All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The scene is a well-appointed drawing room in Copenhagen in September 1840. A fresh-faced girl in her late teens is playing the piano in an attempt to soothe the troubled spirit of her boyfriend, a slender, bouffant-haired philosopher in his late 20s by the name of Søren Kierkegaard. Suddenly, he grabs the score from her
What sort of mojo do you want your police officer to bring with them the next time you’re stopped and searched? The Metropolitan police asked Londoners to help them use this procedure better: one quoted consultation response was to stop using ‘bad energy’ in such an encounter. Perhaps the answer to London’s awful street crime
Opponents of Keir Starmer would be well advised to concentrate on his many real weaknesses rather than inventing non-existent disasters just to bolster their own prejudices. The British radical online Right spent the last 48 hours not only hoping for the UK Prime Minister to be humiliated by Donald Trump, but then pretending he had
Seldom in modern times has the fate of a whole nation been so dependent on a single meeting and on a single relationship. When Volodymyr Zelensky entered the Oval Office on Friday he had one job: to repair a deep and catastrophic rift between him and Donald Trump, who the previous week had called the
What possessed the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump in a verbal wresting match in the White House? It makes almost no sense as a diplomatic strategy. It is well documented that the US president, notoriously thin-skinned and egotistical, likes to be showered with compliments and treated as an all-knowing, all-seeing
Keir Starmer will have been pleased on Thursday after his meetings with Donald Trump managed to avoid any major gaffe or diplomatic incident. There was some relief when Trump chose not to repeat his past comment that Volodymyr Zelensky was a dictator. However, the same cannot be said of Friday’s meeting between Zelensky and the
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In a wide-ranging conversation at the White House yesterday evening, Donald Trump was in the mood to talk about everything under the sun – from the speedy success his second administration has had putting fear into the hearts of bureaucrats and Eurocrats, to why he believes there is a path to a balanced budget. He
The resignation of Anneliese Dodds, the International Development Minister, over cuts to the aid budget is a shock on many levels. After all, it is almost unheard of for a senior politician in office to quit because of some political belief or principle. Dodds deserves praise for sticking up for her values, even – and
Keir Starmer has lost another minister. Anneliese Dodds is stepping down as International Development Minister following No. 10’s decision to slash the foreign aid budget by almost half to pay for an increase in defence spending. That policy decision was announced earlier this week ahead of Keir Starmer’s meeting with Donald Trump at the White
Fresh off the back of a summit with Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington, the President of the United States granted The Spectator’s US Editor-at-Large Ben Domenech an exclusive interview in the White House. One of the most pressing topics discussed by Starmer and Trump was support for Ukraine in its efforts to resist Russia’s invasion – and
Keir Starmer may have survived his meeting with Donald Trump yesterday – with the President saying he was ‘inclined’ to support the Chagos deal and might not impose tariffs on the UK – but it appears the US President still has plenty of concerns about the state of this country. Speaking to The Spectator’s Ben Domenech yesterday,
Dear oh dear. Just as positive polling had lifted the spirits of the Scottish Nats, news of their membership exodus will bring them crashing down. As revealed by the august paper that is the Scotsman, the SNP has lost more than 5,500 members in six months alone. It’s hardly what you want to hear when
A UK-US trade deal is on the table. On a surprisingly successful trip to Washington, US President Donald Trump made it clear to the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer that a trade agreement with the United States was close. “We could very well end up with a real trade deal where the tariffs won’t be
Back in 2023, when Joe Biden was President of the United States, there was something of a drugs scandal in the White House, when the Secret Service found a gram of cocaine in the West Wing. An investigation was launched, but while Secret Service officials trawled through their security systems and indexed ‘several hundred’ people
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Freddy is joined by The Spectator World’s deputy US editor, Kate Andrews, and The Telegraph columnist, Tim Stanley, to talk about Keir Starmer’s much-anticipated meeting with Donald Trump in Washington. Across the board, it has been read as a success – at least domestically, that is. The victories include movement on the Ukraine backstop, some positive discussions around
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Unbelievably, Keir Starmer arrives back from Washington today after a successful meeting with Donald Trump. In fact, it’s hard to see how it could have gone much better. Top of the list of victories: it looks like some headway was made in avoiding tariffs on the UK and, on Ukraine, the pair discussed the prime
On Thursday, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) called on his organisation to lay down their arms and dissolve themselves. If they comply, this would put an end to a decades-long conflict with the Turkish state that has claimed the lives of over 40,000 people. The statement was delivered in a crowded
By most accounts, Keir Starmer seems to have done a good job keeping Donald Trump on side when the two men met at the White House yesterday. Starmer offered his counterpart a second state visit to the UK, with a handwritten invitation from the King, while the Donald suggested that Britain may well escape the
Those whose mouths have been left hanging open by Donald Trump’s pivot towards Russia in the past fortnight, and the ruthlessness with which the Ukrainians (and Europe) have been thrust off the stage, haven’t been paying attention. The love-in between the two leaders has been going on now for a decade. It started properly in
It was to a packed-out auditorium that Nigel Farage announced his party’s mayoral candidate for Hull and East Yorkshire on Thursday night. Reform pulled out all the stops for its reveal of former Olympic boxer and gold medallist Luke Campbell, from sparkler firework lights to a mocked-up boxing ring. ‘The set up is immense,’ one
The BBC’s admission of serious editorial failures in its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone is not just a scandal – it is a moment of reckoning. This is, without doubt, one of the most humiliating debacles in the corporation’s modern history, and it vindicates those who have long highlighted the BBC’s institutional biases when reporting on
Keir Starmer did almost everything right. He headed for lunch with the President, leaving the British Embassy’s Jaguars and Land Rovers in the garage. Instead, he relied on a made-in-America (probably) Chevy Suburban, presumably part of the Secret Service’s fleet of bullet-proof gas guzzlers. That might take Trump’s mind off the fact that the UK
It’s not just in Britain that defence spending is top of the agenda. In Germany, too, the debate has turned to how the government can resurrect the country’s hollowed-out armed forces. Friedrich Merz, leader of the CDU and the man pipped to become the next chancellor, is driving the discussion. But unlike the grudgingly positive
In a wide-ranging conversation at the White House yesterday evening, Donald Trump was in the mood to talk about everything under the Sun.
The John Smyth affair in the Church of England has already claimed the scalp of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and may yet engulf Stephen Cottrell in York. Earlier this week, it became clear that its reverberations will go much further. The Church has applied to arraign ten other clergy, including an ex-Bishop of Durham, under the
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which threatens the huge gains made in education over the last 15 years, is moving swiftly through Parliament. If it passes, the impact on our children, especially our most vulnerable, will be seismic. Yet this Bill is slipping by largely unnoticed. Labour’s huge majority gives it untrammelled power. But it
When Keir Starmer greeted President Trump on his visit to Washington, he held a piece of paper in his hand that would have been rather welcome for The Donald. It was nothing less than a formal invitation from King Charles for the second-term president to conduct a second state visit to Britain, and it would
Keir Starmer could not have dreamed of a better press conference with Donald Trump. Much of its success was not down to luck, either: the Prime Minister has meticulously prepared for these talks both in terms of substance and (very important) superficialities such as flattering the President. But instead of appearing to be a sycophant
Donald Trump was in a jocular mood as he met with Keir Starmer, barely allowing the Prime Minister to get in a word in edgeways during their joint appearance in the Oval Office. ‘Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that,’ he mused after a reporter queried whether he continued to regard Volodymyr
The Beeb is better at becoming the news than making it these days. The last fortnight has seen the corporation come under fire after a rather controversial Gaza documentary – whose child narrator was, er, the son of a Hamas minister – was first released and then pulled from streaming services. Now Steerpike has had
As Prime Minister Keir Starmer is making headlines stateside after his big talk with Donald Trump, Nigel Farage is busy making news of his own. The Reform UK leader has tonight announced that Olympic boxer Luke Campbell will be the party’s candidate to become the first elected mayor for Hull and East Yorkshire. ‘He’s a
The Trump charm offensive has begun. Keir Starmer has met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office as his first White House visit gets underway. What was initially billed as a short welcome before officially talks turned into a 30-minute question and answer session with the travelling press pack. It made for a wide-ranging discussion