The Week

Leading article

The Tories need to talk

Liam Fox has certainly given the Tories something to talk about as they gather for the party conference this weekend. Liam Fox has certainly given the Tories something to talk about as they gather for the party conference this weekend. Everything that he wrote in his leaked letter to David Cameron is true: the Conservatives

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week | 2 October 2010

The Spectator’s portrait of the week Home Ed Miliband, aged 40, was elected leader of the Labour party by 50.65 per cent of the vote, to 49.35 per cent for his brother David, aged 45. Ed Miliband had gained 15.522 per cent from MPs, 15.198 from party members — both lower figures than his brother,

Diary

Diary: Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg opens up his diary Waiting in the Scottish sunshine to meet the Pope, my eye is drawn up Arthur’s Seat. I feel a sudden, strong desire to climb it. A long walk is overdue, especially after a night on the ‘sleeper train’ — surely one of the crueller oxymorons in the English language.

Barometer

Barometer | 2 October 2010

Among the quango; Labour leadership; Power source; Gay population Among the quangos The government is to axe 177 quangos. Here are some of the most obscure, and their stated purposes: Agricultural Dwelling House Advisory Committees 16 regional bodies which hear disputes over tied housing on farms Commission for the Compact Aids partnership between the government

More from The Week

What’s not to like

The Spectator on Emma Thompson and contemporary English Was Emma Thompson right to berate a group of schoolgirls this week for saying ‘like’ and ‘innit’? Many Spectator readers would, we imagine, have cheered her on. It is annoying the way today’s teenagers pepper their speech with ‘like’ and put ‘innit?’ at the end of each

Letters

Letters | 2 October 2010

Spectator readers respond to recent articles Darwinian faith Sir: I am always amazed at how little Darwin’s devotees seem to know about his theory of how evolution came about. In addressing the familiar riddle of why the fossil record does not show ‘intermediate forms’ between one species and another, Mr Lewin (Letters, 25 September) caustically claims that