All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Rishi Sunak is back in the headlines today, saying it’s time for greater maths literacy. But when it comes to his own political pledges, how many of those stand up to mathematical scrutiny? A Spectator mug for the first person to complete all challenges.
Many Brits who’ve outstayed their welcome in the Old Country head across the Pond for pastures new and the chance of a fresh start. The Pilgrims, Thomas Paine, John Oliver. Could former prime minister Liz Truss be the next to follow that well-trodden path? Since her astonishing fall from grace last September, when she managed
It would take longer than I’ve got to comb through copies of Thank you, Jeeves and Right Ho, Jeeves, to find out the ways in which they’ve been edited, ‘minimally’, to remove offensive language, but I think we can work out which bits may have fallen foul of the thought police. Penguin Random House have informed
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Isabel Hardman hosts the highlights from Sunday morning’s political shows. This morning’s shows heavily focussed on the crisis in the NHS, after the Royal College of Nursing voted against the government’s pay deal, meaning further strike action. Pat Cullen says the strikes could last as long as Christmas. Conservative Party Chair, Greg Hands disagrees and
Oh dear. It seems that another police chief is making headlines, for all the wrong reasons. Perusing his copy of this week’s Spectator, Steerpike was bemused to read in Charles Moore’s notes about Wiltshire Police’s latest edict. No officer may join the force’s rural crime team if he or she has any link with hunting,
Pat Cullen – respect nursing, or strikes could continue ‘until Christmas’ This morning’s shows heavily focussed on the crisis in the NHS, after the Royal College of Nursing voted against the government’s pay deal, meaning further strike action. The RCN’s General Secretary Pat Cullen stood by her union’s members, telling Laura Kuenssberg that patients were
Three cheers for the Sunday Mail, which has today got its hands on footage of Nicola Sturgeon which is, er, sub-optimal, to say the least. The newspaper has been sent a video of the then First Minister furiously insisting that the SNP’s finances had ‘never been stronger’ in a meeting of the party’s ruling body
On 1 July, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, known as the ‘Butcher of Mariupol’, delivered a statement about recent attacks on apartment blocks in Odesa. In a familiar tone of Soviet bureaucratese, he read aloud: ‘To implement the provocation across 26–28 June, twenty foreign mass-media representatives, as well as employees of the international organisation UNICEF, were brought
When I was a teenager someone asked me if I was scared of dying. No, I said, but I’m a bit scared of living. I want to say the same thing to David Baddiel. In his new book The God Desire he seems to be trying to present himself as a more nuanced sort of
A young woman called Lyudmila walks into a cafe in Odessa, the southern Ukrainian city. Her phone is switched on and the camera set to record mode. She approaches the owner and asks for service in Ukrainian. He declines. He says his Ukrainian language skills are poor. When she insists he makes excuses, then tells
There has been more ferry chaos this week for Scotland’s beleaguered island communities, so much so that it now looks like the Scottish government is bringing in the Ministry of Defence to help with the fallout. One senior SNP MP, Ian Blackford, has urged military bosses to provide a ‘short-term solution’ to the ferry network
Nearly one in two left-wing voters in France believes the country has too many immigrants. When the same polling company conducted a similar survey five years ago the figure was 27 per cent. The fact it is now 48 per cent demonstrates how the gap has widened between left wing politicians and their electorate when
Those opposed to leaving the European Union repeatedly accuse Brexit of being based on ignorance fed by lies. The ‘lie’ they invariably refer to is the £350 million on the side of the Boris bus. In reality, it was the Remain campaign, and its interminable Rejoiner sequel, that was and is based on systematic distortions
No one really expects much in the way of principles or morality from those charged with running international sport. The Qatar World Cup was merely the latest, most blatant example of the iron rule that money and greed conquers all in sport. But for a brief moment — 16 months to be precise — the
Has Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida just survived an assassination attempt? Kishida was evacuated from the site of a stump speech in the fishing port of Sakizaki in Wakayama western Japan after what appeared to be a pipe bomb was thrown in his direction. No one was injured but people fled in terror after the attack, which occurred at around 11:25 AM shortly
I recently wrote a column elsewhere about the junior doctors strike. As if often the way with this topic, it resulted in some strong and sometimes vituperative reactions. It also led to many conversations with people in and around medicine. Some of them thought I’d got things wrong. That’s a reasonable position to take, and
It is sobering to think that if Ann Rothermere had been a less enthusiastic painter, James Bond might never have existed. In January 1952, Lady Rothermere and Bond’s creator Ian Fleming were on holiday at Goldeneye, his house in Jamaica. Tension crackled in the air. He and Ann had been lovers since 1939. Her husband,
Few observers of politics can by now be in much doubt about the defective nature of Keir Starmer’s antennae when it comes to picking up the concerns of the British public. The number of U-turns the Labour leader has made once it has been explained to him what most voters actually think – the latest being
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Striking junior doctors are demanding a 35 per cent pay rise. Is that realistic? And are junior doctors really underpaid? Lucy Dunn is joined by economics editor Kate Andrews and Spectator contributor James Kirkup.
When Channel 4’s new programme Naked Education – in which adults strip naked in front of children – was launched, it promised viewers it would be ‘all about body positivity’, and that it had a mission to ‘champion our differences and break down stereotypes’. In the very first episode one of the participants, Martha, stated: ‘you have to accept yourself
Just don’t call him ‘Useless’. Humza Yousaf’s sister, Faiza, told STV last week of her shock and anger at hearing a hospital porter use the First Minister of Scotland’s ubiquitous soubriquet. Well, she’d better get used to it. Once an image is established in the public mind it’s hard to get rid of it. And
A call from my younger son’s secondary school was not what I was expecting at 11.30 a.m., but as soon as I heard the secretary speak I knew what had happened to him. He’d just got himself a pair of Apple AirPods and was keen to use them – why wouldn’t he be? As he
There’s disappointment in Downing Street this evening after nurses at the Royal College of Nursing voted to reject the government’s offer of a 5 per cent pay rise for 2023-24, along with a one-off lump sum payment. It was a close result, with 54 per cent rejecting the offer and 46 per cent voting to
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Home Secretary, Suella Braverman has come under fire from senior Conservatives who have accused her of ‘racist rhetoric’, but are these accusations fair? Also on the podcast, Katy Balls takes a look at the latest deal on strikes and Natasha Feroze asks Fraser Nelson why he’s against voters bringing ID for the May local elections.
So what did everyone learn from the massive trove of more than a hundred top secret US documents a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman apparently put on a gaming server to wow some fellow God-fearing gun enthusiasts? Both little and a lot. Despite some clumsy cut-and-paste editing of casualty figures, as well as some carefully-worded claims
Nurses in England have today rejected the government’s pay deal and have announced a fresh round of strike action. The next strikes will take place over 48 hours from 8.p.m on 30 April to 8.p.m. on 2 May, with no emergency cover. The Royal College of Nursing ballot showed that 61 per cent of eligible
I am beginning to wonder if there are, in fact, two incarnations of King Charles that co-exist simultaneously. The first is a remarkably generous-spirited and forgiving man, who responds to insults and slights with Christ-like forbearance and shows nothing but a genuine love for his country and his people. And the second is a more
How big a deal is long Covid and can it be treated? Opinions range from it being a serious impediment to the health of millions of those who suffered from Covid-19 to a figment in the imagination of the workshy. A study by the University of Oxford of a drug developed by US Pharmaceutical company Axcella
For the British government, the Biden visit to Belfast posed one major exam question: would the pageantry of a pan-nationalist juggernaut rolling into town, led by the most tribally Irish-American President of all time, make it appreciably harder for the DUP to accept the Windsor Framework and so to re-establish the Stormont Executive as the
Daniel Radcliffe has told a group of young people that adults worried about children changing gender have a ‘slightly condescending but well-meaning attitude of like, well, people are young and like… that is a huge decision’. The children in this film are being cruelly misled Yes, Daniel, it is a huge decision, and it is
Every leader of Scottish Labour has, since 2007, felt they were turning the corner to recovery – only to discover they were actually on a roundabout. Every new dawn has proven itself to be sometimes agonisingly, and always painfully, false. But now, as the SNP is mired by scandal after scandal, Labour’s odds in Scotland