All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Everyone knows that Britain’s jails are filthy, failing and dangerous. But there’s another less obvious problem with our prisons: those locked up can find it impossible to get anything done. In prison, your ability to achieve the most basic of tasks done is almost entirely dependent on others. This means that if a prisoner needs
Stormzy has finally completed the journey from super-cool to super-cringe. The rapper, once the symbol of youthful rebellion, is to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge. Meanwhile, in your local branch of McDonald’s, you can partake of ‘the Stormzy Meal’. How depressing to see Stormzy abase himself in this way. Stormzy’s McDonald’s
Jeffrey Goldberg’s story in the Atlantic is so mind-blowing it’s hard to know what to say in response. It defies belief that Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, appears to have accidentally added a top journalist to a Signal messaging group with senior government officials – including the Vice President, Secretary of State, Defence
This is an extract from today’s episode of Spectator TV, with Toby Young and James Walton, which you can find at the bottom of this page: I wasn’t all that overbowled by the series. I think one of the reasons it’s met with such a chorus of approval, particularly in the mainstream media, is because
14 min listen
Reports in the papers today say that the British government is considering scrapping its digital services tax – largely levied at American tech companies – in return for an exemption to Trump’s tariffs that come into effect on April 2. Would this be an effective – or desirable – move on the British part? James
Awoken by sirens wailing over large parts of central Israel last weekend, I pulled on whatever clothes I could find beside my bed and shuffled down to the bomb shelter in the basement. The missiles, launched from Yemen by the Iranian-backed Houthis, didn’t distinguish between ideologies or identities. More or less every Israeli in the strike
Tick tock. There are less than 48 hours to go until Rachel Reeves’s big Spring Statement on Wednesday and as the Treasury finalises its preparations for the big reveal, YouGov has been running some tax-related tests of its own. In a blow for the reds, the polling company has found that it is becoming more
This past week, eagle-eyed observers of South Korean politics – not to mention the South Korean public – were supposed to have been put out of their respective miseries. The fate of the embattled South Korean President, Yoon Suk Yeol, would be made known, and South Korea could regroup and plan its next steps at
There are moments in the life of a democracy when ambiguity becomes complicity. On Sunday, in the heart of London, such a moment unfolded with eerie precision and devastating clarity. During the annual Quds Day rally – an event imported from the revolutionary streets of Tehran – demonstrators hoisted images of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the
It’s a day ending in ‘y’ which means there’s more bad news for the Scottish Nats. Now new polling for unionist group Scotland in Union shows that most Scots feel safer as part of the United Kingdom. The Survation survey revealed that most of Scotland’s population believe they are more secure – and have more
It hardly feels like a serious discussion of the Conservative party’s future until Lord Frost has indicated where the leadership is going wrong. As Steerpike reported this weekend, the architect of the Brexit withdrawal agreement and former Scotch whisky salesman delivered a speech at the annual Margaret Thatcher Freedom Festival, and had some advice on
Donald Trump’s efforts to negotiate a quick end to the war in Ukraine have run into trouble. As US negotiators meet with Russian and Ukrainian counterparts in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to explore possibilities for a comprehensive ceasefire, the Russian side is clearly going through the motions. Vladimir Putin’s call last week with Trump showed that
Kemi Badenoch’s announcement that the Conservatives are no longer committed to the net zero target in 2050 represents a massive breach in fifteen years of bipartisan consensus. It was greeted with predictable hostility by other parties, but also by pro-net zero forces within the Conservative party too. The Conservative Environment Network commented: ‘Abandon the science
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is seeking to trim £2 billion from the government’s £13 billion administration budget, with up to 50,000 jobs being cut in her Spring Statement. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government was ‘looking across the board’ for savings. But do Reeves and Starmer really have the courage, and the political capital,
Amidst the U-turns, if there is one thing on which Labour has remained almost rock-solid until now, it is human rights and the UK’s continued participation in the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights). But even here things are changing. ECHRexit, like Brexit once did, looks increasingly respectable On Saturday, a group of Red Wall
Ahead of last summer’s election, the Labour party made lots of grand promises about how it was going to fix the pothole crisis plaguing Britain’s roads. Finally, eight months on, Keir Starmer’s government has revealed its plan to woo drivers: councils will get an extra £500 million from mid-April to fill in the holes. Yes,
It’s a hard time to be in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government, what with poor poll ratings and dismal economic forecasts to contend with. Perhaps that’s why Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner felt she deserved a free safari tour during a work trip to Ethiopia earlier this year. But it transpires her hopes were rather
Twenty years ago, I made a programme for Radio 4 on Soviet military maps from the Cold War. I needed expert opinion on the highly detailed maps I had of London and Blackpool and Oleg Gordievsky, master spy of the late Cold War era, who died on Friday at the age of 86, seemed the
As the government makes growth its top priority, one critical lever risks being overlooked: monetary policy. Ministers are busy wrestling with fiscal constraints and the pressures of a sluggish economy, but too much focus remains on spending pledges and supply-side fixes, and too little on the frameworks that shape demand and investment. Ahead of this
Anyone who relishes the humiliation of Sir Keir Starmer – and I know that in this respect, if only this one, many Spectator readers will make common cause with the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn – was presented with a delicacy this weekend. Here was a humiliation so exquisite, so public and so unrecoverable-from, that you
At long last, we have a date. In just over a month’s time, Canadians will head to the polls to decide whether to end a decade of Liberal rule. Having succeeded Justin Trudeau as party leader on 9 March, Mark Carney has, predictably, opted not to play it long. By calling the election now, Carney
To Buckingham, for a blast of soundness at the annual Margaret Thatcher conference. Star of the show was David Frost, the guest speaker at last night’s dinner. And the Tory peer has certainly been brushing up on his political bon mots, judging by his lines to the 200 attendees. Frost compared the ‘amateurish farrago’ of
Israel No telling in Jerusalem this morning that Israel resumed war and poured hell on Gaza last night. In the Muslim Quarter of the Old City shopkeepers receive pallets of soft drinks, and spilled coke runs red-brown down the Via Dolorosa. A couple of streets away the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is very quiet.
Rachel Reeves: ‘I’m confident we will see living standards increase’ A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that living standards in the UK are set to fall by 2030, news which increases pressure on Chancellor Rachel Reeves ahead of her Spring Statement next week. Appearing on Sky News this morning, Reeves rejected the
Rachel Reeves has spent the morning touring the broadcast studios as she attempts to pitch roll for Wednesday’s Spring Statement. While this was never meant to be a big fiscal event, it has taken on a new significance as a result of the worsening public finances. The Chancellor is looking for billions in savings with
Cindy Yu (CY): Slashing winter fuel allowance, keeping the two-child benefit cap, cutting foreign aid, cutting the civil service, axing NHS bureaucracy and slashing welfare spending. Rod, are we actually living under a conservative government? Rod Liddle (RL): No, because the Conservative government didn’t do any of that, because they didn’t have the appetite for
Five years ago tonight, Boris Johnson told us we were going into lockdown. In the run-up to the anniversary of that historic moment, lots of people have shuddered as they remembered the boredom, frustration and horror of that strange time when we were only allowed to leave the house once a day. Me? I’ve been
The phenomenon of people living their lives vicariously through social media is nothing new. We’ve all got that friend who uses their Instagram story to post passive aggressive memes about their ex. Or the one who decides to document the repainting of their downstairs loo as if it’s an interior design triumph worthy of Architectural
Looking at the list breaking down the reasons for which people are granted Personal Independence Payments (PIPSs), up to £180 a week to help them with their daily living and mobility, one cannot help but be reminded of the London Bills of Mortality of the seventeenth century, when some people died ‘frighted’, or of ‘grief’,
Just Stop Oil are their own worst enemies. I support their aims and I do my best to minimise my carbon footprint. I haven’t flown since 1993, I don’t own a car and I have eleven solar panels on my roof, but I’m losing patience with the movement. Meeting the JSO activists who disrupted a
The death of Oleg Gordievsky at the age of 86 comes at a moment when relations between his native Russia and his adopted country Britain are just as fraught as they were in his heyday as the West’s most important double agent at the height of the Cold War. Gordievsky’s life story reads like the
At some point in every sensitive young Oxonian’s life he admits that he should have gone to Cambridge. Since graduating I have found it so much lovelier and livelier than dreary Oxford. Had I my time again I’d join the Tabs, not shoe them. Disillusioned as I am, however, every year I summon up some
Five years ago this weekend, the nation was plunged into what was expected to be a three-week lockdown. Weeks turned into months and years, lives were upended, and society was reshaped. But with the Covid inquiry rumbling on and the threat of a new pandemic ever present, it is worth reflecting on what happened. That’s