George Osborne has declared victory over Ed Balls, the IMF and all the others who warned that his austerity measures would throw Britain back into recession. But his triumphalism obscures a huge failure: his inability to contain the national debt. While the UK economy has been growing strongly (it is currently the fastest-growing of any
This week’s issue of the Spectator takes a close look at Europe. Nicholas Farrell focuses on the terminal decline of Italy, and asks whether anything can be done to stop the rot. Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP, suggests that David Cameron might not mean it when he says he will campaign for an EU exit
From The Spectator, 24 October 1914: In the western theatre of the war great movements have been going on which have won for themselves the name of the coast battle. Strange as it may sound, it appears that as soon as Antwerp was taken, and the inevitable State parade was finished, General von Kluck determined,
From ‘Topics of the day’, The Spectator, 24 October 1914: That spies are a great danger at the present time, and that espionage is being carried on on a gigantic scale, we do not doubt. It has been shown again and again that reports of the movements of our ships and of our troops, and
This is a sneak preview from tomorrow’s magazine: Home A hundred firemen could not prevent wooden cooling towers at Didcot B gas-fuelled power station in Oxfordshire from burning down. A consortium said it could power 2.5 million houses in Britain by 2018 with solar energy generated in southern Tunisia. The Bank of England indicated that
From The Spectator, 24 October 1914: On Thursday the police authorities throughout the country arrested a large number of enemy aliens. Most of them were persons of military age. We have dealt with this problem and also that of spies elsewhere, and will only repeat here that the country will support the Government in any
From The Spectator, 24 October 1914: The Germans, as we write, have got as far as Nieuport, which is, roughly, south-west of Ostend. There they have come into the “sphere of influence” of eleven British vessels, including three river monitors bought by the Admiralty at the beginning of the war from Brazil, for whom they
From The Spectator, 24 October 1914: EVIL practices, when they concern the relation of the sexes, are often allowed to fester into scandals, and even to bring moral and bodily ruin, before ordinary English men and women can induce themselves to speak of them. The newspapers lately have contained many allusions to the presence of
From The Spectator, 17 October 1914: The siege of Antwerp has been a minor tragedy in a quarter to which few probably gave a thought. The authorities of the Antwerp Zoological Gardens, before the bombardment began, felt compelled to destroy all the dangerous animals in their cages. They could not contemplate the possibility of beasts
From The Spectator, 17 October 1914: NEVER did a people and their Sovereign and his Consort deserve greater honour than the Belgians and their King and Queen. They have drunk the cup of misery and horror to the very dregs. “Their heads are bloody though unbowed.” The invaders have used against them the strength of
From The Spectator, 17 October 1914: King Carol of Roumania died suddenly at the Castle of Pelesh, Sinaia, on Saturday last, in his seventy-sixth year, and is succeeded by his nephew, Prince Ferdinand, born in 1865, who married in 1893 Princess Marie, daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh. King Carol, as a Hohenzollern, undoubtedly cast
‘No, I don’t think we’ve met, but I have abused you on social media.’
‘I’ve got us a TV dinner, followed by a Facebook dinner, followed by a Twitter dinner, followed by a. . . ’
‘Part of the constitution… they’re allowed to make just one smoke signal each.’
‘We all draw crap on our walls but he has to make such a big deal of it!’
Man flu season
‘There’s been a coo.’
‘Push! Push! Push harder!’
