All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Jeremy Corbyn wants to get rid of the British Empire Medal and David Cameron wants to ditch the Human Rights Act. But I have a different nomination for the national institution most desperately in need of abolition: the FTSE 100 index. It is harming our economy by consistently underplaying the returns to be made on
David Cameron’s announcement today that the government will be involved in the direct commissioning of new homes on public land isn’t a huge surprise in that it continues an exploratory policy announced in the last Parliament. But what is a surprise is that this policy was announced by the Lib Dems and is now being
Jeremy Corbyn is expected to carry out his much-awaited and much-briefed ‘revenge reshuffle’ this week. Given he will have to face a shadow cabinet meeting on Tuesday, it would make more sense for the Labour leader to get on with moving and sacking today so that he faces the shadow cabinet he wants, rather than
Although the first rule of spin doctoring is to never become the story, Leave.EU’s Andy Wigmore appears to be taking the Alastair Campbell approach when it comes to managing the campaign’s comms. After the Mail on Sunday revealed that Nigel Farage may have been the victim of an assassination attempt — after a wheel on
When British troops were on patrol in Iraq and Afghanistan, we faced many enemies, from jihadis to press-ganged civilians. But he most terrifying ones lay buried. Bullets usually miss. Improvised explosive devices – IEDs — don’t. They are frighteningly simple. Old munitions wired together or plastic bottles packed with fertiliser and ball-bearings could destroy a
In January 2014, Douglas Murray explained in The Spectator how relations in the Middle East were becoming increasingly tense. With Saudi Arabia having now cut diplomatic relations with Iran, Douglas’s insight seems prescient. Syria has fallen apart. Major cities in Iraq have fallen to al-Qa’eda. Egypt may have stabilised slightly after a counter-coup. But Lebanon is starting
Who held the power in the supposedly inappropriate relationship between Labour MP Simon Danczuk and gorgeous, pouting etc seventeen-year-old Sophena Houlihan? The fragrant young lady bombarded the loopy old goat with a string of lascivious text messages, in which she fantasised about having sex with him. An odd fantasy, I admit, but each to their
Happy New Year. Sorry about my absence. I’ve been away for a couple of weeks and then, when I returned, there was no internet access and those hardworking people from BT spent ten days mulling over the problem before they tried to put it right. What a wonderful organisation. So, anyway, well done Lutz Bachmann
Back in August — after much anticipation — Jeremy Corbyn finally revealed some of his economic policies to the world. His policies — also known as ‘Corbynomics’ — took inspiration from the tax expert Richard Murphy’s blog. While several of the ideas — which included reclaiming the £120bn ‘tax gap’ and quantitative easing — were described as ‘starry-eyed,
David Cameron’s pledge to his MPs that none of them who want to stand again in 2020 will be left behind as a result of the boundary changes is a sign that the Prime Minister thinks party management will be seriously important this year. A fight between MPs over fewer constituencies would have been bad
I was on Kangaroo Island, in the great Australian Southern Ocean, when I heard about the terrorist attack on Paris. It was Paul, an abalone diver, who passed on the brief story of atrocity as we bobbed in his chaotic old rubber boat beside black swans, piebald cormorants and piping oystercatchers in the silver morning
Great progress has been made in open data over the last few years, with most important facts and figures now available online. The quality of the UK economic debate has been enhanced by the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which publishes forecasts in a non-tricksy way. The journalist is spoiled for choice. But, still, you don’t
Things I am going to ban when, by popular acclaim, I am elected your Dictator For Life in 2016. 1. Onions where the brown skin doesn’t come off easily. You know the ones: where the papery outer layer clings so tightly that you have to pick it off laboriously with a sharp knife and it
There are just six hours of 2015 to go – and it has, for The Spectator, been our best year ever. Sales of the magazine broke through their record high this year: more people are buying it now than any time in our 187-year long history. And that’s just if you count magazine sales: if you count the number of
Simon Danczuk’s lightning-fast suspension from Labour – as they investigate whether he sent ‘lewd’ texts to a seventeen-year-old girl – is an embarrassing note to end the year on. Especially for an MP like Danczuk who has spent much of the last few years positioning himself as a campaigner against child abuse. He has described today’s story in the Sun as being ‘not entirely
While a new year can mean new beginnings, Steerpike would hate for anyone to forget some of 2015’s more ‘interesting’ incidents. So Mr S thanks the Geneva-based UN Watch for the following list which highlights the ten worst moments of 2015 when it comes to the United Nations: 10. Iran elected to UN Women Executive Board ‘Electing the Iranian
The new year challenge was to compose a thank-you letter for a particularly unenjoyable Christmas visit to relatives that manages to be diplomatic but deters them from ever inviting you again. This one obviously struck a chord. You produced a catalogue of seasonal torture that had me squirming in my judging throne: uncomfortable blow-up beds;
Labour is very cross about a knighthood going to the man who ran the election campaign that beat the party in May. Andy Burnham issued a statement about Lynton Crosby’s inclusion in the New Year’s Honours list which was supposed to highlight what his party thinks is an abuse of the system. But really, it
The Spectator‘s most read article of 2015 was Nick Cohen’s piece about Margot Wallström – the Swedish foreign minister who stood up against Saudi Arabi’s subjugation of women. He wrote it in March; it was still in our top ten most read yesterday. Every so often, new groups of people (mainly Facebook communities) keep discovering and sharing
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thecleaneatingcult/media.mp3″ title=”Ian Marber, Isabel Hardman and Lara Prendergast discuss the cult of clean eating” startat=40] Listen [/audioplayer] Isabel Hardman and Lara Prendergast explored the unhealthy advice peddled by 2015’s near-ubiquitous ‘wellness’ gurus in The Spectator‘s second most read article of the year: The supermarket aisle has become a confusing place. It used to be
Written after the Charlie Hebdo shooting in January and revised after the Paris attacks in November, Douglas Murray’s piece on politicians’ responses to Islamic terror attacks was The Spectator‘s third most read article of 2015: The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each
From Peregrine Armstrong Jones Q. As party planners, we are used to getting some very strange replies regarding dietary requirements, but this one, from the PA to Lord X has flummoxed us. How should we reply? Lord X thanks Bentley’s Entertainments greatly for the kind invitation and accepts with pleasure. Regarding his dietary requirements, Lord
January David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that only electing the Conservatives could ‘save Britain’s economic recovery’. Labour unveiled a poster saying: ‘The Tories want to cut spending on public services back to the levels of the 1930s,’ and Ed Miliband, the party leader, said he would ‘weaponise the NHS’. Two male ‘hedge witches’ were
Every day in the run up to Christmas, sometimes several times a day, the front doorbell rang with a parcel for one of my five sets of neighbours. Each time, I ran down six flights of stairs to scribble a hieroglyph for the man from the Royal Mail. It has not been a season of
Nick Cohen’s cover piece in the Spectator on the demise of the Labour party – and of his own support for it – is the 4th most-read magazine piece of 2015. ‘Tory, Tory, Tory. You’re a Tory.’ The level of hatred directed by the Corbyn left at Labour people who have fought Tories all their
At No 5 in the Spectator’s most-read articles for 2015 is Brendan O’Neill’s cover piece describing ‘Stepford Students’: those who want to shut down debate when it involves people they disagree with and arguments they don’t like. Brendan spotted this phenomenon in 2014 but his article returned to our best-read list this year as more and
What Oliver Letwin wrote in that 1985 memo to Thatcher was ugly. But you know what is also ugly? The forced extraction of an apology from Letwin for the things he thought and said three decades ago, when the political world was a very different place. The attempt to drag Letwin’s name into the gutter
Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn has a socialist doppelganger in Germany. Her name is Sahra Wagenknecht and she serves as co-chairperson of the largest opposition party in the German Bundestag—The Left Party. Her remarks blanketed the German media on Tuesday because she equated Islamic State terrorism in Paris with Britain’s aerial campaign designed to help destroy the
Should celebrities really shut up about politics? Nick Timothy makes a persuasive argument on ConservativeHome that Benedict Cumberbatch et al should stop lecturing theatregoers and pontificating about Edward Snowden because they lower the standard of political debate in this country. He writes: ‘So if I had a wish for 2016, it would be that these
At No 6 in our rundown of the Spectator’s most-read pieces of 2015 is a piece that takes a surprising stance. Freddy Gray’s November defence of Jeremy Corbyn as a ‘shockingly steadfast’ politician in contrast to David Cameron who ‘makes up his foreign policy as he goes along’ was hugely popular, and not just with the
There is no point in anyone trying to defend Oliver Letwin’s 1985 memo to Margaret Thatcher in which the then aide to the Prime Minister argued that white people were not prone to public disorder and that regeneration of inner city areas would only result in those from ethnic minorities setting up ‘in the disco
This week the Today show is being edited by a selection of guests including Sir Bradley Wiggins, Lord Browne and the architect David Adjaye. The Welsh actor Michael Sheen kicked proceedings off on Monday when he managed to upset a number of flood victims as he dismissed calls to cut foreign aid in order to spend more on flood defences
‘Makes me feel sick,’ said my husband, referring not to the third mince pie of the morning (in Advent, supposedly a penitential time of preparation), nor to accepting a glass of champagne after having earlier accepted a glass of whisky at another house. No, what made him feel sick was the seasonal greeting: ‘God bless,
This time last year I was running around excitedly telling all my friends that I had an African president in the family, something none of them could boast. My younger daughter Theo is married to Sasha Scott, son of Dr Guy Scott, who was president of Zambia from October 2014 to January 2015, and the