All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
In this week’s books podcast I’m talking to Max Porter, former publisher at Granta and author of the prizewinning debut Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, about his brilliant new novel Lanny (reviewed by Andrew Motion here). He asks: why are we used to novels having 15 page boring bits? What does the Green Man
It is nothing if not bold. Battered by the gilets jaune movement, challenged by populists, and with a flat-lining economy that may soon be in a full-blown recession, France’s President Macron has proposed a huge extension of the EU’s powers for the 2020s. His plans include common border controls, an agency for defending democracy, and a
Sir Ivan Rogers was in conversation at the Institute for Government. This is an edited transcript of his thoughts on why no-deal isn’t a sustainable outcome, whether there should be a public inquiry into Brexit – and why, when it comes to negotiations, the difficult bit is still to come: Ivan Rogers: Once you get into
The markets are volatile, well at least more volatile than they have been. The FTSE 100 index has already had two days this year where it has moved by more than 2%, in 2017 it only did that once, in the entire year. This has a tendency to make investors cautious and as a result
We have a Tory Government and governing party irredeemably split on the biggest question of our age, namely how and whether to leave the European Union. And we have a Labour opposition in a disorderly civil war between backbench MPs and lords on the one hand, and a leadership team under Jeremy Corbyn over a
A few weeks ago, it was reported that Sajid Javid likes to refer to himself as ‘The Saj’. While the Home Secretary has repeatedly denied the claims, the tendency to refer to one in the third person appears to be catching. The Times reports that Liz Truss has been known to go by ‘The Truss’
If racism is to succeed in corrupting institutions and countries it needs authorisation from the elite. The popular caricature of the racist as a white working-class man, or superstitious east european peasant, or shabby paranoid academic, shows not only class bias, but a lack of understanding that what transforms extremism from poisonous men muttering in
Today was the last chance for the former Labour MP Fiona Onasanya MP to protest her innocence, as she appealed her conviction for perverting the course of justice. The Peterborough MP was sentenced to three months in jail this January for lying to police to avoid a speeding ticket, but has since been released from jail.
A fresh war broke out this week between Labour MPs and the party leadership over how impartial Labour has been when dealing with anti-Semitism disciplinary cases. The fighting began after the Observer reported this weekend that Corbyn advisor Andrew Murray had personally lobbied for the party to be more lenient toward a member accused of defending an
Chris Grayling is back in the news – and once again it is for all the wrong reasons. The transport secretary is facing calls to quit over his handling of the Brexit ferry debacle, which led to the Government having to shell out £33m of taxpayers’ money to Eurotunnel. Grayling said ‘however regrettable the Eurotunnel
The bizarre stories of censorship and bullying by trans activists frequently made baffling reading. But the spectacle of Miranda Yardley, a self-identified transsexual, ending up in the dock for apparent ‘transphobia’ (all at the behest of a non-trans person) really takes the biscuit. An author would struggle to pitch such an incredible scenario at a
Chris Grayling has managed to take the government’s ‘Global Britain’ agenda up a gear this week with an appearance in the New York Times. The under fire Transport Secretary is the subject of a blistering editorial in the American paper (which has developed a penchant for negative UK stories these days) titled ‘How Does He
To judge from what is going on in Italy, the only major European country where populists are in power, right-wing populism works but left-wing populism does not. The senior partner in Italy’s populist coalition government – the alt-left Five Star Movement – is haemorrhaging support, while the popularity of the junior partner – the radical-right
When will politicians learn they can’t just buy off voters? You think they would have twigged this during the EU referendum campaign when the Remain camp’s Project Fear utterly failed to sway the electorate’s feelings about the EU. Every household will be £4,300 worse off, the Treasury claimed, which a) wasn’t true and b) looked
Should the UK’s decision to leave the UK be settled in an argument between seven male white middle-aged Tory lawyers plus one woman of Indian ancestry and – on the other side – a single white middle-aged male Tory lawyer? Because arguably that is what’s happening, in the current off-stage conversation over a possible reform
The recent history of the BBC is a tale of two Dimblebies. David, the elder, enjoyed the higher profile on television, but at a terrible price: his latter years at Question Time saw him acting as ringmaster for a programme that had become a ‘show’, a three-ring circus of shallow anger and offence. Now Jonathan,
Are Brexiteer MPs about to row in behind May’s deal? This is the question that has dominated the weekend’s papers with speculation rising that the threat of a delay to Brexit – or no Brexit – means the European Research Group (ERG) are ready to soften their red lines. Sir Graham Brady – chair of the
John McDonnell – We’ve been forced into backing a second referendum With less than four weeks to go until the UK is due to leave the European Union, Sophy Ridge was joined by the Shadow Chancellor. Labour has recently made headlines with its apparent volte-face on a second referendum. John McDonnell explained his party’s new
Whatever happened to the great Brexit property crash? The stock market has been pummelled on occasion since the referendum in 2016 but none so much as housebuilders’ shares. They suffered one downward loop immediately after the Brexit vote. Then again, as the chances of a no-deal Brexit increased towards the end of 2018, it was
I have praised in print before Mr Corbyn’s magnificently opportunistic handling of the Brexit issue. His aim is to ensure that Brexit happens, but that it is very badly done, and can therefore be attacked as a ‘Tory Brexit’. Who can say he’s failing? His apparent conversion to a second referendum looks to me like
The BBC is grappling with a dilemma forced upon it by George Osborne when he was chancellor. From 2020 the Corporation will be forced to fund the full £745 million cost of providing a free TV licence to households where one resident is over 75. One of the most significant achievements of the Blair government
We already have short-form hybrids such as the clerihaiku (here’s one from Mary Holtby): Peter Palumbo Cries, ‘Mumbo-jumbo!’ and rails At the Prince of Wales And the limeraiku: A haiku will do For a limerick trick, called A Limeraiku That was by Arthur P. Cox. And now clever Bill Webster, veteran competitor, has come up
How to classify the story that there are a thousand fewer UK-born undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge than there were ten years ago? For those (seemingly all three main political parties) who love subjecting education to social control, is this good news? Is it a roaring success for ‘diversity’ (in the same period, Oxford numbers
The Romans never invented the stirrup. It took 50 years after the invention of canned food for someone to invent the can opener. And we put a man on the moon before we put wheels on suitcases. This seems silly. But it is worth understanding each invention in context: often, a concatenation of other events
As The Spectator‘s podcast editor, I’m all for spending more money on podcasts. There are now six million adults in the UK who listen to podcasts, every week. If growth continues on that path, podcast listenership will be on par with total Radio 4 listenership in just another five years. With a trajectory like this,
MPs have 10 days to pass Theresa May’s Brexit deal or calamity strikes, I say in The Sun this morning. May’s deal is far from perfect. But what will happen if it doesn’t pass is truly appalling. If May’s deal hasn’t won a Commons vote by March 12th, the Commons will vote on whether to
One could smell a rat in the fact that so many ministers have recently been allowed publicly to break with government policy and condemn ‘no deal’ flat-out, and even threaten resignation. Three ministers co-wrote an article in Tuesday’s Daily Mail (over the undead body of Paul Dacre) in this sense. They would never have dared
Are Tory MPs actually proud to be Tories? Following recent defections from the party and the ever-present backdrop of Brexit in-fighting, it’s a question being heard more and more around Westminster. There are mutterings of parties within parties and the Independent Group has said it expects another wave of defections, highlighting just how low Conservative morale
Titania McGrath, 24, is a radical intersectionalist vegan activist, feminist slam poet and the author of Woke: a Guide to Social Justice. She won’t meet me in person for security reasons – she fears doxxing – or send me a photograph of her face. Rather, she consents to an interview by email from her gîte
The political campaign against the UK’s immigration laws secured an important victory yesterday, with the High Court denouncing sections 20-37 of the Immigration Act 2014 as racially discriminatory – not by discriminatory intent or design but “indirectly”, by side effect. Those “right to rent” provisions make it unlawful for private landlords to rent property to
I read with great interest Paul Collier’s suggestion that Britain should withdraw Article 50 and remain in the EU as a means of obtaining a better exit at some point in the future. This would be a UK humiliated by the inability of parliament to carry out the clear direction of the voters after nearly three
The announcement this week that Capital, Heart and Smooth radio are cutting back their local news shows might not in itself seem important — they have loyal audiences keen to know what’s happening outside London — but it’s part of a worrying trend. Over the past two decades, important powers have been devolved to regions
The myth at the heart of the ‘Corbyn project’ is that it is a grassroots movement of enthusiastic young people. This group, so the theory goes, is disgusted by free markets and longs for industries to be nationalised and collectives of workers to seize control of the means of production. Books have even been written about how the
