brexit debate, there was a wide mainstream consensus that EU nationals living in Britain should not be affected. As even Ukip said, it would be unthinkable that someone here legally could later be declared illegal. Labour, the CBI, SNP, Vote Leave, pretty much everyone ruled out the disgusting idea of repatriating a single
Hillary Clinton can count herself lucky to have Barack Obama cheerleading her bid for the presidency. The outgoing President is ending his time in power with high approval ratings. People still approve of him after all these years; like Hillary’s husband Bill, Barack’s presidency is ending on a high. And last night, at the Democratic
Lloyds bank is to axe 3,000 jobs in the UK and close 200 branches in an attempt to save £400m by the end of 2017. Chief executive António Horta-Osório said that ‘a deceleration of growth seems likely’ following the UK’s decision to leave the European Union. Nevertheless, in the six months to June the group
In a week in which both Germany and France have suffered terror attacks, the question of the relationship between Islamic terrorism and Europe’s refugee crisis is once again rearing its head. In his Spectator cover piece, Douglas Murray argues that whilst the public knows that ‘Islamism comes from Islam’, Europe’s political classes are still refusing
At the beginning of his war memoirs, Charles de Gaulle famously wrote, ‘All my life I have had a certain idea of France’ and its ‘eminent and exceptional destiny’. It was not only an abstract concept: the picture in his mind was of ‘the Madonna in mural frescoes’. Douglas Murray and Haras Rafiq discuss Europe’s
There are many reasons why a majority of people in the UK voted to leave the European Union. Among them was certainly not a wish to be inhospitable and uncooperative with our fellow Europeans (Leading article, 23 July). Now it is even more important that EU nationals in Britain should have their status respected and
I’m standing at the edge of a financial precipice. I’m a 32-year-old woman doing a job I love. I’ve been beavering away solidly for 10 years and I’ve been working hard to climb my way up the career ladder. After starting out in London surviving on a pitiful cub journo’s salary, I now earn enough
Although George Osborne is now on the backbench, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer is keen to make sure that he remains a busy bee. As well as jetting off to New York this week to attend Tina Brown’s Brexit bash, the MP for Tatton is now considering putting pen to paper for a book. However, readers
For the frontline in a Cold War which has been rapidly heating up in recent years, Narva certainly does not look it. The small Estonian town on the border with Russia has a mainly ethnic Russian population, settled after the Soviet Union annexed Estonia at the end of the Second World War. However the closest
In his essay, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell famously exhorted writers to be cautious of allowing ready words or prefabricated phrases to affect whatever it was he or she wished to articulate. ‘Let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about,’ he wrote. Seventy years on, Whitehall Mandarins have spoken. ‘We
Jonathan Ray looks back on a fine Spectator Winemaker Lunch with Vega Sicilia. An excellent lunch in the Spectator boardroom today as Antonio Menéndez, managing director (sales and marketing) of mighty Vega Sicilia hosted the latest in our series of Spectator Winemaker Lunches. Vega Sicilia in Spain’s Ribera del Duero has an extraordinary reputation and
This 8 week course has now begun. If you are interested in joining another one of our Wine Schools please email wineschool@spectator.co.uk. The Spectator Wine School is a chance to be tutored by the best in the wine business. It is aimed at enthusiastic beginners and anyone who wants to know more about the main wine regions. Over eight
We had some very fine answers in our competition to find the perfect collective noun for a group of wine bores. You might recall that the best my confreres and I could come up with during the wine bores’ dinner that kicked off the initial discussion [see: Struggling to serve wine in the right order]
I always feel sorry for Marley’s ghost in Charles Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol.’ He wore a heavy chain he had unknowingly forged in life. Unlike Scrooge, Marley had not received ghostly visitors to warn him of his future burden. Marley’s chain was made up of ‘cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds and heavy purses wrought in
It is still a little too early to say for sure that George Osborne’s gloom-laden economic forecasts for post-Brexit Britain were bunk. But never mind the future, it now emerges that he wasn’t much good at telling us what was happening in the present. Throughout the referendum campaign he could barely disguise his contempt for
Oh dear. Owen Smith’s decision to go off piste in his leadership speech today has not worked out all that well. While discussing the need for a stronger opposition than the one currently provided under Jeremy Corbyn, Smith said Labour could not allow Theresa May to claim Labour’s centre ground. Alas he used a rather
You have to admire Bernie Sanders’s chutzpah. For almost the entirety of his over 40-year career in politics, Sanders pointedly abstained from joining the Democratic Party. He is a ‘democratic socialist’, officially registered as an independent, and has never been elected to office as a Democrat, seeing that party as insufficiently collectivist. Sanders only affiliated himself
