All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
I suppose it was inevitable that cancel culture would eventually catch up with Jerry Sadowitz. We often talk about offensive or controversial comedy these days. Often regarding jokes and acts that aren’t remotely offensive or controversial to anyone other than a handful of bilious idiots. But Sadowitz is the real deal. This US-born Glaswegian comic-cum-magician
Wars aren’t always decided on the battlefield. As bravely as Ukrainian soldiers defend their homeland from Russian invasion, their heroics won’t suffice without continuous military and financial support from the West. American and European leaders have so far stood firmly behind Ukraine. Public opinion, however, is starting to dwindle. The most important fight for Ukraine
Shehan Karunatilaka is the winner of this year’s Booker Prize. He wrote a notebook from Sri Lanka for The Spectator earlier this year. The late great Sunil Perera, popular Sri Lankan singer and satirist, lamented that people should be clamouring to come to our beautiful island. But with each passing decade more of us find more reasons to escape.
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Keir Starmer has unveiled a £29 billion plan to freeze energy bills for six months. Under his proposals, the Labour leader said Brits would not face the enormous price hikes anticipated in October and January. But is his idea a serious one? Where would the money come from? And how have the Tories responded? Isabel
‘Putin’s Philosopher’ Aleksandr Dugin, self-styled deep thinker and ideological architect of current Russian expansionism, has claimed there are two distinct version of the president. There is a ‘Lunar Putin’ – practical, cautious, a supporter of the capitalist economy and free trade, alert to international opinion. And a ‘Solar Putin’, a messiah, fully embracing his mission
Who doesn’t want lower electricity bills, and sympathise with households who will be unable to keep themselves warm this winter? But there is something rather missing from the Dutch auction between Keir Starmer and the two Tory leadership candidates over promises to help with household energy bills. What about businesses, whose gas and electricity bills
Cast your mind back to 2020. Back then, in the dark days of Covid, a ray of light was apparently offered in the form of New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern. Here, we were told, was the shining beacon of hope, the solution to all our ails. A ‘zero Covid’ approach and a total national lockdown; closed
It’s a curious mix that are backing Liz Truss. Most of the Boris diehards like Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg backed her early on in their quest to deny Rishi Sunak the premiership. But since she became the frontrunner, a number of new-found friends have declared their support too: including those who found little favour
Keir Starmer is today attempting to get back on the front foot over the cost-of-living crisis. Over the past fortnight, the Labour leader has been keeping a low profile (including a holiday abroad) which has given space to former prime minister Gordon Brown and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey to fill the vacuum in his
When I met Salman Rushdie in New York a couple of years ago, he told me that the days in which he feared physical attack were long behind him. ‘It only affects my life when I talk to journalists,’ he said, a little pertly. ‘It is 20 years since I required any form of protection.
Something funny is in the water in Oxfordshire. In recent months councillors there have embarked on a spree of unorthodox eco-measures, no doubt encouraged by the Green party’s gains in local elections. Back in March, TV star Jeremy Clarkson led a protest of farmers, enraged by the County Council’s decision to only provide ‘plant-based’ food
If any further evidence was needed of the moral cowardice of the British political class it has been provided in the wake of the appalling attack on Salman Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution. There were of course messages condemning the atrocity in New York, although notably it took Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey
England is in the grip of its most widespread drought in 20 years. Water companies are implementing hosepipe bans. Half the country’s potato crop is expected to fail. Photographs of reservoirs show them drained, dry banks open to the sky. Another heatwave is here, bringing little prospect of imminent relief. Britain hasn’t built a reservoir
Catalonia’s president Pere Aragones has wanted to win independence from Madrid ever since since joining the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) as a teenager. Despite the obstacles standing in his way, he now seeks inspiration from two votes held in the UK: the Scottish independence referendum and Brexit. Aragones resumed negotiations with Spain’s socialist prime minister Pedro
The old English nursery rhyme The North Wind Doth Blow asks ‘what will poor robin do then, poor thing?’ about the impending onset of cold conditions. As he faces up to the prospect of a heavy defeat in the Tory leadership contest, we are similarly entitled to wonder what will poor Rishi do then, poor
Salman Rushdie’s would-be assassin might have been a lone wolf. He might have had no contact with military or intelligence figures. He might never even have set foot in Tehran. But be in no doubt: he acted, in effect, as an agent of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Under the terms of the fatwa issued
After Ayatollah Khomeini ordered Muslims to kill him for publishing The Satanic Verses in 1989, Julian Barnes gave Salman Rushdie a shrewd piece of advice. However many attempts were made on his life and the lives of his translators and publishers, however many times Special Branch moved him from safe house to safe house, he
Haven’t we all had that panicky, sinking feeling at one time or another? A realisation that we’ve been the victim of a crime. Perhaps it happened when you couldn’t find the mobile phone in your back pocket. Or after you spotted fragments of glass on the road near your car windscreen. You might have felt
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Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth about why Sir Keir Starmer and his frontbench have been seemingly missing in action during the Tory leadership race and the ongoing cost of living crisis.
The Devil Wears Prada, a 2006 box-office hit adapted from Lauren Weisberger’s best-seller, is the story of Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), an earnest reporter trying to break into New York journalism. Eventually she takes an entry-level job as a personal assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the Anna Wintour-ish editor of Runway, a Vogue-ish fashion
Ukraine appears to be faring well in its fight against Russia. Explosions have rocked a Russian military base in Crimea and the country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky is confidently stating that the war must end with the liberation of Crimea. Aid is also pouring in from the West. But Ukraine has been here before – and Putin’s Russia could, once
Household energy bills are rising very rapidly, and are now expected to be over £4,000 per year by October and possibly over £5,000 per year by early 2023. Many commentators, including most notably Gordon Brown, are saying that we should now nationalise the energy companies and bring bills down. Would that help? It’s rather unclear
The attack on Salman Rushdie on-stage in New York is deeply shocking and sadly not surprising. People have been calling for his death for over three decades, ever since the publication of his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. That novel led to a fatwa from the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran and the Iranian government putting
We are all praying that Salman Rushdie will be okay. What happened in Chautauqua in New York today is indescribably appalling. An author, a man, stabbed in the neck just as he was about to speak on freedom of expression. This attack is a vile affront to liberty and to the principles of an open
To start with, Volodymyr Zelensky was careful not to blame Russians for a war Vladimir Putin started. Appealing to them and speaking in his native Russian, he asked: ‘Do the Russians want war?’ He called on them to rise up to make Putin listen. But this did not happen. Zelensky appears to have decided that
Kim Jong-un’s notorious sister is back in the limelight. Not only is Kim Yo Jong reiterating her hostile words against South Korea and the United States, but she is also seeking to reinforce the loyalty of the North Korean people to her brother. How better to combine the two than to infer that the Supreme
Poor Rishi Sunak. Membership polls put him 30 point behind Liz Truss but there’s still three-and-a-half weeks to go in the Tory leadership race. The former Chancellor is being forced to spend his summer traipsing around the country, trapped in some hideous purgatory, waiting for the sweet release of 5 September to halt the seemingly
As interest rates hit nearly 2 per cent and inflation tops 9 per cent, many Brits are feeling the pinch. But once again it seems that generation rent is worst off. Last month, my landlord hiked my rent by £450, or nearly 30 per cent. I’m far from alone: rents across the UK have gone
Feminists tend to be fascinated with the story of Joan of Arc. She was irreverent, impertinent, way more intelligent than her enemies, and was true to herself and her beliefs right to the end. War hero and religious martyr, Joan has been described as ‘Jesus with a sword’. A 16-year-old peasant girl who decided to
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‘Profit is not a dirty word’, Liz Truss said at last night’s leadership hustings. The Foreign Secretary has made clear that she would prefer to cut taxes than take money from energy firms and give it directly to struggling Brits. But, if Truss makes it into No. 10, could she really reverse the windfall tax?
With all the crises coming down the track, the Union has not received as much attention as it should in the Tory leadership contest. But given that the October supreme court hearing on the Scottish government’s plan for another independence referendum will push the issue right back up the agenda, the candidates should be thinking
Shalom from Manchester, where Liz Truss has visited a synagogue. This being the Tory leadership race though, every visit is a chance for a good bit of self-promotion, with team Truss firing off a press release to mark the occasion. But amid pledges to pursue a free trade deal with Israel and give more support
Gordon Brown is demanding Parliament be recalled for an emergency budget. By October, he says, quoting a study he commissioned from the University of Loughborough, half the population could be living in fuel poverty. ‘Not enough thinking is being done about the major social crisis,’ he told Radio Four’s The World at One on Monday.