All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Professor Richard Dawkins has written a book called Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide. Its aim is to save children and young people from belief in the sky fairy. A couple of weeks ago he was plugging it on Channel 4 News. ‘Facts are so wonderful… and such a treat!’, he trilled, sounding not unlike the
Your latest challenge was to submit an extract from a government memo whose language would meet with the approval of Jacob Rees-Mogg. The Leader of the House recently sent his departmental staff a list of rules regarding grammar and vocabulary. The words ‘ongoing’ and ‘hopefully’ are out; imperial measurements are in. All non-titled males are
Three events will dominate next week. The Supreme Court’s decision on the legality of prorogation, Labour conference and the UN General Assembly. As I say in The Sun this morning, Boris Johnson’s address in New York will be more ‘Green Giant’ than ‘Incredible Hulk’. He’ll stress the UK’s environmental credentials; announcing a new biodiversity fund
With a cross-party group of MPs successfully passing legislation to instruct the government to seek an Article 50 extension rather than go for no deal, the Prime Minister could be forced to seek a Brexit delay if he cannot agree a deal. However, Boris Johnson has said on numerous occasions that he will do no
I have a friend who insists that he takes little interest in politics. Even so, the other evening he came out with three sentences which take us straight to the heart of our present discontents. ‘I’m sick to death of talking about Brexit. Yet I can’t stop talking about Brexit. Why don’t the politicians just
In the run-up to every election, newspapers fill with articles about the handful of voters that will supposedly swing the result – ‘soccer moms’, ‘NASCAR dads’, ‘Worcester women’, even ‘pebbledash people’. Occasionally this analysis is useful. Normally it is not. In the past six UK elections, 84 per cent of demographic groups swung in the same
Proceedings in the Supreme Court are typically being reported as if judges are making an impartial assessment of the constitution. It would be more true to say that they are asking whether or not to give themselves more power. Perhaps they will uphold the established constitution, or perhaps they will concoct sophisticated legal-soundings reasons for
The new episode of the Holy Smoke podcast looks at the cruel cat-and-mouse game that the Soviet Union played with Jewish classical musicians at a time when it was sneakily trying to extinguish both their religion and their ethnic identity. It’s prompted by the story of Maria Grinberg, the magnificent Russian Jewish pianist whose recorded
This weekend is Labour’s tenth conference in opposition and the fifth with Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the party. It’s also the first time since 2007 that its party conference season has been framed as the appetiser to an imminent general election campaign. The 2007 election famously never was, much to David Cameron’s delight, but this time both
Tom Watson’s position as deputy leader of the Labour party hangs in the balance this weekend after a move was made on the party’s national executive committee to oust him by abolishing his post. The motion was proposed by Jon Lansman, founder of Labour grassroots group Momentum. Although Watson survived Friday’s vote, a second attempt will be made
This evening, Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee has started to discuss a motion which would oust Tom Watson as deputy leader. There is expected to be a vote on this plan, which abolishes the role altogether, tomorrow, and there is a strong chance that it will pass. It was tabled by Momentum founder Jon Lansman,
If Brexit can’t be sorted out by mere mortals, perhaps the UK and EU need some divine inspiration to break the deadlock. That was perhaps what an Irish priest was thinking when he presented Taoiseach Leo Varadkar with a bottle of holy water this afternoon. But it seems Varadkar had other ideas about what to do
Students went on strike today worldwide to protest against climate change. Luckily, the London protest took place only a stone’s throw away from the Spectator office so Steerpike went down to Parliament Square to see what action the eco-protesters want taken as a country. Only, with signs ranging from ‘F–k Boris’ to ‘Defy Tory Rule’,
Is Jeremy Corbyn pro Remain or pro Leave? Three years have passed since the EU referendum, but the Labour leader still won’t answer that question. In an interview with ITV’s Joe Pike, Corbyn was asked eight times whether he now backed leave or remain. And eight times he refused to say: Joe Pike: “So are you
As the Supreme Court wraps up its trial into prorogation, we ask – are the courts overreaching (00:25)? We also find out about the prevalence of mental illness in the homeless and the rough sleeping (10:20). And last, Mary Killen tells us why she’s no longer a Remainer (20:45) – plus, Rachel Johnson tells us
“The Earth is dying”, “the world is on fire”, we’re undergoing an “environmental extinction”: just three of the sentiments which have been expressed by today’s climate “strikers” and which, unlike even moderate expressions of scepticism on matters of climate science, seem to escape without challenge. While it is tempting to think of today’s climate “strike”
Readers may be unaware that I have a new book out this week (which readers might purchase from Amazon or anywhere else where books are found). The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity came out on Tuesday with a big bash at The Spectator’s offices in London. But the thing I was hoping for most
William Hazlitt said hypocrisy is the only unforgivable vice. He would surely have a field day with our current crop of politicians. But perhaps the worst of the bunch is Caroline Lucas. The Green MP responded to the Liberal Democrat’s promise to overturn Article 50 without even a further referendum by saying: Lucas is partly
At the close of Supreme Court proceedings on Thursday, there was quite a lot of to and fro about what it would actually mean if the judges find the prime minister unlawfully misled the Queen when proroguing parliament. Which was understandably interpreted by some knowledgeable observers as a signal that the judges may indeed find
Since 2016, Brexit has been dividing families, splitting friends, ruining dinner parties. But perhaps the one family whose split over the EU has been the most public, drawn-out and frankly Shakespearean, is that of the Johnson family. While Boris is determined to take us out by 31 October do or die, his Remainer brother Jo
Jean-Claude Juncker, the outgoing President of the EU Commission was in fine spirits today, as he passed on some positive news for those hoping a Brexit deal will be struck by Boris Johnson before 31 October. The former Luxembourg PM was interviewed by Sophy Ridge for Sky News, and assured her that a Brexit deal with the
The Liberal Democrats have been going through something of a minor identity crisis as of late, after the party allowed the former Tory MP Phillip Lee to cross the aisle and join their ranks. Lee’s support in the past for checking migrants at the border for HIV, and his abstention on a key vote for
There have been plenty of revelations about David Cameron this week, from the time he questioned Michael Gove’s sanity to when he got ‘off his head’ on dope at Eton. But Mr S thinks our former prime minister might have saved the best admission until now. On ITV’s This Morning, Cameron was talking about how
Like many people, I am fascinated with Greta Thunberg’s meteoric rise. For me, her appeal is not to do with her environmental campaign: it’s because she is a well-known figure on the autistic spectrum. Like Greta, I have Asperger Syndrome. I was diagnosed when I was a young teenager in 2002, before Greta was born.
I don’t like to say I told you so — I bloody love it. Lo, a whole 19 months ago, I wrote on Coffee House that there was something iffy about Justin Trudeau’s behaviour on an official visit to India: ‘He turned up for one event in a gaudy golden kurta, churidars and chappals. At
If you live by the sword of wokeness, you might die by it too. Justin Trudeau is about to find this out. The painfully right-on PM of Canada, this undisputed master of the virtue-signal, this morally unassailable possessor of Pride socks and correct opinions on everything, looks set to be cancelled, to use woke parlance.
Saudis woke up last Saturday to find the crown jewel of their oil industry in smoke. The attack on the al-Abqaiq oil processing facility, allegedly conducted by cruise missiles and launched from a staging area inside Iran, resulted in the sharpest single-day increase in crude prices since the 1991 Gulf War. Saudi Arabia’s largest oil installation,
I can understand why Ben Stokes and his mother would rather not be reminded of the murder of the cricketer’s half-siblings by their father in New Zealand in 1988, three years before Stokes was born. His reaction, calling the Sun’s publication of the story as ‘immoral and heartless’ and ‘contemptuous to the feelings and circumstances
If Britain and Australia agree a post-Brexit trade deal, Liz Truss the international trade secretary has said that free movement between the two countries could form part of an agreement. In a press conference this morning in Canberra, Truss explained that ‘Australians want to come and live and work in Britain, and Brits want to
To understand the move last night by Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to abolish the party’s student wing, Labour Students, you need to go back in time nearly 40 years to the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then, the party’s youth section, the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS), had been wholly taken over by Militant,
Labour has yet again shown it doesn’t care about its Jewish members. Jeremy Corbyn said earlier this year that “there is no place for anti-Semitism or any form of racism in the Labour party”. But not for the first time – and not for the last – Jews who still belong to the party have
This is an article about Twitter, so you might decide to ignore it. Social media is not real life, after all, and many sensible people dismiss it as meaningless noise: ‘it’s just Twitter’. But this article is also about the current state of politics and journalism, neither of which can – sadly – be discussed
The BBC PM programme today led on Boris Johnson’s discomfort when confronted by members of the public while out on press calls. A legitimate subject: Boris is neither nimble nor terribly empathetic. The story was tied to his confrontation today with a man in a hospital. The presenter, Evan Davis, played an audio clip of
Happy Union Day, the fifth anniversary of Scotland’s vote to remain in the United Kingdom. It’s gotten so commercial, though at least voting No to independence means the Scots still have a currency to buy their celebratory Union Jack bunting in. Only there’s not much in the way of celebrations today. In 2014, the Better