All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
There was victory for a group of mortgage borrowers last week when Court of Appeal judges ruled West Bromwich Building Society had wrongly upped interest rates for about 6,000 customers. However, despite the legal wrangle being described as a ‘David and Goliath’ type duel, not everyone was pleased for the little people winners. That’s because
Two polls putting Leave well clear of Remain – five points according to yesterday’s Guardian/ICM poll, seven points according to a Times/YouGov poll – have seen bookies slash their odds on Brexit, implying that it’s more likely than ever before – as shown by the chart above. A few weeks ago, the betting markets thought there was
A levy could be added to bills to ensure that consumers do not lose out if their energy supplier goes bust under proposals put forward by Ofgem. With more than 40 firms now offering gas and electricity deals, the energy watchdog has warned of the danger of one becoming insolvent. At present anyone who is in credit with
We are definitely now in squeaky bum territory in the EU referendum. Leave has a seven point lead in today’s Times/YouGov poll, while yesterday the Guardian/ICM poll put Leave six points ahead. Meanwhile the Sun has splashed on its backing for Leave. It isn’t a huge surprise that the Sun is supporting Britain leaving the European
What would Brexit mean to dance? Many big hitters in dance were among the 300-plus arts people who signed last month’s public letter urging the UK to remain in the EU: the Royal Ballet’s director Kevin O’Hare, choreographer Akram Khan, Sadler’s Wells chief Alistair Spalding and Sir Matthew Bourne among them. I’ve asked some of
There are now only ten days to go until the EU referendum and in a bid to regain momentum, Labour figures from the past and present are this week putting the case forward for staying in the EU. Today, it was Gordon Brown’s turn to try and convince wavering Labour supporters why Britain is better
An ICM poll released this afternoon shows that 53 per cent of voters are backing Brexit compared to 47 per cent who want Britain to stay in the EU. And just ten days to go until the EU referendum. Today’s poll is further evidence in support of momentum towards Leave: an ICM poll two weeks
There’s just over a week to go until the polls open for the EU referendum and Britain decides what it would like its future to look like. The debate has been fierce – and no more so than when The Spectator brought together key figures from both campaigns to make the case for Leave and
MPs pressing for the reform of backbench bills have declared war on the government after it refused to accept any of the changes that they recommended. Private Members’ Bills are a tedious and unedifying part of Parliament which promise much and disappoint even more. Earlier this year, the Procedure Committee published a report on how
I’m pro-gun control, but I come from the most heavily populated corner of one of the most crowded islands on earth, where it’s appropriate. I also grew up in a city and have only fired a gun once, which was basically an air rifle, and the results were predictably Woody Allenesque. But gun control may
Rolling news does not give its participants the option of shutting their mouths and biting their tongues, even when shutting and biting are the best available options. Silence is the producer’s greatest fear. The supposedly contrarian presenter has to keep talking. The supposedly tough-minded pundit has to show she is nobody’s fool. Better that than
Gordon Brown’s intervention in the EU referendum debate was meant to be all about putting forward the positive case for voting ‘Remain’. But not for the first time, the former Prime Minister appears to have fallen flat on his face over immigration. It wasn’t quite as bad as Brown’s Gillian Duffy moment in that he
Gordon Brown is busy trying to reset the Remain campaign with a rather leftier tone today. As Tom writes, Labour voters are far less solid in their support for Britain staying in the European Union than the party had hoped, and so the campaign is being handed over to the party so that it can
It’s happened. After weeks of Project Fear warnings from the Remain camp — from WW3 to house prices actually falling — Donald Tusk has offered the most apocalyptic warning yet. A clear frontrunner for Mr S’s ‘Project Fear’ award, the president of the European Council has claimed today that Brexit could spell the end of… western civilisation.
I live in a world of Post-it notes. Yellow ones, blue ones, orange ones. They are everywhere. One day someone is going to find my wizened body beneath a mountain of these infernal things. Death by Post-it note. In a world where multi-tasking has become a full-time profession, the humble Post-it note is now an integral
The cost of renting a one-bedroom property in the UK has soared to swallow almost half of the average young worker’s take-home pay, according to figures published in The Guardian, while those living in London are typically handing over 57 per cent of their monthly wages. Data from property firm Countrywide showed that the average
As the countdown to the EU referendum debate continues, the momentum appears to have continued to swing towards Brexit: ‘Leave’ went ahead in the polls last week, with one survey putting them five points clear of ‘Remain’. What’s more, David Cameron has looked more and more rattled. Yesterday, he had to answer questions on Marr about
Although John McDonnell is tipped to be Jeremy Corbyn’s likely successor, Mr S doubts his appearance at an an event next month will do much to help his leadership chances. The shadow chancellor is scheduled to appear at a talk entitled ‘Local Government in Revolt’ alongside Ted Knight and Hazel Smith. This event will see McDonnell reunited with his old comrades
I’m sitting in a gay café in Washington DC. Opposite me, a lesbian couple are hugging and kissing, trying to console each other about the massacre of 53 people in a gay club in Orlando last night — the biggest terrorist attack since 9/11. This weekend was supposed to be a big gay carnival. There
Last night a gunman attacked a gay club in Orlando, Florida. At present at least 50 people are confirmed dead and another 42 are confirmed injured – which would make it the worst mass shooting in American history. The gunman appears to have been a US citizen called Omar Mateen. Even the FBI is now
Campaigns only last for a few weeks, but politicians can be defined by what they say during those campaigns. Ed Miliband will never live down the #EdStone, Zac Goldsmith will always be stained by his murkier attacks on Sadiq Khan – and I suspect David Cameron will never manage to shake off the threat he made to
Barely a week goes by without the Guardian declaring war on a seemingly harmless food type. According to the paper tea-drinkers possess ‘the worst possible English trait, up there with colonialism‘, HP sauce is the condiment of the establishment and barbecues are simply borderline-racist. Now they have a new enemy in their sights: street parties. Although tens of thousands
Anyone with any more corkers in their armoury should take note there’s less than a fortnight left in which to release them. This week did see George Osborne finally challenged on why he and David Cameron keep pretending that a country they have always campaigned to bring into the EU will never in fact come
David Cameron is now having to face questions on what he would do if, as looks far more likely than he would have liked at this stage, Britain votes to leave the European Union. As James predicted in his cover piece this week, Cameron will have to row back on predictions that he made about
There has been speculation for a while that Boris’s fabled mop may have had a touch of the Marilyn Monroe to it. Last year, celebrity hairdresser Heinz Schumi claimed it was a ‘forgery’. ‘I’m telling you, it’s bleached,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘I went to see him give a speech, and when the spotlights shone on his hair, it
What a strange human being the historian Eric Hobsbawm was. I was reminded of this the other day while reading a new report by the New Culture Forum on attitudes to Communism almost a century after the Russian Revolution. It includes this exchange between Michael Ignatieff and Professor Hobsbawm: Ignatieff: In 1934 … millions of
Denmark has been basking in a glorious June heatwave this past week, hastening the annual migration cycle. ‘Summer Danes’ are a delicate subgenus of the species. We roam the planet’s warmer regions every year between September and May, absenting ourselves from Nordic noir winters. But mercury rising brings us home; and last week was the
The latest challenge, prompted by the hashtag #RemoveALetterSpoilABook that’s been doing the rounds on Twitter, saw you at your best. Among many highlights in a whopping, inventive entry were Robert Schechter’s A Clockwork Orange, which featured Donald Trump’s manhood, and a turn by Ted Hughes in Katie Mallett’s Far from the Madding Crow. Other star
All sides of the Remain campaign are turning their fire on Boris Johnson at the moment. But these attacks are, I argue in The Sun today, a mistake by the Remainers. First, it makes Boris, the most popular politician in the country, the face of the Out campaign when the IN campaign’s strategic aim is
Is Google racist? That is the charge made in a short video in which someone types ‘three white teenagers’ and ‘three black teenagers’ into the Google images and finds that while the former brings up images of happy, smiling students, the latter brings up what appear to be police mugshots. Given that Google searches do
Weary that his republican views could put-off some Labour voters, Jeremy Corbyn has been keen to make clear that he won’t fight to scrap the monarchy — ‘it’s not the fight I’m interested in’ — if elected Prime Minister. So, what of his rumoured successor John McDonnell and his team? Just in time for the
To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. The EU referendum on June 23rd looks set to be one of the most important political moments in a generation. But if Britain does vote out, what would
Alain de Botton, to judge from his new novel The Course of Love, is trying to be the Freud for our day, the Facebookers’ Freud. For a book that presents itself as an affirmation of married love, it is rather bleak. And the bleakness echoes that of the Viennese know-it-all. Freud, remember, said that our sex
This is an abridged transcript of Nigel Farage’s Brexit interview with Andrew Neil IMMIGRATION Reducing the level of immigration has been central to your pitch to voters, can you tell the British public at what level broadly you’d expect net migration to fall if we left the EU? Up to us. The point about this
