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Mr Speaker, I share the impatience of this House and the country at large to bring those responsible to justice – and to take the full range of appropriate responses against those who would act against our country in this way. But as a nation that believes in justice and the rule of law, it is
Everyone agrees the Grenfell Tower disaster must usher in a new era of social housing in the UK. The danger is that it sends us back to a very old era, when the council owned, managed and controlled community housing. There is another way forward, one which meets the rightful sense of injustice felt by
Labour’s internal complaints body looks set to have a busy few weeks. After Debbie Abrahams was effectively suspended as Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary over allegations of bullying, the Labour MP made a bullying allegation of her own. Abrahams claims she’s the one being bullied – accusing unnamed figures in the Leader’s Office of behaving in an
Martin Selmayr’s power grab, elevating him to the post of Secretary-General and putting him in charge of 33,000 staff, was a brilliantly-executed Brussels coup. As Jean Quatremer reveals in The Spectator, the double promotion of Juncker’s chief of staff was over in nine minutes flat, and was described by one of those present as an ‘impeccably prepared
This is an extract from Martin Vander Weyer’s ‘Any other business’ column, in this week’s Spectator. Unilever, the consumer goods conglomerate formed in 1929 by the merger of Margarine Unie of Rotterdam with Lever Brothers of Port Sunlight, is a model of cross-Channel collaboration that pre-dates the European Union we’re about to leave. So the
Everyone, understandably, is focusing on the white ‘nostalgia’ bit of Vince Cable’s speech to the Lib Dem conference. His slur against older Brexit voters, whom he thinks voted against the EU because they want to go back to a world where ‘passports were blue, faces were white and the map was coloured imperial pink’, has
There was much excitement last week when Susan Michie told Communist Party members – at a meeting at the Marx Memorial Library in Clerkenwell – that they should work ‘full tilt’ to propel Jeremy Corbyn into No 10. Her claim that such a stance could act as ‘a potential springboard for strengthening organic ties with Labour’
Marina Litvinenko: ‘Lessons have not been learned’ The case of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who has been hospitalised alongside his daughter after a suspected attempt on his life, has been dominating news headlines since it happened. Marina Litvinenko, the widow of the one-time Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who is believed to have been
Theresa May came under fire last year when she appeared to dodge a question on whether – if there was a referendum tomorrow – she would now back Brexit. Since then, the Prime Minister managed to set tongues-wagging once again when asked in a Q&A after her big Brexit speech whether Brexit was worth it.
On the matter of President Trump’s imposition of a 25 per cent tariff on US imports of steel and 10 per cent on aluminium, I cannot improve on the comments of the sage of Washington, the former Bank of England monetary policy committee member Adam Posen, who called it ‘straight-up stupid’ and ‘fundamentally incompetent, corrupt
The moment that has defined my approach to politics came when my mother told me the proudest moment of her life: buying her council house. Growing up in Consett, a former steel town in the north east, that house seemed to be like any of the other identikit terraced properties in the area. But to
‘Any fool can commit murder, but it takes an artist to make it look like suicide’ the KGB used to say. But whoever put Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in hospital was rather less subtle: police have identified 240 potential witnesses, according to Amber Rudd, and have extensive CCTV coverage to go through. I
Our road was closed last July so that pipes could be installed underground, a mundane bureaucratic procedure that, for my children, led to the most memorable summer of their lives. For weeks they played in the street with friends while our front door was left open, strangers instinctively smiling at kids being able to run
So Stonehenge was built for the communal fun of it. Maybe. Some archaeologists now wonder whether the main point of the monumental erection was the mass participation involved in getting it up. There were years of feasting and frolicking at the site’s construction, as well as lots of head scratching and mansplaining about whether wax-treated
Paolo Gentiloni, who may now have to step down since his Democratic party got only 18.7 per cent of the vote in the Italian elections, is the fourth Italian prime minister in a row not to have been chosen by the electorate. Voters have shown a repeated disinclination to support the candidate of Brussels, so
How did it come to this? Here we are, in 2018, in modern, democratic, fair-minded Britain, and what happens when it turns out the leader of the Labour Party was a member of a secret Facebook group awash with anti-Semitic comments? Not a lot really. As the political editor of the Jewish Chronicle, I have
There are plenty of things you could say about Labour’s All-Women Shortlists (AWS). Tony Blair called them ‘not ideal at all’ in 1995. In 1996, Peter Jepson and Roger Dyas-Elliott – two men who’d been rejected as Labour candidates – called them sex discrimination. An industrial tribunal agreed with them, and Labour was forced to
It’s an exciting day at the office. We’ve just launched Spectator USA, a new website from the world’s oldest weekly magazine. For 190 years, The Spectator has been producing some of the sharpest, funniest and best-written journalism. Now we want to do more of the same for an American audience. Spectator USA will cover politics,
You would have to be quite odd not to approve of the sudden surge of solidarity amongst Hollywood stars of the female persuasion. (Though I did wonder, when Frances McDormand called so movingly during her Oscar-winner speech ‘Meryl, if you do it everyone else will!’ whether she meant ‘Suck up to Weinstein for years’ or
A spring without a Budget is a bit like one without the Grand National or the Boat Race. It doesn’t feel right. The sight of the Chancellor’s red box, regardless of its contents, has always instilled in me a frisson of elation as one contemplates the warmer, sunnier months ahead. We do, however, have the
Donald Trump’s acceptance of Kim Jong-un’s invitation to meet is a master stroke. It’s exactly the kind of thing Ronald Reagan liked to do. Reagan, you may recall, announced his pursuit of a missile defense system in March 1983 on national television without alerting his advisers beforehand. Liberals went crazy. Then he decided to end
Although the BBC has earned a reputation for leaning towards Remain, tonight’s Question Time shed light on the various political allegiances at the BBC. Prue Leith – the Great British Bake Off judge and Spectator writer – told the audience that she had backed Brexit in the EU referendum: ‘There was a life before we
Justin Welby is right to take a stand against his predecessor, Rowan Williams’ most controversial announcement: that Britain should introduce sharia law. Ten years ago last month, Williams suggested parts of Islamic sharia law should be incorporated into British law. He argued that some kind of “constructive accommodation” was not only possible but desirable to
To mark International Women’s Day, Liz Truss took over the Treasury for one night only. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury kicked off the celebrations at No 11 with a speech praising Destiny’s Child, the American girl group: ‘I can’t put it better than Destiny’s Child when they sang “all the honeys making money”‘ While
Happy International Women’s Day. To mark the occasion, there are several events taking place across Westminster this evening – with Liz Truss opening up the Treasury to leading businesswomen. So, how would the Prime Minister like to mark the occasion? That’s the question that left Theresa May flummoxed today in an interview with ITV. The Maybot
‘Evolve’ is the new word of the Brexit negotiations. The draft Council negotiating guidelines presented by Donald Tusk yesterday, stressed that the EU’s offer would change if the UK’s position evolved. Meeting Tusk today, the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has made exactly the same point. The negotiating strategy is clear: keep telling the British that
On this week’s episode of The Spectator Podcast, we look at the new Saudi Crown Prince as he visits the UK. Is he the great moderniser that some imagine, or are we sweeping the more unpleasant elements of his regime under the carpet? We also consider the many strands of Labour’s Brexit position, and look
Almost eight million people have now watched Cathy Newman’s Channel 4 News interview with Jordan Peterson. This figure must be unique in the history of Channel 4 News online. Only a few minutes were broadcast on the original news programme, but Channel 4 then put out the full half-hour on YouTube, perhaps miscalculating the effects
Over the past ten years, mental health has gone from being one of those problems that no-one liked to talk about to something politicians tussle over to show they are the most committed. There is still a stigma floating around certain conditions, and people are still struggling to access the basic treatment that they need.
The comedian Richard Pryor famously advised any man caught committing adultery by his wife to deny everything and instead to ask: “now who you gonna believe – me or your lyin’ eyes?” This would be a good motto for British sport. For years, sports fans in this country have been impelled to disregard the evidence our lyin’ eyes,
A few tickets remain for The Chancellor’s Spring Statement and The Spectator’s economic and political outlook for 2018 and beyond on 13 March, in partnership with Old Mutual Global Investors, with Andrew Neil, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. Book tickets here. The resignation of Gary Cohn as head of the National Economic Council is almost
The SNP are a quieter force in Westminster since the snap election. Along with a reduction in size, they now have to face down the equally rowdy Scottish Conservatives each week at PMQs. Alas, it seems the new challenge is proving too great for the party’s digital operation. At PMQs, the SNP’s Mhairi Black criticised
At the BBC early doors for the Today programme, to preview Corbyn’s speech advocating membership of a customs union. I suggest that ‘this is something Remainers can get behind’, but come off air to a torrent of denialism and abuse on Twitter. In a parallel universe, the people who feel existentially destroyed by being halfway out of
It’s International Women’s Day. As feminists rush to detail the many disadvantages still facing women (yes, all women, everywhere) we’ll no doubt hear a great deal about the gender pay gap. In that regard, International Women’s Day is a bit like every other day of the year. But let’s go with it. According to the