Madeline Grant is The Spectator’s assistant editor and parliamentary sketch writer.
‘Nurse! Nurse! He’s out again!’ That’s right, Sir Keir had escaped his handlers and was mingling with the public once more. This time he was ruining the coffee break of some workers at McLaren to talk about apprenticeships. Presumably he takes any opportunity he can to avoid the company of his own MPs at the
41 min listen
To submit your urgent questions to Michael and Maddie, go to spectator.co.uk/quiteright. This week on Quite right! Q&A: was lockdown the right call – and what did Britain get catastrophically wrong? Michael and Maddie unravel the ‘sins’ of the Covid era, from criminalising everyday behaviour to the rise of snitch culture. Did Sweden show there
I am going to shock Spectator readers and say something in praise of the government. There is one area where they are genuinely, consistently impressive, precise even. Received wisdom states that an institution is generally either malign or incompetent. The Starmer ministry time and again hits the absolute sweet spot where it can reasonably be
You always know it’s going to be a good PMQs when things start with Ian Lavery. After a winding and angry monologue about things being grim up north – Holden Caulfield meets Ken Loach – Lavery, with supreme comic timing, asked the Prime Minister if there was much to look forward to on the horizon.
48 min listen
This week: Rachel Reeves reels as Labour’s Budget unravels – and a far-left Life of Brian sequel plays out in Liverpool. After a bruising seven days for the Chancellor, Michael and Maddie ask whether Reeves’s position is now beyond repair. Did Keir Starmer’s bizarre nursery press conference steady the ship – or simply confirm that
King John placing his seal on Magna Carta 810 years ago is widely held to be a low point for the monarch and a boon for the rest of us. Now all those centuries later his work is about to be undone by none other than David Lammy who arrived in the House today to
You can always tell someone is in trouble when the Prime Minister calls an emergency press conference. A combined force of black cats and magpies arriving at your front door, bursting in and putting new shoes on your table while opening umbrellas inside would be less of a bad omen than Keir Starmer setting up
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‘Marriage is the real rebellion’ argues Madeline Grant in the Spectator’s cover article this week. The Office for National Statistics predicts that by 2050 only 30 per cent of adults will be married. This amounts to a ‘relationship recession’ where singleness is ‘more in vogue now than it has been since the dissolution of the monastries’. With
Wantage may seem an unlikely birthplace for England’s greatest gift to the world. Yet as well as being the site of King Alfred’s birth, it gives its name to the legal code of the 990s, in which Aethelred the Unready laid down the right of an Englishman to be tried by a jury. Fast forward
Jonathan Swift had a suitably unromantic attitude to holy matrimony. Once, when sheltering under a tree during a storm near Lichfield, he was asked to marry a heavily pregnant bride to a rather guilty-looking groom. Asked to provide evidence that he had performed the shotgun wedding, Swift found a piece of paper and wrote: Under
It is genuinely astonishing that Rachel Reeves isn’t accompanied by the Benny Hill theme at all times. Her ability to harvest the fruit of incompetence is without compare. She is the Nellie Melba of cock-ups, an anti-Midas in a pantsuit and a Lego hairpiece. Really, those of us who take joy from seeing a disaster
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This week: After leaked EHRC guidance threw Labour’s position on biological sex into disarray, Michael and Maddie ask whether Bridget Phillipson is deliberately delaying clarity on the law – and why Wes Streeting appears to be retreating from his once ‘gender-critical’ stance. Is Labour quietly preparing to water down long-awaited guidance? And has the return
Rachel Reeves has been speaking to the newspapers trying to sell her Budget, which given her communication abilities is a bit like asking King Herod to do your babysitting. The Chancellor of the Exchequer appears to be getting the excuses in early; it’s almost as if she, like everyone else, knows that next week’s announcements
36 min listen
To submit your urgent questions to Michael and Maddie, go to: spectator.co.uk/quiteright This week on Quite right! Q&A: Is the Treasury still fit for purpose – or has ‘Treasury brain’ taken over Whitehall? Michael and Maddie dig into the culture and power of Britain’s most influential department, from the Oxbridge-heavy ‘Treasury boys’ to a ‘visionless’
One must say this for the Home Secretary, she is a Parliamentary Pugilist. While the general demeanour of the government in which she serves has a Sir Robin the Chickenhearted attitude to parliamentary spats (one can imagine the adenoidal cry of ‘Run Away’ ricocheting around No. 10 every Wednesday), Shabana Mahmood seems to enjoy a
With the country looking forward to Rachel Reeves’s big moment next week – in much the same way you would look forward to root canal treatment or a trepanning – it was no surprise that this week’s PMQs focused on tax and leaks. That the government seems to conduct policy formulation by Chinese Whispers is
50 min listen
This week: a Commons showdown over asylum – and a cold shower for Net Zero orthodoxy. After Shabana Mahmood’s debuts Labour’s new asylum proposals, Michael and Maddie ask whether her barnstorming performance signals a new star in Starmer’s government – or whether the Home Secretary is dangerously over-promising on a problem no minister has yet
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: John Power examines the rise in drug abuse and homelessness on British streets; Madeline Grant explains the allure of Hollywood radical Sydney Sweeney; Ysenda Maxtone Graham laments the rise of the on-the-day party flake; Calvin Po warns of a war on Britain’s historic architecture; and Gus Carter reads his
32 min listen
To submit your urgent questions to Michael and Maddie, go to: spectator.co.uk/quiteright This week on Quite right! Q&A: Could Britain see a snap election before 2029? Michael and Maddie unpack the constitutional mechanics – and explain why, despite the chaos, an early vote remains unlikely. They also turn to Labour’s troubles: growing pressure on Keir
Every time you feel down about Britain’s out-of-touch elites, a look across the Atlantic is a reassuring reminder that it could be worse. Hollywood, in particular, seems incapable of learning lessons. The highlight for me was when various actors tried to comfort people during the pandemic by recording a butchered version of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’
