Javier Milei’s election in 2023 was a repudiation of decades of Peronist turmoil, corruption and inflation. Milei offered shock therapy, delivered with an Austin Powers haircut and chainsaws. This is a man who had worked as a tantric sex coach and claims to speak not just with animals but also with God himself. Eyebrows were
In Silicon Valley there is a simple mantra that drives innovation: You Can Just Do Things. Wait for permission from the system, the bureaucrats or, worst of all, your lawyers, and nothing ever happens. Incumbents want inertia not challenge. Progress depends on movement. Nowhere does the PM seem so adrift than in the area he
Exactly a year ago, this magazine warned that ministers were showing a dangerous naivety towards China. We revealed that the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister were all intent on cosying up to Beijing. They were scornful of the wariness Conservative ministers had shown towards the Chinese Communist party. The Labour leadership believed
There have been 106 Archbishops of Canterbury since Gregory the Great declared Augustine his ‘Apostle to the English’ in 597. Their number has included Catholics and Protestants, progressives and traditionalists, academics, politicians, even a tank commander. But none had ever been a woman. Sarah Mullally’s appointment is a historic moment for the Church but it
Questions of identity permeate our politics. What is it to be English, to be British? The Prime Minister sought to reclaim patriotism for the left in his conference speech, but his invocation of football stadium flag-waving and Oasis swagger was a remix of Britpop themes which were tinnily jarring two decades ago and beyond tired
What is the point of Keir Starmer? He was the means by which the Labour party could suffocate the hard left and assume the mantle of respectability and, in due course, power. But he lacked, and has never acquired, a governing philosophy. He was handed a landslide by an electorate determined to eject the Conservatives
Politicians, authors, priests and the occasional Spectator editor have all served as the Oxford Union’s president over its 200-year history. Few among them would know what to make of George Abaraonye. The debating society’s president-elect faces disciplinary proceedings for celebrating the killing of Charlie Kirk. Upon hearing of the conservative activist’s assassination – some four
Athelstan has long faded from public imagination, despite being the king who, in 927 ad, first united England. But thanks to a campaign by historians such as Tom Holland, David Woodman and Michael Wood, the 1,100th anniversary of his coronation last week was celebrated with a memorial service, a new biography and the naming of
Britain’s energy policy is a mess. We have the highest energy prices in the developed world, which is damaging competitiveness, crippling our economy and accelerating the decline of our industries. This is not just economically illiterate, but also environmentally counterproductive and socially regressive. The drive to reduce carbon emissions produced by the UK may seem
In 1979, XTC sang: ‘We’re only making plans for Nigel/ We only want what’s best for him.’ The song is from the perspective of two overbearing parents, confident that their son is ‘happy in his world’ and that his future ‘is as good as sealed’. Nigel Farage is making plans for his own future but
Few British traditions can claim as long a history as racing. The first races thought to have taken place in these islands were organised by Roman soldiers encamped in Yorkshire, pitting English horses against Arabian. By the 900s, King Athelstan was placing an export ban on English horses due to their superiority over their continental
Sometimes when I go to bed, I think that if I were a young man I would emigrate,’ said James Callaghan, the then foreign secretary, in 1974. He was referring to that decade’s chronic economic dysfunction, with its double-digit inflation, growing unemployment and stuttering growth. Two years later, as prime minister, he would have to
In August 1945, Group Captain Leonard Cheshire was stationed on the Pacific island of Tinian as an official British observer of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Two decades later, he wrote for The Spectator about his experience. For him, the attack on the two cities represented ‘the ‘destruction of the
Last month, the government announced that 16-year-olds would be able to vote at the next general election. If these new voters had wanted to inform themselves about political issues over the weekend, they would have found it strangely difficult. Take, for example, a recent speech about the rape gangs made by the Tory MP Katie
The children of Gaza are enduring horrendous suffering. The control of aid has been restricted. Innocent lives have been set at nothing. Ruthlessness well beyond the terms of realpolitik has put hundreds of thousands at risk. The people responsible deserve global condemnation. But instead it seems they are to be rewarded. It is Hamas which
The United Kingdom’s immigration system is broken. Tens of thousands have entered the country who should not, and the bureaucracy which processes asylum cases is a creaking wreck. Those who do deserve a safe welcome are left in legal limbo for months, if not years. And yet the Home Office, which is responsible for this
Norman Tebbit, who died this week aged 94, was a self-made man who shouldered his way to the top of a party of old Etonians. He was, to many, the leather-clad bovver boy of Spitting Image, ordering the unemployed to get ‘on yer bike’. He was a devoted husband who stepped back from politics to
Labour swept to power on a pledge to ‘save the NHS’. As shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting said he would go ‘further than New Labour ever did’ to clear the health service’s backlog and, to achieve this, he claimed old taboos would be torn up, including the use of the private sector to improve services.
During the Troubles, some 2,500 people were victims of kneecappings – punishment shootings, dished out by paramilitaries, for perceived crimes ranging from fraternising with British soldiers to drug dealing and rape. The term is something of a misnomer. The torture entails a low-velocity gunshot to the knee from a handgun. That isn’t guaranteed to destroy
Some crimes are so horrific that our instinct is to look away. And there can be few as appalling as those perpetrated by the rape gangs whose activities Dame Louise Casey reported on this week. Girls as young as ten were beaten and sexually abused. They were tortured with baseball bats, knives and meat cleavers.
