Fraser Nelson is editor of The Spectator
The Spectator’s financial accounts are released today. We normally don’t make a fuss about them but these are unusual times, with plenty of interest in us as a company – since we are now, of course, up for sale. So for those interested, I’ll say a bit about our story so far. When I became
Next time there’s a pandemic, the advice of Dr Jenny Harries will be crucial. She runs the UK Health Security Agency, set up during Covid to replace the much-maligned Public Health England. In her interview with the Telegraph there seemed to be a penny-dropping moment where she suggested that Britain may be more like Sweden next time:
A year ago, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng had just announced that they would hold a mini-Budget. It turned out to be the tax-cutting Budget that people like me had long been arguing for. So why wasn’t I more supportive at time, and since? I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column and it takes us
Ever since Alastair Campbell’s declaration that ‘we don’t do God’, no prime minister – and almost no politician – has discussed their faith. David Cameron said his Christianity came in and out ‘like MagicFM in the Chilterns’, a line he borrowed from Boris Johnson who self-defined as ‘a kind of very, very bad Christian’. But
There’s a bit too much schadenfreude from Tories over the effective bankruptcy of Birmingham Council. Its ‘Section 114 notice’ is an admission that the council (Europe’s largest) is unable to meet a £760 million equal pay lawsuit – so spending on all but essential services in Britain’s second city will stop. A Labour-run council has
The two best things about Labour – the two reasons for thinking that Keir Starmer may be a reforming prime minister – were Wes Streeting at health and Jon Ashworth at welfare. Both have been prepared to acknowledge the need for reform that the Labour grassroots would find difficult. Streeting, it seems, has survived. But
Every three months, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) updates the full UK welfare picture. It’s a big task and there’s a six-month lag — but the resulting picture is the biggest scandal in politics. It shows that now, with a worker shortage crisis so acute that immigration has been running at a million
After waiting for months, Nadine Dorries has today served her resignation – as several MPs have done recently. But, enraged by Rishi Sunak’s refusal to put her in the House of Lords, she is also triggering a by-election which the Tories are highly likely to lose. In her letter, released in time for the Sunday newspapers,
Katharine Birbalsingh has been releasing videos of pupils at her school, Michaela Community, getting their GCSE results. They’re incredibly moving, all the more so because you wonder how many of these same kids – many from disadvantaged backgrounds – would have done if she had not set up that free school. These results are testimony, yes, to pupil effort. But
It’s great to see Philip Collins back in the Times: you may agree or disagree with him as a columnist but his writing is always elegant and thought-provoking. Today’s column looks at the conundrum facing Keir Starmer. ‘In all honesty I don’t think anyone involved can really say they know what it means to be a Labour government
The number of students studying modern languages is plummeting, The Sunday Times says today. ‘The number of pupils studying German has fallen below 2,200 with French also on a downward trend — amid fears students are becoming little Englanders.’ It shows a graph suggesting, rather absurdly, that Brexit is linked to the drop. Really? Little
In his interview with the Sunday Telegraph proclaiming himself to be pro-car, Rishi Sunak made an interesting point: that this was not about post-Uxbridge opportunism but about his values. ‘I have a set of principles and values that are important to me, and that anchor my approach to life and to government.’ He added, as
At 10 p.m. on Friday night, the BBC sent out a ‘breaking news’ notification informing millions that a joke made by Jeremy Clarkson about Meghan Markle has been deemed sexist by Ipso, the press regulator. That such attention was given to a few sentences published on p17 in a months-old article is odd, but the
With the return of Tory psychodrama and the leak of CCHQ lockdown party videos, Rishi Sunak needs something to go badly right for him. His best hope will be the Court of Appeal green-lighting his Rwanda deportation plan which he hopes will show major progress towards his pledge to ‘stop the boats’. The latest data
John Edmunds was, with Neil Ferguson, one of the main advocates of lockdown but has been remarkably silent about how this theory held up against the results. But he does, still, pop up to attack those who were sceptical of his old advice. Chief amongst them was Rishi Sunak, his target today. The Observer discloses that
One of the great parts of my job is that you get to meet the people you’ve always wanted to. When I first became editor, I used this a lot – mainly abusing my expenses account. Then we acquired an events department and with it, the facility to invite others along too. So next month, we’ll
Every successful digital publication has one thing in common: brilliant analytical people working hand-in-glove with editors. We’re looking to hire such a person. We have a strong data team at The Spectator which allowed us to scrutinise Sage in lockdown and allows us, now, to look at how we can better serve our own readers.
This was supposed to be the year when Recep Erdogan would finally come to grief. Instead, he has defied the odds and won today’s runoff in the Turkish presidential election with 52 per cent of the votes vs 48 per cent for 74-year-old opposition leader Kemal Kiliçdaroglu. This establishes Erdogan as one of the great
Jeremy Clarke, one of the most loved columnists in the history of The Spectator, died this morning at his home in Provence. Catriona, whom he married a few weeks ago, was by his side. He was 66. Everyone who read his column knew this day was coming, but that doesn’t make the news any easier
When researching The Spectator cover story last week, we came across a figure so shocking that I felt it had to be wrong: that Manchester, a city where 40,000 job vacancies are currently being offered, has an unemployment rate of 18 per cent. That is to say: almost one in five of the working-age population