All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
James Espey was born in Zambia and educated in South Africa before moving to London in 1977. For many years he worked for international drinks companies, developing brands such as Malibu, Baileys and Johnnie Walker Blue Label. For the past two decades he has been an entrepreneur in his own right, as well as a
When Mark Thompson, a Briton, took over as CEO of the New York Times in November 2012, he was under a dark cloud. He’d just served as Director General of the BBC, and the corporation had been accused of covering up the sex crimes of one of its biggest-ever stars, the late Jimmy Savile. Ever keen
Italy has a new Prime Minister: Giuseppe Conte, who heads up a Five Star / Lega coalition. He presented his list of ministers to President Mattarella this morning and, with the Eurosceptic economist Paolo Savona moved from Finance to European affairs, it was accepted. The way is now paved for this Five Star / Lega
Donald Trump is following through on his threat—or promise, as his voters see it—to impose steep tariffs on foreign goods in the name of supporting American industry, starting with levies of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium imports. Allies and neighbours that had been granted temporary exemptions are now set
Andrew O’Hagan of the London Review of Books did something very valuable this week: he re-complicated Grenfell. His 60,000-word piece ‘The Tower’, which takes up the entire current issue of LRB, wrestles the Grenfell calamity from the infantile moralising of Corbynistas and much of the commentariat, and reminds us that this was a strange and
The cover of this week’s Spectator says “the people vs the EU” and Jean-Claude Juncker is certainly warming to that theme. Just in case the Italians were in any doubt how they are regarded by the president of the European Commission he made it pretty clear yesterday. When asked what the EU could do for
I shop at WH Smith with gritted teeth but I positively salivate when I spot a Pret A Manger. Some serious investors think likewise: the sandwich chain has just been sold for more than £1.5 billion by the US investment firm Bridgepoint to JAB Holdings, the vehicle of the German billionaire Reimann family who also
Dear Mary: I have been invited to the wedding of a distant relative through marriage, to her long-term partner. I did not expect to be invited, therefore would like to show my gratitude. However, there is no wedding list and they have specified on the invitation that the only gift they wish to receive is
President Erdogan can raise a crowd. As he travels to every corner of his huge country in the month before elections that could return him to the palace for another five years, tens of thousands turn out in sports halls, city squares and purpose-built rally grounds. His acerbic, bombastic public appearances, stage-managed with rock-star entrances
The threat of a global trade war is back. The Trump administration has announced that the US will impose tariffs on aluminium and steel imports from the European Union, Canada and Mexico. The EU is already promising to respond to Trump’s tariffs in kind. It is all too easy to see how this situation escalates.
In this week’s Spectator Books, I’m talking to the journalist and comic novelist Carl Hiaasen about his latest book, a splenetic broadside against feelgood commencement speeches called Assume The Worst that serves as a joyous corrective to “you can be anything you want to be” boosterism. Our conversation ranges to his take on the state
How serious are Jeremy Corbyn and the Corbynites about winning power? Deadly serious, if the remarkable tactical flexibility he displayed on his first official visit to Belfast as leader of the Labour Party is anything to go by. Corbyn took care to genuflect not just to nationalist idols such as Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and
David Lammy is upset again, as he is every week. This time it is thanks to data released by Ucas, which reveals that while black applicants make up nine per cent of the total, they account for 52 per cent of those whose applications have been flagged up for possible cheating – either because they
This week, the new Italian coalition’s proposed government was blocked by the Italian President, giving EU grandees in Brussels a cause for celebration. But is the EU way too controlling of rebellious member states? On the home front, would a Eurozone crisis help or hinder Brexit negotiations? We ask Nigel Farage. And last, is Mueller’s
Only one pope in the history of the Catholic Church could have uttered the following words: ‘Juan Carlos, that you are gay does not matter. God made you like this and loves you like this and I don’t care. The pope loves you like this. You have to be happy with who you are.’ Speaking
Barely a month goes by without a new banking firm popping up. And while some are interesting, and a few perhaps revolutionary, most have simply rolled out mortgage and savings products in an attempt to muscle in on the home turf of the UK’s building societies. Add to the mix a fast deteriorating High Street
Gavin Williamson is the unfortunate victim of the Parliamentary recess. With little in the way of political news, the Defence Secretary’s awkward exchange with Richard Madeley over his ‘shut up and go away’ Russia comment has received a lot of attention. Now the Good Morning Britain presenter has decided to prolong Williamson’s turmoil a bit
“The greatest politician in the world”, a friend quipped recently, “is the Westminster projection of Ruth Davidson”. I do not think this was meant altogether unkindly. It was, in part, a reflection of the age-old truth that what you cannot have so often seems more attractive than what you can. Davidson is a formidable communicator;
Never one to shy away from a platitude, the shadow attorney general, Shami Chakrabarti, has declared that the PM must reform abortion law in Northern Ireland on the basis that women there “have been let down by privileged women and men for too long” and that, so far as Theresa May is concerned, “the test
Bond yields are soaring. Stock markets are tanking. The banks are looking wobbly, and money is starting to drain out of Italy. To listen to the mainstream commentary on the Italian crisis part 782, you’d imagine that a wild and irresponsible ‘populist’ government had just been tamed by the financial markets. And that once some
It’s always the ones you most expect. Roseanne Barr, an icon of Trump culture, has had her TV sitcom cancelled by ABC after she tweeted that former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett was the product of a union between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Planet of the Apes. Jarrett is black and was born in Iran.
Ruth Davidson’s Glasgow speech is making headlines about the NHS because that’s where most political village attention is right now. We all know that a big government announcement on health funding is coming and Davidson knows it too. As a former hack, she also knows how to hijack someone else’s story, so her speech is
If you have credit card balance on an existing account, you could save vast amounts of money by transferring the balance to another card. Here is a selection some of the best cards on the market with a 0% introductory balance transfer rate, from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.
Is Theresa May a feminist? That’s the question that’s dominating Westminster today following the Prime Minister’s reluctance to back reform of Northern Ireland’s strict abortion law. The Republic of Ireland’s decisive vote to overturn its own law on Friday has seen May come under pressure from Cabinet ministers and some of her own MPs to
With one state-imposed compliance exercise after another getting in the way of business, no wonder our productivity looks permanently sickly. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which takes effect this week, has imposed a huge bureaucratic burden on companies and charities — as well as, for those that do it properly, a sacrifice of valuable
If stoves and fires come under attack, country pubs and restaurants will collapse. This will happen, I suspect, even if Mr Gove does not ban them, because he is opening up a new world in which they will come under official disapproval. Before long, it will be alleged that pub staff suffer from the equivalent
Gavin Williamson – who told the Russians to ‘shut up and go away’ – is usually the one dishing out the rebukes. Not today. The Defence Secretary met his match in the form of Good Morning Britain presenter Richard Madeley after he repeatedly refused to answer a question on whether he was right to use
Two video clips did the rounds in the French media at the weekend. One went global, that of the heart-warming heroism of Mamoudou Gassama, a migrant who rescued a small boy dangling from a balcony in Paris; the other, being more feel-fear than feel-good, didn’t capture the world’s attention in quite the same way. This film was
It is generally agreed that Britain is suffering from a housing crisis, with big cities such as London being particular flashpoints. This year in the capital, the number of renters exceeded the number of homeowners for the first time. In the country, home ownership rates stand at a 30-year-low. And the proportion of 25 to
Oh dear. The Labour party is one of the loudest cheerleaders when it comes to giving 16-year-olds the vote. At PMQs in January, Emily Thornberry was particularly keen to push the cause. The shadow foreign secretary accused the Conservatives – who oppose such a move – of being in a ‘coalition of cavemen’, before going
The wags of the right have been chuckling since the Irish electorate voted to legalise abortion. Ha, ha, ha, they cry, look at all those liberals. They deplore the Brexit referendum result and seek to have it overturned but are whooping with delight at the – wait for it – referendum result in Ireland. Here
It’s safe to say that the Tory think tank Bright Blue hasn’t always enjoyed the greatest respect among the Conservative party-at-large. Although it has a dedicated following from Liberal Conservatives, its focus on green issues has seen more traditional Tories snipe that it bears a closer resemblance to Lib Dem yellow than a Tory blue.
The film awards season is over and Cannes has been handed back to wealthy holiday-makers, yet the #MeToo movement shows no signs of slowing down. Morgan Freeman is the most recent addition to the ignominious list of film producers, directors and actors who have had accusations of sexual harassment made against them since #MeToo took
Is Italy descending into political chaos? Some may shrug their shoulders and say well, it is Italy. Yes, Italy has had messy politics before. But that doesn’t make the current row any less high stakes. We don’t yet know if the League backs the demands of the Five Star – and the small Brothers of
