Michael Simmons is The Spectator's economics editor
The launch of the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek has caused turmoil in the markets. The release of China’s newest AI – which appears to work as effectively as programmes developed in the West – saw tech stocks plummet when the market opened today. It hasn’t helped that DeepSeek was made for $6 million: pennies compared to
Britain is turning sadness into sickness. More than four in five GPs believe that the ups and downs of normal life are being wrongly redefined by society as mental disorders. The news, from the Centre for Social Justice’s (CSJ) report Change the Prescription, follows comments from Tony Blair, who said: ‘You’ve got to be careful of
Rachel Reeve’s £25 billion National Insurance rise is beginning to bite. According to the latest data on our labour market, released this morning by the Office for National Statistics, payrolled employment fell by 47,000 last month — the sharpest fall since the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of vacancies in the economy fell for the 30th consecutive period,
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It’s been a tricky week for Rachel Reeves: an onslaught of criticism for the levels of borrowing costs, GDP at 0.1 per cent, and stagflation still gripping the UK economy. Remarkably she has come out of it looking stronger – politically at least. But can she afford to celebrate? The Spectator’s Kate Andrews and data
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This week: President Trump’s plan to Make America Greater In the cover piece for the magazine, our deputy editor and host of the Americano podcast, Freddy Gray, delves into Trump’s plans. He speaks to insiders, including Steve Bannon, about the President’s ambitions for empire-building. Could he really take over Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal?
Eyebrows were raised in the House of Lords this week as the Justice and Home Affairs Committee heard evidence that the Ministry of Justice is having to recruit from overseas to staff Britain’s overcrowded jails. Mark Fairhurst, the national chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association, said: We are recruiting from overseas and you are getting
13 min listen
Former Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced she is separating from her husband Peter Murrell, former chief executive of the SNP. The announcement comes as the police probe into the SNP’s funds and finances remains ongoing, with Sturgeon and ex-SNP treasurer Colin Beattie under investigation while Murrell was charged with embezzlement in April 2024.
39 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Catherine Lafferty argues that the drive to reduce teenage pregnancies enabled grooming gangs (1:27); following Luke Littler’s world championship victory, Michael Simmons says that Gen Z is ruining darts (6:32); Paul Wood looks at the return of Isis, and America’s unlikely ally in its fight against the terrorist group (10:35);
Luke ‘The Nuke’ Littler, born two weeks after the first iPhone was unveiled, stormed the Professional Darts Corporation world championships last week to become, at 17, the sport’s youngest ever world champion. How Littler behaved after his win shows how different young sports stars are today. Littler didn’t celebrate by going out drinking; no hotel
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On this week’s 2024 Out Loud: Cindy Yu examined Chinese work ethic (1:13); Michael Simmons declared his love of the doner kebab (6:28); Angus Colwell reported from Israel in July (9:27); Igor Toronyi-Lalic explained the inspiration behind the cinema of Marguerite Duras (14:41); Mary Wakefield analysed the disturbing truth of the Pelicot case (20:38); Fraser Nelson
More than half of Britons receive more from the state than they pay in taxes, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. The proportion of those receiving more through benefits than they paid in taxes last year fell slightly to 52.6 per cent, down a percentage point compared with the year before. The
Muhammad topped the list of most popular boy’s baby names in England and Wales last year, knocking Noah from first place. The figures, released by the Office for National Statistics this morning, show that Muhammad was the most common name given to newborn boys last year; 4,661 boys were named Muhammad with 4,382 Noahs. The
37 min listen
This week: are we drowning in a sea of twee? Gareth Roberts writes the cover article this week, arguing against what he sees as the hideous triviality of our times. ‘The British have lost their aversion to glutinous sentimentality,’ he declares. How did we get here, and who are the worst offenders? Gareth argues that
There are not many phrases that offend me more than ‘pigs in blankets’. The correct name for this dish is, of course, kilted sausages. In fact, the bacon-wrapped cocktail sausage has many incorrect names: the Irish go with kilted soldiers while the Germans call them Bernese sausages. The Americans for some reason wrap hotdogs in
Can Britain trust its economic statistics? The nation’s arbiters of numerical truth, the Office for National Statistics, yesterday released what on the face of it was good news for the Home Office and a vindication of the previous Conservative government’s policies to reduce worker visas and the number of dependants of migrants arriving in the
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It’s been a day of press conferences in Westminster. First to Reform UK, where Nigel Farage unveiled their newest defection: Dame Andrea Jenkyns, who had served as a Conservative MP from 2015-24. Could there be more defections on the horizon? Next to Keir Starmer who reacted to the newly published migration figures from the ONS.
How can you miss over 300,000 migrants? This morning the Office for National Statistics revised up its previous record high net migration figure to 906,000 meaning that since 2021, 307,000 more migrants are in the country than the ONS previously knew about. So, has Britain turned the corner on migration? There has been a 20
Labour talks of having the ‘bold ambition of an 80 per cent employment rate’. But who should they target to get there? The government published its white paper this week on ‘getting Britain working’ and tackling the growing health and disability benefits bill, which is forecast to hit £120 billion. Figures slipped out by the Office for
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The government have announced their latest effort to get Britons back into work. A series of benefit changes intend to tackle the fact that Britain is the only major economy where the employment rate has fallen over the past five years, largely because more people are out of work due to long-term ill health. Why
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An unexpected rise in inflation today takes the rate to higher than the Bank of England’s target, and adds to Rachel Reeves’s worries. James Heale talks to Katy Balls and The Spectator’s data editor Michael Simmons about the latest figures, and they also discuss the shadow minister Alex Burghart’s performance at Prime Minister’s Questions. Produced
