Michael Gove is editor of The Spectator.
Airport security was much on my mind last Friday afternoon. I had been due to fly from Heathrow to Zurich that morning, but the substation fire meant a switch to an afternoon departure from London City Airport. City is a business-oriented operation in every respect and one of its many efficient features is a baggage-checking
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This afternoon, Rachel Reeves made good on her promise to deliver only one fiscal set piece per calendar year by announcing what is widely being considered a Budget… this precedes a spending review in the summer and an actual Budget in the autumn. The headline is that the Chancellor had to find £15 billion in
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On 23 March 2020, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the unprecedented decision to put the UK into lockdown. To mark the 5th anniversary of that announcement this weekend, we have brought together our editor Michael Gove – then a cabinet minister under Boris – and our associate editor Toby Young – an ardent critic of
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Bridget Phillipson’s schools bill is back in the Commons today. The scope of the legislation is twofold: firstly, looking at the welfare of children in schools and secondly at fundamentally changing the landscape of secondary education by doing away with academies (and with it the legacy of the previous Conservative government on education). The plan
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Colin Freeman explains how Islamic State tightened its grip on the Congo (1:23); Harry Ritchie draws attention to the thousands of languages facing extinction this century, as he reviews Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages by Lorna Gibb (8:00); Max Jeffery highlights the boxing academy changing young lives (13:20); Michael
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Slashing the winter fuel allowance, maintaining the two child benefit cap, cutting international aid, cutting the civil service, axing NHS bureaucracy, possibly slashing welfare expenditure… you’d be forgiven for thinking the Conservatives were in power. But no, these are all policies pursued by the current Labour government. So on today’s Saturday Shots Cindy Yu asks
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It was widely briefed that the main focus of Sir Keir Starmer’s speech in Yorkshire today was his plan to do away with Whitehall red tape. What was kept under wraps was the Prime Minister’s plans for the NHS – specifically to scrap NHS England. In a bid to tackle bureaucracy in the health service,
Education secretary really is the best job in government, though sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Lives can be transformed – hopefully for the better – as a direct consequence of the decisions you make. But you are also firmly in the firing line. There’s no other area of public policy in which everyone is
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It’s a special (and emotional) edition of Coffee House Shots this Saturday because it is the last with Kate Andrews on this side of the Atlantic. She joins our editor Michael Gove and political correspondent James Heale for a debate on ideology. Kate – a liberal, in the classical British sense – explains exactly why she is
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With reports of ‘billions’ of spending cuts earmarked for the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, taking place later this month, Michael Gove and Kate Andrews join Katy Balls to discuss what exactly Rachel Reeves could cut. With little fiscal headroom and sluggish forecasts of growth, Reeves doesn’t appear to have many options. It’s likely that welfare will
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The Spectator’s Katy Balls, Michael Gove and Kate Andrews were joined by special guests Robert Jenrick and Jonathan Ashworth for a live podcast, recorded at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster. The main topic of discussion was, of course, Donald Trump, whose inauguration has ushered in a new world disorder. His ‘shock and awe’ foreign policy
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Kemi Badenoch has today given a major speech outlining the Conservatives’ commitment to ‘realism’ in their foreign policy. She said, ‘You cannot help others if you cannot help yourself’, and that the sovereignty and strength of Britain matters ‘above all’. She also pressed Keir Starmer to push defence spending north of the 2.5 per cent
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‘What does a party get after nearly two decades in office, collapsing public services, an internal civil war and a £2 million police investigation? Re-election again – perhaps with an even bigger majority’, writes James Heale in The Spectator this week. He’s talking about the SNP, whose change in fortunes has less to do with their leader
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This week: the world needs a realist reset Donald Trump’s presidency is the harbinger of many things, writes The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove, one of which is a return to a more pitiless world landscape. The ideal of a rules-based international order has proved to be a false hope. Britain must accept that if we are
Sir Roger Scruton may not be the Prime Minister’s favourite author. Apparently Keir Starmer prefers Victoria Hislop. But as he prepares to travel to Washington next week, the PM could scarcely spend his time more wisely than burying his nose in The Uses of Pessimism – and the Dangers of False Hope, one of Scruton’s
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From Churchill to Thatcher to Blair to Farage, Parliament has seen some truly fantastic rhetoricians over the years. But last week came the news that – in a bid to improve his own oratorical skill – Keir Starmer employed a voice coach: former actress Leonie Mellinger. Mellinger has been at the centre of a fresh
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This week saw the publication of Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund’s new book Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer. It’s the second in their tell-all series of books on the Labour Party’s ups and downs and has caused quite a stir in Westminster. From the revelations about Keir Starmer’s voice coach causing a
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As a man with the instincts of an insurgent, Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, has found Labour’s first six months in office a frustrating time, writes The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove. ‘Many of his insights – those that made Labour electable – appeared to have been overlooked by the very ministers he propelled into
Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, does not immediately display the demeanour of a disruptor. He speaks softly, picks his phrases with care, and cultivates an unassuming image. But underneath the sober blue suit are the scars of a streetfighter. As a young man, McSweeney came to political maturity fighting the hard left in
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This week: why don’t we know how many people are in Britain? How many people live in the UK? It’s a straightforward question, yet the answer eludes some of the nation’s brightest statistical minds, writes Sam Bidwell for the cover this week. Whenever official figures are tested against real-world data, the population is almost always
