When Ed Miliband stands up in the House of Commons, he might be surprised to hear the loudest cheers coming from the wrong side of the chamber. He is becoming an unlikely Tory champion, the man who’ll do more than anyone else to ensure that David Cameron wins an outright majority at the next general
The murder of a teenager on Boxing Day, stabbed during a brawl over a pair of trainers in Oxford Street, offers another horrifying glimpse of the culture of violence being incubated in our sink estates. Police have not yet confirmed if this was another gang killing, but it seems to fit a sickening pattern. There
As soon as Thanksgiving is over, the Beverly Hills bitches are out and about in full force and full maquillage. Driving their Beemers and Mercs with maniacal intent, they hit the department stores determined to put a dent in their hubbys’ credit cards. Black Friday is what the day after Thanksgiving is called, as all the retailers
The hands of Big Ben are approaching the designated hour, and the bells are about to toll for our Readers’ Representative Award. Only a few days remain for you to vote for your favourite parliamentarian. Dwindling time is not the same as no time, of course. New runners can emerge and overtake old favourites in
A blue tide has washed over the latest nominations for The Spectator’s Readers’ Representative award. Last week, your votes were for parliamentarians from right across the political spectrum: Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, even the occasional Ukipper. This week, they are mostly for Conservatives. Perhaps this is a sympathy vote following Liam Fox’s resignation. Perhaps it
Q. A friend of ours went with his nephew to a funeral. The nephew is an absolute maniac driver. They flew up to Scotland and all the way our friend was terrified because the nephew was renting a car at the airport and then proposed to drive 50 miles. What to do? Just as the
It was Ladies’ Day at the RAC yesterday, so I went with my friends and did a water aerobics class. It was Ladies’ Day at the RAC yesterday, so I went with my friends and did a water aerobics class. When I first started going to the RAC, ladies could only go as ‘the daughter
Q. My new boyfriend holds his knife like a pencil. How can I gently correct this without him thinking I am starting to nag too early on in the relationship? My parents will be appalled. — Name withheld, Godalming, Surrey A. You may be unable to break the habit but you can explain its
So everyone is going to live much longer and will therefore have to work much longer to pay for their pensions. But what is so wrong with dying, Greeks and Romans would ask? So everyone is going to live much longer and will therefore have to work much longer to pay for their pensions. But
Almost 20 years ago, Samuel Huntingdon forecast a ‘clash of civilisations’. Almost 20 years ago, Samuel Huntingdon forecast a ‘clash of civilisations’. In the past few months, this clash has become outright war. Christian minorities, who have lived peacefully in Muslim countries for generations, are finding themselves subject to increasingly violent persecution. Churches are being
As I was slipping a pudding into the water to boil a bellowing noise like the questing beast in Malory made me jump. But I did not drop it. ‘My word of the year,’ said my husband, blowing like a tuba-player through a rolled up copy of the Radio Times. ‘Vuvuzela. We’d never heard of
Part of the pleasure of the WikiLeaks revelations is that they confirm the view now universally reviled as ‘neocon’. Part of the pleasure of the WikiLeaks revelations is that they confirm the view now universally reviled as ‘neocon’. It emerges that whereas the public pronouncements of the Arab world all concentrate on Israel as the
Churchill popped up early at last week’s Spectator debate, which was sponsored by Brewin Dolphin. Churchill popped up early at last week’s Spectator debate, which was sponsored by Brewin Dolphin. James Crabtree, the Financial Times’s comment editor, deplored the way our war leader’s bust had been ‘removed from the White House’ by an incoming Barack
War, debt and recession. Last month’s Strategic Defence and Security Review had to confront a unique combination of difficulties. Secretary of State Liam Fox, opening the Spectator conference on the future of defence procurement, explained the review’s aims. Proudly identifying himself as ‘a hawk on defence and on deficit reduction’ he re-stated his commitment to
A familiar story was played out in Brussels last week. A British prime minister entered the conference chamber vowing he would not give one inch to the European Union. He emerged a few hours later having given way but nonetheless declaring a ‘spectacular’ victory. It was John Major and Maastricht, Tony Blair and his ‘red
Just a few hours after the publication of the strategic defence and security review, two crack teams of speakers clashed over the future of the armed forces at a Spectator debate sponsored by Brewin Dolphin. The novelist and military historian Brigadier Allan Mallinson proposed the motion — ‘The army, navy and air force are so
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To govern is to choose. For nine years, Gordon Brown delayed choosing between higher taxes or lower spending, which is why the last time he balanced the government’s books was 2001–02. Since then, we have been building up to the spending cuts announced this week. No matter who won the election, there would have been
Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics At Labour party conference in Manchester last week, David Miliband’s supporters could be spotted at 20 paces. They were the ones walking around in a daze, still not quite able to take in what had happened. They felt that their man had not so much lost as been
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