All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Even Prince Harry’s critics must concede that his memoir Spare has been an enormous success. The book is the UK’s fastest-selling nonfiction book ever: 400,000 copies flew off the shelves on its first day. The Duke of Sussex’s recent blitzkrieg of high-profile publicity opportunities, on both sides of the Atlantic, leaves little doubt that he
Nowadays, MPs’ expenses claims are vetted by IPSA to ensure that the spectre of duck houses and flipped mortgages don’t darken Westminster once more. But occasionally the odd claim or two gets approved which seems, er, somewhat incongruous: Zarah Sultana’s ring light and Angela Rayner’s personalised airpods are just two of the more examples. And,
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Welfare reform is back on the agenda. Today there have been reports of how the Tories plan to reform welfare benefits in this country. What is Mel Stride thinking? Also on the podcast, Rishi Sunak will this evening travel to meet with Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. What will they be discussing? Why is it
Welfare reform is back in Westminster, with both Labour and the Tories now seeking solutions to deal with the 5.2 million on out-of-work benefits – a figure which The Spectator was first to pick up on. The Times today splashed on possible government proposals with Labour’s Jon Ashworth now accusing his opposite number Mel Stride of ‘stealing’ his
Paul Johnson, the author, journalist and historian, has died at the age of 94. He wrote more than 40 books, edited the New Statesman from 1965 to 1970, and wrote a column for The Spectator from 1981 to 2009. Below are some extracts from his Spectator columns, all of which are available on our archive.
Rishi Sunak has been Prime Minister for nearly 100 days – but what has Sunak done with his victory since moving into No. 10? Sadly, the answer is very little. Despite enjoying a healthy Commons majority inherited from Boris Johnson’s landslide election victory, no new legislation has been passed and dubious measures from the old
Paul Johnson, the historian, journalist and author has died at the age of 94. He wrote a column for The Spectator from 1981 to 2009. The piece below is from our 2012 Christmas issue. Rest in peace. My belief in God is not philosophical. It is not rooted in metaphysics or reason. It springs from
This week Jonathan Ashworth set out Labour’s answer to the 5.2 million on out-of-work benefits – a figure which The Spectator was first to pick up on. Now the Times reports on the government’s own plans to help those on out of work benefits back into employment. Since the pandemic, successful disability claims are up
The NHS is struggling. In December, English A&Es saw their busiest month on record: 170,000 people waited more than four hours to be admitted and nearly 55,000 waited more than 12 hours. These are the highest figures ever recorded. Ambulance response times were their worst ever too: the average wait for emergency call-outs was 93
Matilda played with her mother’s stethoscopes when she was a child. As a teenager, she pored over anatomy books. She devoted her early twenties to medical school and has been cramming for postgraduate exams well into her thirties. Last summer, she jacked it all in. Being a doctor ‘was turning me into a bad person,’
Ministers will come under increased pressure to block Nicola Sturgeon’s gender legislation with the publication of a new Policy Exchange paper today. This examination of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill concludes it will have serious impacts on the rest of the UK. The Bill removes the safeguards involved in obtaining a gender recognition certificate, the means by which a man
So, one granite-faced general has been replaced by another. The announcement that, after just three months in post, General Sergei Surovikin is being succeeded as overall commander of Russia’s war in Ukraine by Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov may sound like appointing a new captain for a hull-breached Titanic. But it is significant
Angela Rayner hasn’t always had the best of relationships with Fleet Street’s finest. But there was no sign of discord tonight when she charmed the cream of the parliamentary press gallery at the women’s lobby drinks. The Labour deputy leader remarked how ‘I came in [to parliament] in 2015 when the wheels fell off politics,
Four Chancellors, three Prime Ministers, two monarchs and one mini-Budget: it’s fair to say 2022 was a crazy year in politics and for the Tories in particular. And at least one Conservative MP has admitted publicly what many of his colleagues are saying privately about their party’s prospects at the next election. Jerome Mayhew, the
New year, new Labour. Sir Keir deployed his latest strategy at PMQS, contrasting the Tory-run NHS with the glorious record of the Labour administration. When his party were in power, he argued, the NHS was such a triumph that hardly anyone used it. There was no need. Doctors’ appointments were available within days. Cancer referrals
Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida is in London today to meet Rishi Sunak and sign an historic defence agreement which will allow the countries to deploy forces on each other’s soil. The two will also toast the new UK-Japan digital partnership which aims to ‘strengthen cooperation across cyber resilience, online safety and semiconductors’ and discuss
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Rishi Sunak has finally answered questions over his healthcare arrangements with a statement in Prime Minister’s Questions, stating that he is currently registered with an NHS GP but has used private healthcare in the past. Is this change in tack an admission that he should have answered the question sooner? Katy Balls talks to Isabel
He was going to change his line at some point. Finally, at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Rishi Sunak dropped his refusal to discuss his family’s healthcare arrangements and admitted he has gone private. He used the first question of the session, from Labour’s Cat Smith, to ‘answer the lady directly’ and say: ‘I am registered
Labour feels strongly on the NHS – you can tell that by the number of times Keir Starmer brings up the NHS during Prime Minister’s questions, which he did again today. Historically, the NHS has always been a weak point for the Conservatives. In spite of granting the health service ever more resources, come election
Cardinal Pell, a former head of Vatican finances, does not criticise Pope Francis directly in the piece he’s written for The Spectator. But it was the latter who instituted this ‘synodal way’ which, according to Pell, ‘has neglected, indeed downgraded the Transcendent, covered up the centrality of Christ with appeals to the Holy Spirit and
It will cover a generous pay rise for the nurses. It will bail out the NHS. It will put the public finances back on track, and, even better, it will make the country more equal. The Labour party has a simple solution to most of the problems the UK faces. It will abolish ‘non-dom’ status,
Shortly before he died on Tuesday, Cardinal George Pell wrote the following article for The Spectator in which he denounced the Vatican’s plans for its forthcoming ‘Synod on Synodality’ as a ‘toxic nightmare’. The booklet produced by the Synod, to be held in two sessions this year and next year, is ‘one of the most incoherent documents
Remember the tale of Donald Trump and the ‘illegal hoarding’ of the top-secret documents? It was only last summer. On 8 August, the FBI raided the 45th President’s home in Mar-a-Lago to seize back highly classified material. An image of the reclaimed files promptly leaked to the press. Over-excited pundits started talking about Trump’s ‘Al
It’s the first Prime Minister’s Questions of the year today and No. 10 is keen to get off to a good start. So it is perhaps no surprise then that party officials have quickly moved to strip Andrew Bridgen of the Tory whip three hours after an offensive tweet. The North West Leicestershire MP has
As the fighting in Ukraine slows for the winter, three things stand out. The first is the most obvious: a small, highly motivated country, equipped with advanced weapons and intelligence, is slowly but inexorably defeating what used to be called the world’s second-most powerful military. We need to remind ourselves how stunning that is. The second
It’s the first Prime Minister’s Questions of the year and strikes will undoubtedly dominate. Both sides feel they have a political advantage. Rishi Sunak sees his anti-strike laws requiring minimum service levels as a way of uniting his party and claiming that Labour don’t care about the basic safety of the public. Keir Starmer sees
To the Carlton Club, that Palladian monument to power. Last night it hosted the unveiling of Boris Johnson’s new portrait, at a lavish dinner featuring the former premier as a guest of honour. The Carlton hasn’t always been the happiest of places for Johnson: it was here last summer that ‘Pinchergate’ began, resulting in the
Why did China end its zero Covid policy so abruptly? This question has confounded China-watchers and even the Chinese people over the last month. For the last three years, the Chinese government dictated its people’s lives to an extent unseen since the Cultural Revolution. Zero Covid had become part of Xi Jinping’s political legacy. It
Let’s just simmer down about Prince Harry, at least when it comes to his comments about the Taliban. In his memoir Spare, released this week, the Prince writes that he killed 25 people in Afghanistan and thought of ‘Taliban fighters not as people but as chess pieces.’ This wasn’t the best choice of words. He shouldn’t have
Florida governor Ron DeSantis is shaping up as the GOP’s best hope for next year’s US presidential election. Large parts of his popular appeal are his open attack on (now fairly well-established) left-wing infiltration in education and to some extent in commerce, and his expressed intention to make Florida the state ‘where woke goes to die’. Hitherto
Much was made of Amy Lamé’s appointment as London’s first ‘night czar’ back in November 2016. The then newly elected Mayor Sadiq Khan trumpeted that she would be a ‘much-needed ambassador for the city after dark… a fantastic hire who will give a big boost to our city’s flourishing nightlife’ with a ‘proven track-record of
The Scottish parliament returned from its Christmas recess today and held its first debate of 2023. Take a guess what it was about. Yes, independence. Holyrood occasionally touches on other matters – the NHS, the educational attainment gap – but these are mere throat-clearings in a never-ending dialogue between the SNP government and its hardline
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President Biden is visiting Mexico this week to meet with President Obrador, and Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada. Biden is expected to bring up illegal immigration with Obrador, and hopes that he can offer him some way out of what is becoming a spiralling crisis. But is any help coming? Freddy Gray speaks to Todd