All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
17 min listen
The Liberal Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller, elected as the new MP for Bicester and Woodstock last year, joins James Heale to talk about the ambitions of the party that became the largest third party in Parliament in 100 years at the 2024 general election. They want to overtake the Conservatives to be the
After Hashem Abedi allegedly attacked three prison officers with hot cooking oil at HMP Frankland last weekend, there has been a crackdown on inmates using kitchens. Self-catering facilities have been suspended in separation facilities like the one that housed Abedi, the convicted terrorist who helped his brother plan the Manchester Arena bombing. This is a
A great exhortation of our times is the need to ‘be kind’. It manifests itself among those who cry ‘refugees welcome’, who urge for ‘compassion’ for the feelings of those deemed oppressed, and for those who regard Paddington Bear as the embodiment of everything good in the world. More sinisterly, however, this mentality still shows
Fun though it is to bash Keir Starmer for everything he says or does, there’s surely a point at which the self-respecting anti-Starmerite will want to cut the man a bit of slack – if for no other reason than that if the spite grows too ridiculous you will sound deranged, and it will recruit the
War seldom has true victors – and for Bethlehem, where tourism once accounted for approximately 70 per cent of income, the Israel-Gaza conflict has left businesses shuttered and livelihoods in ruins. Since the October 7 attack, my home country of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs has classified Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank
Oxford Street – the busiest shopping street in Europe, in a nation once known as an island of shopkeepers – has had at its heart two fine Art Deco monuments to British mercantilism: Selfridges and Marks & Spencer. But in December, the deputy prime minister Angela Rayner granted permission for M&S to demolish and redevelop
They defaced the statue of Millicent Fawcett. That’s all you need to know about yesterday’s march for ‘trans rights’. Someone clambered up the Parliament Square monument to one of Britain’s best-known feminist icons and daubed it with offensive words. ‘Fag rights’, they scrawled upon Fawcett’s likeness. A warrior for women’s suffrage vandalised with a homophobic
Happy Easter Sunday to LGBT+ Labour. Today’s Mail on Sunday splashes on leaked messages from a WhatsApp chat of MPs who all belong to the campaign group. The paper claims that Labour ministers are now plotting to defy the Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday that the legal definition of a woman should be based on biological
I guess I must be one of Ed Miliband’s ‘siren voices’. Writing in the Observer today, the Energy and Climate Secretary complains about people he thinks: ‘Would keep Britain locked in dependence on global markets we don’t control. They will also make up any old nonsense and lies to pursue their ideological agenda, the latest
As a British writer living in Berlin, I recently attempted something that now passes for quietly provocative: I tried to buy a book. Not just any book, but On Democracies and Death Cults, the latest from Douglas Murray. On Democracies and Death Cults has been born of the last 18 months in Israel, beginning with the
The IMF is onto something – a sentence I’ve never uttered before. But that august institution says today’s 70-year-olds not only have the cognitive functions 53-year-olds had back in 2000, but are faster, stronger and more energetic than ever. In other words, 70 isn’t really old anymore. Ergo, says the IMF, a little self-servingly, we
US and Iranian diplomats are meeting in Rome this weekend for further talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, in what looks set to be another forlorn bid to rein in the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism – and a regime which makes North Korea look like a paragon of good faith. In some ways, the new
Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch, was found hanged in his Sunningdale home in March 2013. Born to Ashkenazi Jewish parents, Berezovsky converted to Russian Orthodoxy in 1994. His leap of faith, I suspected, was more political than spiritual. ‘So why,’ I asked him at dinner one evening, ‘do you buy Russian Icons?’ Berezovsky told me
Christian interpretations of Easter can sound notoriously subjective to sceptics. Consider the following claims made by a distinguished preacher I heard recently. ‘To encounter Jesus is to encounter the source of all life and love – namely God himself.’ ‘In the Incarnation, [Christ] becomes one of us in order to restore life to a dead
There has been discussion over the past few weeks that Britain’s young people are undergoing a religious revival. This Easter weekend, we asked two young writers to write about their church. The Spectator’s Margaret Mitchell is Catholic; Policy Exchange’s James Vitali is Anglican. You can read the discussion below. Margaret Mitchell There’s an episode of
Easter is the most important festival of the Christian calendar, and so it is unsuprising that most of England’s Pre-Reformation churches were adorned with artworks commemorating Christ’s passion and resurrection. Sadly, such was the zeal of the reformation that virtually none of these depictions remain, apart from fragments, mutilated, burnt or eaten away by rot
Christian culture is under fresh attack. Those striving to preserve old Christian institutions, to maintain the Bible and Church traditions as a common cultural reference point, or to use scriptural ideas to influence society’s laws and ethics, regardless of whether society still possesses an underlying faith, are facing censure. This new assault has not come
Nearly 300 academics have contacted a French university after it declared itself a safe space for those looking to flee Donald Trump’s America. Aix-Marseille University on the Mediterranean coast responded to the president’s pursuit of American universities he deems to be anti-Semitic by launching a ‘Safe Place for Science’ programme. Described as a ‘scientific asylum’,
For urban South Africans – now 70 per cent of the country’s population – there’s much to celebrate this Easter because, in addition to the four-day weekend, there are two more breaks within a fortnight. On Monday 28 April, we remember the first democratic election in 1994, and in the same week is International Labour Day on 1 May, marking
At 4 p.m. UK time today, Russian troops were instructed to temporarily lay down their weapons in Ukraine. The order, issued by Russian president Vladimir Putin to mark the Easter weekend, is nominally in force for 30 hours until midnight on Easter Monday. ‘We are proceeding on the assumption that the Ukrainian side will follow
A few weeks ago, when Adolescence first came out, I found myself reading some of the academic literature on incels. It turns out they are a risk – but only really to themselves. When interviewed, over half of incels said they had considered killing themselves in the previous two weeks, compared to 5 per cent
Giorgia Meloni has confounded her critics yet again as she proves herself to be the most important leader in the European Union. She has shown in the past two days that she is the vital bridge between America and Europe. As a result, Italy looks set to play a major role on the world stage
When Volodymyr Zelensky speaks of the Ukrainian territories under Russian control, he always calls them ‘temporarily occupied’. The phrase, first used by Zelensky’s predecessor, has been engraved into Ukrainian politics since 2014, after Vladimir Putin seized Crimea. That terminology is more than symbolic – it’s a promise that Ukraine will one day, even if it
21 min listen
Katy Balls joins Coffee House Shots for the last time as the Spectator’s political editor. Having joined the magazine ten years ago – or six prime ministers in Downing St years – what are her reflections on British politics? Katy’s lobby lunch partner from the Financial Times Stephen Bush joins Katy and Patrick Gibbons to try and make
I wake up in a good humour most mornings, but today I started the day feeling that this country – which seems, in so many ways, to have been sleepwalking in a hall of distorting mirrors for so long – had taken a definitive step towards the overthrow of the crazed, tyrannical cult which has
Passiontide is a good time for church music. From the triumphal Palm Sunday processionals of ‘All Glory, Laud and Honour’ and ‘Ride On! Ride On in Majesty!’ to the mournful but grateful reflections of ‘My Song is Love Unknown’. From the desperate sadness of ‘O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded’, the tune coming from Bach’s ‘St
Towards the end of his life, suffering from culminating decades of decadence and subsequent ill health, Benjamin Franklin penned a humorous dialogue between himself and a personified interpretation of the source of all his ills: gout. Gout, taking the personality of a scolding schoolmarm, chastises Franklin for his indulgence and sedentary lifestyle, pointing out that
When I heard that WH Smith was going to disappear from our high streets, I became a nostalgic mess. I was transported back to childhood trips to buy pencil cases before each school year began, weekend visits to browse football magazines, some of which I even bought, and those late December expeditions, feeling loaded as
There is an odd contradiction in Russian attitudes to the current negotiations with the United States. On the one hand, a sense that the window of opportunity may be closing, on the other no real rush to take advantage of it, or at least to offer Donald Trump any concessions to show willing. Mikhail Rostovsky,
23 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to Peter Wood who is the President of the National Association of Scholars about Trump’s decision to block Harvard funding after the university denied the President’s DEI demands.
Giorgia Meloni met Donald Trump in the White House on Thursday and stated her ambition to ‘make the West great again’. The Italian prime minister is closer to the Trump administration than any other Western European leader, and later today in Rome she will host J.D. Vance. The American vice-president could be described as Meloni’s
Many people have been celebrating after the Supreme Court’s declaration that the definition of a woman will indeed be based on biological sex. Some have heralded it as signifying the end of radical trans ideology, or even the end of woke politics altogether. All this remains to be seen. What we certainly won’t see, however,
