All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Is Mitt Romney the mouse that roared? Or does he pose a real threat to President Trump? In his Washington Post op-ed, Romney bludgeons Trump: ‘the president has not risen to the mantle of his office.’ Move over Elizabeth Warren. It looks like the real civil war will be in the Republican, not the Democratic, party. Romney
IN ASSOCIATION WITH Over the past ten years, few industries have faced changes as dramatic as retail – and, in particular, the British high street. While the high street itself remains a much-loved institution, it seems that hardly a week passes without another reminder of the unprecedented changes – from consumer habits to technology –
For Silicon Valley, 2018 was defined by one impossible question: should there be limits to free speech on the internet? The first amendment is hardwired into the (American) CEOs of the big three social media sites: Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Each platform grew its user-base with a “words can never hurt me” attitude. Back in
Westminster conversation about Brexit often suffers a time lag. MPs frequently speak with surprise about things that actually happened months ago and which are regarded as old, established facts in Brussels and policy wonk-world. The backstop is the best example: outlined in the December 2017 Joint Report of the UK and EU negotiators, its meaning and
It’s the New Year, which must mean that railway fares are up again – this time by an average of 3.1 per cent. Jeremy Corbyn has said the latest price hike is a ‘disgrace’, and commuters forced to shell out more for their journeys are likely to agree. No one – not even Chris Grayling
Britain is, of course, in a Brexit-driven recession of its own making, while other EU countries are powering on ahead without us. Or so we keep being told. The ideas is that we are distancing ourselves from European markets – and concerned manufacturers will move production to factories elsewhere in the EU. While this gloomy
It’s a new year, a new dawn, a new day – and for many Brits a fresh start. Unless you’re Theresa May. The Prime Minister begins 2019 with things much the same as they were in 2018. Her party is at war over Brexit, she still has a hugely unpopular piece of legislation to pass
Even by his usual standards of self-satire, Jean-Claude Juncker was on top form to open the new year. As he uncorked his final bottle of wine for the year, the president of the European Commission found time to blast out a tweet celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the launch of the euro. It has, according
None of us can predict the potential fallout from Brexit, good and bad. What began as a vote of confidence in our institutions has shown them to be dangerously fallible. A country where people usually rub along together is now marked by a cultural and emotional rift. If Brexit does continue to dominate our politics
Dame Helena Morrissey has been described as the UK’s own superwoman thanks to the fact that she balances a high-flying City career as a financier with bringing up nine children. She’s also a rarity in the finance sector as a proud Brexiteer. So, I’m delighted to have Helena as my guest on the latest episode
Of what is happening on the Channel, we know this for certain: it is not a crisis. Only 239 foreign nationals have crossed unauthorised since November, a rounding error in the 625,000 legal migrants and 15,170 asylum seekers and other protectees granted leave in the UK in the year to June 2018. We know this
Last week the government awarded a £13.8 million contract to operate a new ferry service between Ramsgate and Northern France in the event of a no-deal Brexit – the money going to a company which, as yet, seems to possess no ferries. But that is a minor misuse of public money compared with the costs
‘Remind me what incel means again,’ said my husband. There was no point, since he’d forgotten twice already. I suspected a psychological barrier to learning. Incel (a label for people unhappy at being involuntarily celibate) was a runner-up for Oxford dictionaries’ word of the year, won by toxic. But to me the word that captures
We’re closing 2018 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 1: Douglas Murray on Cathy Newman’s interview with Jordan Peterson: In the magazine this week I have written a piece about the Canadian Professor Jordan Peterson. He has been in the UK over the last week to talk about his new book
“Never resign! Wait until you’re fired!” was Winston Churchill’s advice to political colleagues. Unfortunately for today’s frontbenchers looking for a way out, Theresa May has been in no position to sack anyone – no wonder, then, that so many have found themselves making their own way to the door. If nothing else, 2018 will be
2018 has hardly been a year which has inspired faith in our political class. From the bungled Brexit negotiations to botched resignations, at every turn our elected representatives have managed to outdo themselves in bids to prove how useless they can be. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the numerous political interviews viewers
It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of Elon Musk, it was the age of Mark Zuckerberg. It was the season of Novichok, it was the season of the backstop. We had WTO terms before us, we had our hoard of food and medicine before us.
It is always a pleasure to watch Paris burning. On the surface a civilised country, but scrape a little deeper and France is revealed as a nation of kind of faux-Arabs (aside from that rapidly growing proportion who are actual Arabs): easily incensed into an incandescent toddler fury at real or imagined iniquities, things not
We’re closing 2018 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 2: Steerpike on the many problems with May’s Brexit deal: Theresa May’s government has teetered on the point of collapse over her proposed Brexit deal. The withdrawal agreement between the UK and Brussels led to Dominic Raab and Esther McVey resigning in
We asked friends of The Spectator which picture they’d choose to own. Here is Mervyn King’s response: In the centre of our drawing-room, I would install the ‘Wilton Diptych’. From the Middle Ages, it shows Richard II being presented to the Virgin and Child. We do not know who painted it, or why, and the
We’re closing 2018 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 3: Paulina Neuding on Sweden’s crime wave: January was a particularly violent month in Sweden. A 63-year-old man was killed in Stockholm by a hand grenade lying in the street. A Dutch exchange student was hit by a stray bullet during
Why us? Why is the UK the first – and only – country to decide to leave the EU? Greenland, Algeria (when it was part of the French empire) and the French Caribbean island of St Barthélemy have all been in the EU and are no more, but the UK is the first full member
With Theresa May’s Brexit agreement set to return to the Commons in January, rumour had it that the government – increasingly desperate to convince Brexiteer MPs to support the deal – was considering doling out knighthoods and honours to get them to change their mind. Lo and behold, the New Year’s honours list for 2019
There is never more excitement on the Left than when a Tory MP recants and concludes that his heartless party and its callous social policies are wrong. So it was on Friday when Nigel Evans, MP for Ribble Valley, announced that he had had a ‘road to Damascus conversion’ and realised that David Cameron’s legal
When the tide goes out, you see who’s swimming naked. So says Warren Buffett, the folksy billionaire investor, explaining that tough times expose which firms have poor management. The same is true of politics, and especially Brexit. 2018 was the year the tide went out on Brexit, and we saw too many of our politicians’
In Western democracies, literature no longer matters to politics. Once, literature and politics could co-exist on the same typewriter or in the same person: George Orwell in Britain, André Malraux in France. But that was a long time ago. Still, the powers of politics remain linguistic, whether bureaucratic or rhetorical: the war criminal at his
Rod Liddle is spot on about John le Carré (8 December). I’ve long held the view that life is too short to read or watch another le Carré. Your erstwhile columnist Hugo Rifkind put it brilliantly when he wrote of le Carré in these pages in 2011: ‘Single bars burning on three-bar fires; men who
Oh dear. Fiona Onasanya’s 2018 didn’t go exactly as she would have hoped with the Labour MP found guilty of perverting the course of justice, after a court found that she had lied to police about speeding to avoid putting points on her driving license. Despite the Labour whip being withdrawn, Onasanya has since compared herself
A rather sinister tweet was sent out yesterday by the Home Office telling EU nationals that if they wanted to stay in Britain they’d best “apply” – not register – for the scheme if they “want to stay in the UK” after 31 December 2020. The tone was quite disgusting. And it raises the question
There will be chaos at the ports. Only the occasional root vegetable will be sold in the supermarkets. The factories and farms will run out of workers, and the planes will all be grounded on the runway. We have yet to get an official warning about how the black death will ravage the land, or
Twelve months ago Le Journal du Dimanche published an opinion poll in which Emmanuel Macron had an approval rating of 52 per cent. A fortnight ago the same paper ran a poll in which the president’s popularity stood at 23 per cent. Where has it gone so wrong for the man once likened among sections
Christmas books pages usually invite columnists to nominate their publishing event of the year. Well, here’s a corker: The Ties that Bind: Citizenship and Civic Engagement in the 21st Century, published by the House of Lords Citizenship and Civic Engagement committee. That obscure body has 12 members and takes itself seriously. The Ties that Bind
We’re closing 2018 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 4: Tony Abbott on how to save Brexit: It’s pretty hard for Britain’s friends, here in Australia, to make sense of the mess that’s being made of Brexit. The referendum result was perhaps the biggest-ever vote of confidence in the United Kingdom,
The palaver about who should be the next Poet Laureate has begun. I hate the way that the serious art of poetry is turned into something like a horse race, with odds at William Hill. In 1998 the press began speculating about the next one before Ted Hughes was buried. I still haven’t forgiven them
