In death, as in life, Elizabeth II has been a unifying force for her country. For all the political rancour of recent years, this week has revealed a country at ease with itself. People of all political persuasions have come together to show their respect – in Scotland just as much as in England. It
It’s hard to think of any Prime Minister who has entered office surrounded by such low expectations. Liz Truss was backed by just over half of Conservative party members and secured barely an eighth of MPs in the first ballot. Her critics dismiss her as a lightweight, wholly unsuited to tackling the problems now facing
In her memoirs, Raisa Gorbacheva recalls the moment when her husband turned from bureaucrat into reformer. ‘I’m in my seventh year of working in Moscow,’ he told her as they were walking together one evening. ‘Yet it’s been impossible to do anything important, large-scale, properly prepared. It’s like a brick wall – but life demands
In just over a week, Britain will have a new prime minister. No one can say that the 160,000 or so Conservative party members who will have made the choice have been deprived of exposure to the two candidates. The leadership race has dragged on for longer than a general election campaign, with endless televised
It has become received wisdom that Brexit has condemned Britain to chronic labour shortages. Many of the migrant workers who used to staff our hotels and restaurants, install our bathrooms and look after our children, returned home during lockdown and never returned. Sometimes that is blamed on the end of free movement, other times more
As A-level results come out today, we will find out if the government has made any progress in stemming exam grade inflation. As always, some candidates will celebrate while others will be disappointed. This year, though, the latter group is expected to be more numerous because exam boards are supposed to be clamping down on
Liz Truss has taken the lead in the Tory leadership race with an agenda that seems radical and ambitious, whereas Rishi Sunak appears to offer only elegantly managed decline. Truss promises instant relief from the rising cost of government; Sunak offers to reverse barely half of his own tax rises – and over the course
During the eurozone crisis, southern European states had to go cap in hand to Germany to stave off national bankruptcy. A decade on and it is Berlin doing the begging. Europe has reluctantly agreed a 15 per cent cut in gas use this winter in the hope that German factories can stay open and German
Trains were running even more slowly than usual. Schools were closed again. Offices were empty. No one would deny that Monday and Tuesday were on the warm side, at least by British standards. Even so, there was something more alarming than the temperature: how quickly the authorities started to close down society – and showed
A few years ago the Conservatives were excited about the march of the tech giants. Uber was offering an alternative to black cabs at a far lower cost, and Airbnb enabled homeowners to rent out a spare room to tourists at a fraction of the rate charged by hotels. Politicians were no longer dependent on
What is the purpose of a Conservative government? It’s a reasonable question for voters to ask. In 2019 Boris Johnson gave us a clear answer: he was a different type of politician. He would get Brexit done, then protect the public from the rising costs of government by freezing taxes. The public, he said, had
Nicola Sturgeon presents Scotland as a country outraged by Brexit and straining at the leash of the United Kingdom. She said she wants a second referendum on 19 October next year. But she has no powers to call one and has already referred herself to the Supreme Court, which is likely to confirm that only
A little over a year ago, The Spectator printed a cover story about the risk of inflation. Britain, we argued, was hugely vulnerable: the national debt was structured in such a way that even a small uptick in inflation followed by a rise in interest rates would inflict immense damage on public finances. The conventional
The problem with the bishops in the upper chamber is not that they speak too much, but too little. The attack on the government for sending migrants to Rwanda was a rare example of clerical intervention, but where were the bishops during the discussions about the evils of people-smuggling and the problem of migrants risking
If you have a flight booked in the next few months, it’s time to worry. A new era of air travel has arrived, in which reliability has been replaced with roulette. Airlines take bookings for flights they know might not take off. If staff shortages mean the flight is cancelled, passengers aren’t told until the
Rarely has a public figure taken a promise so seriously as the vow that Her Majesty the Queen made on her 21st birthday in 1947: ‘I declare before you all that my whole life – whether it be long or short – shall be devoted to your service.’ Predictions that she would take the occasion
An ability to survive narrow scrapes has been one of Boris Johnson’s defining qualities. The pictures of Downing Street’s lockdown social events included in the Sue Gray report were so dull as to be almost exculpatory: staid gatherings of half a dozen people around a long table with sandwiches still in their boxes, apple juice
From the start of the war in Ukraine, the democratic world has shown striking unity in the economic boycott of Russia. But sanctions are always a blunt instrument: aimed at the regime, they end up harming the whole population. Ordinary Russians, too, are victims of Vladimir Putin’s corruption and misrule. Far better to target the
The Ukraine crisis has transformed international affairs, forcing countries the world over to rethink their alliances and interests. New patterns are forming that will probably stay in place for many years – and one outcome is that global deals are being seen as more effective than regional ones. Sweden and Finland look set to join
As Boris Johnson faced the possibility of a no-confidence motion earlier this year, a large number of Tory MPs decided they would neither back him nor sack him. ‘Wait until the local elections,’ they said. The Prime Minister was chosen as party leader not because of popularity among his political peers (he has never commanded
