All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Better rebels than Kneecap would’ve begun their headline set at Wide Awake festival in south London on Friday night with a show of defiance against the British state, a swipe at the occupier in its fortress capital. Perhaps they would’ve unfurled a great big yellow Hezbollah banner. As it was, Kneecap flashed the message ‘FREE
The Work and Pensions Committee’s recent safeguarding report reminded me of the worst thing about working in politics: other people finding out you work in politics. There was the wedding where four men took turns giving me 30-minute monologues on why the Conservatives lost the election (as if living through it once wasn’t enough). My
Rayner: ‘Can’t guarantee’ winter fuel payments will be on time for this winter Keir Starmer announced a partial U-turn on the winter fuel payments this week, but the extent of the reversal is not yet clear. Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg, Angela Rayner said changes to the cuts would happen ‘as the economic situation improves’, but
How much longer are Reform’s critics going to be able to get away with calling it a right-wing party? It is an odd kind of right-wing party that proposes to reinstate welfare benefits that even Labour has decided are too expensive; that pledges to nationalise the steel industry and 50 per cent of utilities; and
Broadly speaking, there are two responses to Keir Starmer’s surrender of the Chagos Islands. The first is indignation. This is sovereign British territory and yet the Prime Minister has handed it over to a foreign country. The constitutional scholar Yuan Yi Zhu asserts that this decision ‘cannot be defended on any authoritative legal grounds’, and nor does it
Clown. It’s a great word, and I use it often. Though not a great fan of emojis, the clown face one is the one I deploy most frequently when answering unwanted and insincere private messages on X. I do this because the meaning of the word ‘clown’ has changed considerably over the years. Once it meant
The ‘eradication of structural racism would be a defining cause’ of Labour’s time in power. That’s what Keir Starmer said in 2020, a few months after the death of George Floyd. In the party’s election manifesto last year, it promised to introduce a Race Equality Act to root out racial inequalities as part of a
Is the European Court of Human Rights a foreign court? For the former diplomat Lord Hannay of Chiswick, this ‘lamentable, dog-whistle nomenclature is not even accurate, since the court has had many admirable British judges down the years’. Strictly, the Strasbourg Court may be an international court rather than a foreign court – and it is true and
Sorry to disappoint antisemites, but Operation Starvation is not an Israeli plan to murder millions of Palestinians; it was a US plan to starve Japan into submission at the end of the Pacific War. However, comparisons with Israel Defence Force’s (IDF) current strategy for defeating Hamas, and the changing legal landscape of warfare since World
The Church of England’s various travails and dilemmas – on controversial issues, like sexuality and safeguarding – are on one level beside the point. Even if it managed to solve these problems, the Church’s drift to the margins of our culture looks likely to continue. The really fundamental issue is how the CofE can reverse
Deep within the workings of an electric motor lies a split-ring commutator. It reverses the current flowing through the coil every half rotation so that the force on the coil also reverses as it spins between a pair of opposing magnetic poles. If ever it was necessary to recall such esoteric minutiae, the time is
Births in the United Kingdom are halving every 55 years. While headlines still focus on overpopulation – driven by urban growth, longer life expectancy, and immigration – the real demographic trajectory is heading sharply in the opposite direction. If current trends continue, by 2080 Britain will need only half as many neonatal units, kindergartens, and
In a week’s time, it will be illegal to sell disposable vapes in Britain. Politicians from both parties will pat themselves on the back. The ban was introduced by Rishi Sunak and backed by Keir Starmer, and was hailed as a moment of non-partisan unity. In truth, it’s a policy disaster. I used to smoke ten
For Iran, the re-election of Donald Trump in November 2024 was its worst nightmare. Waking up the morning after the US election, Tehran feared President Trump’s unpredictability – and remembered the hard line he’d taken on Iran in the past and his killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds force commander Qassem Soleimani
It’s the 21st century and Jews are being arrested for making fun of fascists. The Telegraph has revealed that last September a Jewish protester was nabbed and detained by cops in London for the speech crime of mocking the then leader of Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah. The man – who wishes to remain anonymous, which is
I could not resist rushing to the High Court to witness the eleventh-hour challenge to the deal to give away the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius, brought by two valiant Chagossian women. Outside, their supporters chanted ‘Chagossians British’ and waved their passports. Inside, it was a legal massacre, with the government’s lawyers insisting that the Foreign Secretary’s
There’s been a late entry in the competition for most cretinous misunderstanding of international trade policy. For anyone who’s been distracted by the ongoing meltdown of the global order, this week Britain finally signed a deal with the EU. The deal is sane and sensible enough to be slighty disappointing all round, which has not
For years, Israel has been compared – sometimes unjustly – to South Africa. This comparison stems from the concept of apartheid. In South Africa, racial segregation was between whites and blacks; in Israel, it’s the discrimination against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Today, however, the validity of the comparison between Israel and South
‘Transition’ is a word much bandied about in education circles. No, this is not about gender. Rather, when school staff talk about transition they mean that pivotal moment between primary and secondary school. This is the moment when a child moves from a small (average roll number of 280 pupils) and familiar place, probably within
Emmanuel Macron assembled some of his top ministers at the Élysée on Wednesday. Their purpose was to devise a strategy to counter the growing expansion in France of the Muslim Brotherhood. The nebulous organisation, formed in Egypt in 1928, has as its aim a global caliphate and it is in Europe where it is enjoying
Brussels makes one thing better than anywhere else: regulation. Reporting duties, due diligence checks, ESG disclosures, and endless frameworks for climate and labour compliance – if it can be mandated, Brussels has a directive for it. Now Brussels has outdone itself with a directive that makes companies legally liable for the behaviour of every entity in
20 min listen
Spectator editor Michael Gove joins Natasha Feroze to talk about his cover article this week: ‘Starmer vs the workers’, the real Brexit betrayal. Michael puts forward his arguments for why Labour should learn to love Brexit, should take back control to protect British jobs and industries, and could use Brexit as an opportunity to harness AI
It was gold that brought the Spanish conquistadors to Peru in the 1500s. More than 500 years on and the precious metal is still causing problems. Gold mining came into sharp focus at the end of April when 13 miners were found, naked, bound and gagged, at the bottom of a mine in Pataz which
We Brits used to rub along pretty well with seagulls. Their distinctive call conjured memories of happy days out at the seaside and it was strangely hypnotic to watch them circle above the waters as we breathed in the salty air. But now they’re in danger of becoming public enemy number one as the tabloids
Brian Glanville, who died this week at the age of 93, was a unique voice in the crowded and often hysterical field of football writing and a uniquely important one. His historical reach was unparalleled. He published his first book (a ghosted autobiography of Arenal striker Cliff Bastin) at the age of 16 and attended 13 World Cups, starting with the 1958 tournament in Sweden. His lean, elegant, novelistic style, informed
One of the main accusations levelled at the trans movement is that the tidal wave of youngsters claiming to be gender dysphoric in recent years is a form of social contagion, especially among rich, progressive households. Katharine Birbalsingh, the former government social mobility tsar and head of Michaela Community School in northwest London, seems to
‘You want a ceasefire? I want your death,’ said Russia’s chief propagandist Vladimir Soloviev during prime time television, the camera zooming in on his face. His message was aimed at both Ukrainians and Europeans urging the Kremlin to stop the war. Soloviev, alongside a chorus of other Kremlin loyalists and military experts, has lately been
Has there ever been a day when Brexit seemed such a good idea? The story of Brexit began to change on ‘Liberation Day’ on 2 April when Donald Trump announced a 10 per cent tariff on imports from the UK and a 20 per cent tariff on those from the EU. No longer was it
Kim Jong Un is not a happy man. Only a month after he unveiled North Korea’s first 5,000-ton destroyer, another similar warship was seriously damaged as it was launched yesterday. North Korean state media issued an unusually lengthy report following the destroyer’s failed launch, mentioning how the ship’s hull had been damaged, the ‘launch slide
The deals have been settled. The exceptions have been made. And supply chains have started to return to normal, while the stock market has recovered its losses. We may have thought the ‘tariff wars’ were over. But President Trump has today resumed hostilities, threatening a fresh round of levies on the European Union. It seems
Benjamin Netanyahu should not be Prime Minister of Israel. It is a stain on Israel’s political system that after the massacre of 7 October, the man whose entire selling point to voters was that he alone could keep Israel secure has been able to remain in power through a deal with extremist Israeli politicians. But
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Former Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor David Gauke joins James Heale to talk about his review into prison sentencing. The former Tory minister was appointed by the current Labour Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, but says there is a clear centre-right argument for prison reform. He talks James through his policy proposals and the political reaction