All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It wouldn’t be a Tory party conference without hundreds of protesters lining the streets. Manchester has not disappointed. From trade unionists, Steve Bray’s die-hard remainers, the Young Communist League, Extinction Rebellion and, of course, Just Stop Oil, anyone with a grievance appears to have made it to the Rainy City. Even Bully XL owners have
The staunchly pro-Russian Robert Fico is back in power for a third time in Slovakia. Fico’s Smer party clinched at least 23 per cent of the vote – enough to lead a coalition government. His victory comes five years after Fico was forced to resign following mass protests over the murder of a journalist investigation corruption
This time last year there was a notable absence at Tory party conference: Rishi Sunak. Fresh from losing the summer leadership contest, the former chancellor opted to stay away from the annual meet to allow Liz Truss to ‘own the moment’. It didn’t exactly go well for Truss – the then-prime minister faced various rebellions
A new Rishi Sunak is being launched at Tory conference and one I saw first hand being interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Manchester this morning. This version is more feisty, ignores attempted interruptions and is, in general, spoiling for a fight. The Prime Minister is trying to ditch his timeshare-salesman image and is seeking to
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg this morning, as the Conservative party conference gets underway in Manchester. With polls currently predicting an election defeat for the Tories, Sunak was noticeably combative in his interview, insisting that he would do what he ‘believes is right’ for the country. When Kuenssberg accused him of
It’s Tory conference – which means the Conservatives are at each other’s throats once again. This morning, Priti Patel took a pop at Suella Braverman, accusing the Home Secretary of attention seeking. Patel also suggested Braverman was guilty of focusing on words over action. The slap down came a few days after Braverman used a
Rishi Sunak is in Manchester for what could be the final party conference ahead of next year’s election – and, if that vote goes as many expect, his last as Tory leader. In order to avoid that fate, the Prime Minister hopes to use the annual meet to enter a more pro-active stage of his
As Conservative conference kicks off, there is a crumb of comfort for the Prime Minister in the latest polling in the Observer – but you’d be hard pressed to actually find it in the newspaper’s write-up. The Opinium survey for the paper of more than 3,000 voters – including over 900 people who voted Tory in
For most people today radioactivity is synonymous with bright yellow warning signs, explosions and poison. But there was a time when radioactivity was revered, not feared. And when it seemed like everyone in Britain was clamouring for more of it. In the late 19th century Wilhelm Röntgen discovered a previously unknown form of powerful radiation
The former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, recently compared the British economy with that of Argentina. This was typical of those Remainers who cannot imagine that a country ignoring them could possibly succeed, and who often seem to will it to fail. That Carney’s sneer did not merely provoke laughter is because
It’s the first day of the annual Conservative party conference in Manchester. Grant Shapps, who is making his first major speech since being promoted to Defence Secretary, is the headline act on the main stage. Here are the rest of the highlights: Main agenda – from 14:00: 1400: Greg Hands MP, Chairman of the Conservative
The former Tory MP Christopher Hollis wrote for The Spectator in 1960 that ‘a Conservative conference is, and is intended to be, the dullest thing that ever happened. Party members come not to hear their leaders but to see them. One sometimes wonders if it would be best to cut out the speeches altogether.’ Hollis duly
There are said to be six million rats in Paris. I met one last week when I was retrieving some winter clothes from a bag in my cellar. Neither of us was particularly keen to make the other’s acquaintance. Such a brief encounter may not please the Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. In the
Assuming this is the Conservative party’s last conference in power, I decided to investigate what kind of country they leave behind. Thirteen years on, are we richer, poor, happier or sadder? I started by asking MPs to name their biggest achievement. No one said ‘the economy’; Ukraine and Brexit were popular. Two replied: ‘Kept Labour
There’s just over a week to go before what might be the Labour party’s last conference before the general election. But while the mood in the wider party might be one of optimism, it seems that caution is the order of the day on Keir Starmer’s front bench. Appearing on a panel called ‘Is Labour’s
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The Conservative party conference begins in Manchester this weekend. Where have conferences gone wrong for previous Tory party leaders, and what will Rishi Sunak want to get out of this one? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Craig Oliver, dormer director of communications in No. 10 under David Cameron.
For reasons that not even Czechs can explain, in the past they developed a habit of throwing their rulers out of windows. It started in the early 15th century, but it was in Prague in 1618 that the word ‘defenestration’ entered the English language. The word derives from the Latin word for window, fenestra. A year earlier
In the year 2007 Gordon Brown became prime minister, Northern Rock went bust and the iPhone was introduced. But something silently and invisibly calamitous must also have happened in Britain, because it was the year that productivity growth in Britain all but ceased. Tempting though it may be to blame some or all of the
I first came to Russia as a travelling English literature-lecturer in the late 1990s. This wasn’t a job given to me but one I’d devised myself, sending off snail-mail begging letters to different university departments all over the Former Soviet Union – Barnaul to Minsk – outlining my services and occasionally, weeks or months later,
The last time a Conservative Chancellor was in the business of cutting taxes, he pointed out that they reduce the incentive to work, invest, and start a business. This was why Kwasi Kwarteng proposed to abolish the 45 per cent additional rate of income tax last year. We really, really, shouldn’t have a tax system
With two weeks to go before New Zealand’s general election, the contest is so close that many have stopped bothering to make predictions over who will win. And yet, despite such competition, one would be hard-pressed to call the parties’ campaigning lively. The election is being contested by a pair of unprepossessing men named Chris:
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Tax levels in the UK are at their highest since records began 70 years ago and are unlikely to come down, or so says the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in their report today. How has the tax burden increased over the four years of this parliament? What’s driving up taxes? Also on the podcast,
It’s safe to say that this hasn’t been GB News’s finest week and there’s no sign of the drama stopping any time soon. First Laurence Fox and Dan Wootton were suspended from the channel for their, er, discussion about political commentator Ava Evans. Now Calvin Robinson has become the third presenter to be disciplined after
Are we seeing the real Rishi Sunak at last? Since telling the nation on 20 September that his government will be taking a more realistic approach to reducing carbon emissions, the Prime Minister has announced – or, more often, refused to deny – that he intends to introduce a whole bunch of policies that horrify bien
Perhaps he was not so useful after all. Yesterday, North Korea’s decision to expel Private Travis King, just over two months after the US soldier bolted across the inter-Korean border, quashed speculation that he would be held captive for years. A month after admitting that King had been detained, Pyongyang decided to ‘expel’ the man
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This week Freddy is joined in The Spectator offices by regular contributor and fellow of urban studies at Chapman University, Joel Kotkin. They discuss Biden and Trump’s respective attempts to burnish their credentials with the unions this week, how the cultural agenda is alienating voters, and whether technology could prevent the coming of neo-feudalism.
You can almost sense the agonising among hardcore remainers, the howls of anguish. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revised the UK’s economic growth figures since Covid upwards. Instead of still struggling to reach its pre-pandemic high it seems that the UK economy in fact surpassed 2019 levels two years ago. Previously, the ONS
The Office for National Statistics has released the UK’s quarterly national accounts this morning, which show growth in the second quarter of the year remains unrevised at 0.2 per cent. Meanwhile growth in the first quarter has been revised slightly upwards, from 0.1 per cent to 0.3 per cent. This means the economy is now 1.8 per
The Conservative party conference in Manchester is something of a political version of the Edinburgh festival: you go for the fringes, not the main events, and there’s no end of variety. The Spectator is hosting a packed and entertaining schedule of fringe events – and a famously un-crashable party. All our events are free but require
Last Saturday in Paris a police officer leapt from his car and levelled his handgun at a baying mob. The thugs backed off long enough for the policeman and his colleagues to make good their escape. The chief of the Paris police, Laurent Nunez, praised the officer’s ‘sang-froid’ in successfully extracting his team from
According to the latest YouGov polling, just 1 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds plan to vote Conservative at the next election. That’s right – 1 per cent. There are now more caravans in the UK than young Tories. Among 24- to 49-year-olds, the figures aren’t much better; Rishi Sunak’s party trails Labour by 45
One August afternoon, my dad, my uncle, and I were walking along Hadrian’s Wall. It was pouring. Our shoes were full of water, our glasses had steamed up, and our pac-a-macs were sticking to our bodies. Seemingly out of nowhere, we came upon a little dip in the cliff, within which was nestled a tall
To the Parlimentary Press Gallery dinner, held in the splendour of the National Liberal Club. This event hasn’t been held for four years, with Press Gallery chair Sam Lister joking that ‘Boris Johnson locked the country down’ to avoid attending while Liz Truss resigned the day her invitation to this shindig arrived. Lister gave the
