All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Over the past five years, Britain has seen a dramatic rise in the number of people claiming disability benefits. There are now 2.8 million working-age adults who are economically inactive due to long-term sickness, a figure that has risen by over 700,000 since 2019. Personal Independence Payments (PIP) are also increasing rapidly, with over 50,000 new applications
BrewDog is in trouble. Its beers have been axed by nearly 2,000 pubs. Punk IPA – once a craft beer titan – has vanished from bars across Britain. The firm is closing ten of its own pubs, including its flagship bar in Aberdeen. Last month, co-founder Martin Dickie left. There’s little doubt that BrewDog has lost
During the early noughties, I pierced hundreds of ears at Claire’s Accessories, the chain store that collapsed into administration last month in the UK. These piercings rarely went smoothly and the evidence often resurfaced: a wonky earring here, a scar there. Good riddance (unemployment notwithstanding), then, to this lavender blight on teen culture. After a
When King Charles paid tribute to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks following his death in 2020, he called him ‘a light unto our nation’. It was a phrase that captured something profound and widely felt. Rabbi Sacks, who had served as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013, was
Today, Pope Leo XIV will perform his first two canonisations, both of which were due to take place earlier this year but postponed after the death of Pope Francis. The recipients will be Pier Giorgio Frassati, an early twentieth century Catholic activist from Turin, and the 21st century’s first saint, Carlo Acutis – also known by
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At the Reform conference in Birmingham, the Spectator’s editor Michael Gove sat down with Reform UK’s head of their department of government efficiency Zia Yusuf. They discussed Labour’s track record in government, Zia’s faith and his tech background, why leader Nigel Farage is his political hero and how AI could change Britain.
In Tory world, it is a year for big anniversaries. One hundred years ago, Margaret Thatcher was born; fifty years after that, she won the Conservative leadership. To mark the occasion, various shindigs are planned, with the party conference next month expected to pay tribute to the Iron Lady’s legacy. A week after that there
Keir Starmer knows not to waste a crisis. The loss of Angela Rayner has been a huge blow to his government. She was the most charismatic politician on the front bench of the Labour government. Her ability to go toe to toe with populist politicians was a huge asset, particularly as the relentless rise of
Back in July I wrote in these pages that if too many Tories joined Reform, Nigel Farage’s party would risk looking like a rescue raft for rats leaving the sinking Conservative ship. Since then, the trend for repentant or redundant Tories to desert their old party – so comprehensively rejected by the voters – and
Not so long ago, an MP was free to earn whatever he liked however he liked, push off without impediment to work for businesses that he’d been responsible for regulating, and could hold his seat comfortably for the best part of 50 years. No longer. One might have thought that the stock of MPs would
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In Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, Britain has a double-edged sword: one of the most anglophile U.S. administrations of all time – but a greater awareness of UK domestic politics. From Lucy Connolly to the recent arrest of Graham Linehan at Heathrow airport, there is much chatter in America about free speech in Britain and
At last weekend’s European Society of Cardiology conference in Madrid, a quiet funeral bell tolled for aspirin. The drug has already been largely dropped as a painkiller, on the basis of having more side effects than paracetamol. Most often now it’s taken to prevent a heart attack. Now, a new study, published in the Lancet
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Lucy Dunn catches up with Tim Shipman at Reform’s party conference, taking place in Birmingham, to get his reaction to Labour’s reshuffle. The reshuffle took place following Angela Rayner’s resignation from government. Tim argues that it’s clear the reshuffle centred around getting Shabana Mahmood into the Home Office, where she can tackle some of the
This summer I spent an afternoon, as I do every year, sitting with old friends in their garden a few miles from the Gloucestershire village where we grew up. Their garden adjoins fields, affording a clear view of the Malvern Hills. But this year, the view was different. We watched as trucks crawled across the
Politicians have spent years talking about the need to create ‘green jobs’. In many ways they have succeeded: there are now nearly 700,000 people employed in green jobs in the UK. But while the likes of Ed Miliband may think this is a victory, the reality is that many of these jobs are a product of government subsidy,
Gay Times, the longstanding monthly magazine formerly aimed at gay men – but now repurposed as an ‘LGBTQ+’ title – is in trouble: it has lost 80 per cent of its advertisers in the last year, and £5 million in advertising revenue as a result. ‘Good old-fashioned discrimination’ is to blame, according to its chief
It’s not even 10am, but already the Galilee sun is prickling the back of my neck. I’m standing outside a war room set up in the community centre of the village of Julis, watching a delegation of 200 Druze men arrive. One by one, they make their way up the steep path – most dressed in their
Reform had clearly planned the Campest Show On Earth for their conference this year. Sparklers, club anthems and strobe lights: imagine Sir Keith Joseph was in charge of your primary school disco and you get a sense of the vibe. Unfortunately for the budding impresarios of Reform, they were upstaged. Just as their conference was
When Volodymyr Zelensky was asked to describe the security guarantees finalised for Ukraine at the Coalition of the Willing summit in Paris yesterday, the word he reached for was ‘theoretical’. Theoretical guarantees for a theoretical ceasefire: 26 countries pledging, in theory, to support peace in Ukraine on land, sea and in the air after the
Keir Starmer is carrying out a far-reaching reshuffle this afternoon after Angela Rayner resigned from her three roles (Deputy Prime Minister, Housing Minister and deputy Labour leader) following a probe into her tax affairs by Sir Laurie Magnus, the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser. The writing was on the wall for Starmer’s former second-in-command after her
Senior Reform figure Zia Yusuf has been on quite the journey within the party. The businessman first came to prominence as party chairman after taking over from now-deputy Richard Tice MP, promising to professionalise the growing party. Then, three months ago to the day, Yusuf shocked party colleagues and members by announcing his resignation from
The misjudgement over Stamp Duty which led to Angela Rayner’s resignation as Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary, may be deeply embarrassing for her (and her party) but it will likely save her from the embarrassment of failing to achieve the government’s target of delivering 1.5 million new homes by 2029. In an interview on
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Angela Rayner has resigned following the ethics probe into her tax affairs. What impact will this have on Starmer’s government? And does this hinder her chances of succeeding Starmer one day? The Coffee House Shots team react live from day one of the Reform party conference, which is taking place in Birmingham. What’s the mood
Angela Rayner has resigned as Deputy Prime Minister after a probe into her tax affairs by Sir Laurie Magnus, the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser. Rayner was investigated after it emerged she had underpaid stamp duty when purchasing a seaside apartment in Hove, East Sussex. Sir Keir Starmer hinted on Thursday that he would move to
Anyone who’s remotely interested in music, fashion, cinema, literature or indeed any of the things that make life worth living, will know that the late David Bowie bestrode all these areas, and more, like a particularly well-dressed South London colossus. But what passed undeservedly unnoticed during his lifetime, and beyond, was that Bowie was also
The French intelligence services are warning that next week’s Bloquons Tout mobilisation, set to start on 10 September, could dwarf the chaos of the gilets jaunes protests of 2018 to 2020. Up to 100,000 people are expected to join the ‘Block Everything’ campaign against a €44 billion austerity plan, undeterred by the near-certain collapse of
It is day one of Reform UK’s conference today and thousands are flocking in to the Birmingham NEC. But while those attending today are the true-teal Farage faithful, what do the millions outside the conference hall make of the lifelong Brexiteer? Merlin Strategy has done some polling for The Spectator to dig into what Britain
When Nigel Farage stands up this afternoon to deliver his speech to Reform UK’s annual conference in Birmingham he will do so for the first time as a potential prime minister. His message to the 7,000 delegates gathered at the NEC will be that they need to prepare for a general election as early as
Here is a rather delightful fact. For 13 years between 2010 and 2023 Britain had a quango called the Office for Tax Simplification. You may never have heard of it, but it really did exist. Its annual report for 2021/22 shows that it was chaired by someone called Kathryn Kearns and had a budget of
It’s a strange feeling finding out that you have been part of a revolutionary group that secretly controls Britain and, er…didn’t realise it. For four years in the 1990s, I was the Research Director of the Fabian Society. It was a wonderful job, at a time when Labour under Tony Blair was open to new
‘Come undone’, the billboard reads. Two hands are clasped together. On another a blonde-haired woman lies prone on a fuzzy peach mattress, her hands tightly gripping the sheets. ‘Drive me mad’, implores the caption. In theatres Valentine’s Day 2026. Despite appearances, this isn’t the latest boilerplate steamy romance for women to drag their boyfriends to
‘Rejuvenation is unstoppable, we will prevail,’ blared the editorial in the Chinese newspaper Global Times. The subject was China’s resurgence, but it looked oddly apposite in light of an inadvertently overheard conversation between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Some Western journalists have mistaken this as evidence of Putin’s hubris and his personality cult ‘Biotechnology is continuously developing,’