All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
If you thought senior Conservatives giving evidence to the UK Covid inquiry in London was rough then you should watch the footage now emerging from Edinburgh, where the Inquiry’s lawyers have moved to take evidence. It’s a bloodbath. Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and current first minister Humza Yousaf are yet to even take the
Keir Starmer is drawing up his battle-lines for the next election. First, he came for the public schools, pledging to whack VAT on school fees. Now he’s going for the traditionalist wing of National Trust members. In a speech today, he accuses the Tories of ‘waging a war’ on charities and civic society. He claims
Professor Dame Theresa Marteau seems to have something of an obsession about glasses and tableware. In the last ten years, she and her team at Cambridge university have carried out numerous experiments in the bars and restaurants of Cambridgeshire to see whether restricting the size of wine glasses reduces the amount of wine consumed. This
Poor old BBC. It’s been another torrid year for the Corporation after being embarrassed by Gary Lineker, lambasted over Richard Sharp and humiliated over various Hamas howlers. And now, even the mild-mannered Culture Secretary is having a pop at them. Lucy Frazer – never the most natural of culture warriors – was out on the
The farmers of France are mobilising. Their anger will be an early test for Gabriel Attal; the countryside is unknown territory for the new prime minister, a young man raised in the affluent suburbs of Paris, like the majority of Emmanuel Macron’s government. The first dissent was on Friday in the south-west of France, in and
A century ago today, the first ever Labour government was formed. Yet even many Labour members will probably be ignorant of the anniversary. To be fair, most historians of the party (this one included) have overlooked the government in favour of the superficially more consequential post-war administrations, especially that of 1945. After all, the 1924
Katharine Birbalsingh is back in the papers again. The head teacher at Michaela, a free school whose outstanding academic record and ultra-strict behaviour policy have made it a culture-wars lightning rod, tells the Sunday Times that she and her staff have been getting death threats ever since her board of governors imposed a policy banning any
The Florida governor has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race
So. Farewell then Ron DeSantis. The Florida Governor tonight bowed to the inevitable and announced he was dropping out of the race to be the Republican nominee for the White House. In a four-and-a-half-minute long address on Twitter/X, DeSantis declared that ‘it’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give
Ron DeSantis’ political action committee is called ‘Never Back Down.’ Well, he just did. A week ago, he said of Trump: ‘You can be the most worthless Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring he’ll say you’re wonderful.’ Well, he just endorsed Trump for the presidency in 2024. This morning, DeSantis campaign staff
On a call with Joe Biden this weekend, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Israel’s demand for security control over Gaza once Hamas has been destroyed, and said that this was incompatible with Palestinian sovereignty. Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg, UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps described Netanyahu’s views as ‘disappointing’, and said that the two-state
More tax cuts are on their way, according to the both the Prime Minister and Chancellor who have written comment pieces in The Sun on Sunday and The Mail on Sunday respectively to indicate their intentions ahead of the upcoming March Budget. This is interesting because their published plans suggest a rise in taxes, to levels not seen in
The first and most important principle of war for any military campaign is the selection and maintenance of ‘the aim’. The aim must be clear and unambiguous, so that everyone, from the most senior general to the private soldier, understands what is trying to be achieved. Unfortunately for the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) the aim
The row that has erupted at Katharine Birbalsingh’s Michaela school in north London highlights the difference in how Britain and France confront Islamic conservatism in education and wider society. Birbalsingh has displayed courage in imposing a blanket ban on all ritual prayer in the school, but nonetheless in France such displays of religiosity have been
Today is the centenary of Vladimir Lenin’s death. His Moscow funeral was marked by official communist solemnity, as if a messiah had come and departed. Trams and buses were halted and boats were tied to mooring posts. Factory whistles were sounded at the moment when his corpse, not yet embalmed for the mausoleum that stands
‘Spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison,’ C.S. Lewis famously said. In western countries, organised religion has been declining for the last two centuries; Friedrich Nietzsche even declared that ‘God is dead’. Does the decline and fall of religion have political consequences? Can totalitarian ideology grow
18 min listen
For this special Americano podcast, Freddy Gray is in New Hampshire with the Spectator US team, Matt McDonald and Zach Christenson covering the chilly primaries. Are both Ron De Santis and Nikki Haley’s defeat a foregone conclusion?
Argentine President Javier Milei’s recent speech, to the World Economic Forum in Davos, has caused a stir for several reasons. First, it was someone saying something interesting at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Also, it was someone being positive about capitalism and enterprise in a lucid, educated way. Agree with Milei or not, he
13 min listen
As problems in the Middle East and war on the continent dominate the headlines, David Cameron has been front and centre in his new role as foreign secretary. Is his experience coming in handy? Is he Rishi’s ‘prime minister abroad’? Katy Balls speaks to Craig Oliver, director of communications at No. 10 during the Cameron
The March presidential elections in Russia will, of course, be a stage-managed farce, but that doesn’t mean that real politics has been entirely extinguished. It offers a narrow window of opportunity for the opposition to try and connect with the Russian people – so the Kremlin is doing its best to muzzle them. On the
If you attend almost any public meeting or event in Australia these days, you’ll be greeted – some would say confronted – by a mandatory statement before it starts. Even the nation’s parliament now starts the day with this statement, ahead of the centuries-old ritual of reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Known as the Acknowledgment of
Robin Garbutt, the postmaster who lived above the village shop with his wife, Diana, was a popular figure in Melsonby, North Yorkshire. The last time I saw him, I was six years old, bouncing on the trampoline in my grandparents’ garden. Robin had travelled to visit the village where he’d grown up to see his mother, and
Sitting in a room at the Israel Defence Forces’ Hakirya base in Tel Aviv, I listened – along with a room full of delegates, mostly European MPs and members of the House of Lords – to a briefing from an IDF spokesman. He was a British-born reservist recruited back to the front lines of Israel’s
The theory that Donald Trump will pick Nikki Haley as his vice president refuses to die – in spite of the growing evidence that he won’t. Haley, for one, is adamant that it will not happen. Today, at a meet-and-greet with voters in Mary Ann’s diner in Amherst, New Hampshire, a voter floated the idea.
As flies are to wanton boys – and this particular boy is as wanton as it gets – so Prince Harry is to court cases. Most Spectator readers would avoid the stern and unforgiving – not to say financially ruinous – environs of the Old Bailey for all they were worth, but the endlessly litigious
15 min listen
Katharine Birbalsingh, headteacher at the Michaela community school in Brent, is being challenged in the High Court over a policy which allegedly bans students from praying. Ms Birbalsingh has defended the policy, arguing that it is vital to ‘maintain a successful learning environment where children of all races and religion can thrive.’ Should the Tories
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Biden administration earlier this week that he objects to the establishment of a Palestinian state, the intended audience was his base of supporters – or what little of it he has left. Since the start of the war on 7 October 2023, Netanyahu had zig-zagged between rejecting
Hurrah! The UK is just about to reduce its carbon emissions by a further 1.5 per cent. As for Wales, it is going to get even close to the holy grail of reaching net zero, with 15 per cent of its carbon emissions wiped off its slate in one go. True, there will be 2,800
It seems the renegade royal has run away again. All of Fleet Street was eagerly anticipating the mother of all media showdowns this month, with Prince Harry due in court for his libel trial with the publishers of the Mail on Sunday, Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL). The MoS is the biggest selling Sunday in the
Rishi Sunak has been caught on camera apparently walking away from a woman who has just started telling him about his daughter’s ordeal waiting for NHS treatment. As she starts to complain, he is looking anxiously over his shoulder at his aide, and then says he needs to get to the next appointment. She then
Once upon a time, a young unionist politician marched out of a talks process. Recalling the incident later, he said: ‘I asked myself the question, could I walk out of here and go down to my constituency, the people of Lisburn, look them in the eye and say this is a good deal. I could not
The saga of the Scottish Government’s WhatsApps continues to rumble on. The SNP regime has never been slow in condemning the Tories for a lack of transparency in the ongoing UK Covid Inquiry. So it was to Steerpike’s amusement then that Humza Yousaf and his Scottish government have been facing considerable criticism in recent months
In Spain’s general election last July, the right-wing Partido Popular and the even more right-wing Vox won 170 seats, just short of the 176 they needed to form a government. The support of an MP from Navarre and another from the Canary Islands took them to 172 but that only added to the frustrating sense