Decline and brawl Sir: Gus Carter’s insightful portrayal of ‘Scuzz Nation’ (‘Streets of shame’, 10 May) is less of a howl of anguish about Starmer’s Britain than an indictment of previous governments of all stripes since the late 1970s. It is also, to me, a call for more sophisticated thinking about the nature of governance
The unclued lights are stations on the Far North railway line from Inverness to Thurso and Wick. First prize Lesley Gibbons, Twickenham Runners-up Peter Dean, London W8; David Carpenter, Sutton Coldfield
When it comes to immigration, Keir Starmer has been ‘on a journey’. As a young barrister, he authored a review in which he argued that all immigration law was ‘racist’. As a new Labour backbencher, he called legislation to make renting to illegal immigrants a criminal offence ‘everyday racism’. While running for his party’s leadership,
Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said, ‘We risk becoming an island of strangers’ as the government published a white paper, Restoring Control Over the Immigration System. He stood by his words but ‘completely rejected’ suggestions that they echoed Enoch Powell’s phrase ‘strangers in their own country’ from his 1968 speech. The white paper
As a subscriber-only special, get exclusive access to The Spectator’s Book Club Live: an evening with Max Hastings. Join The Spectator’s literary editor, Sam Leith, and the military historian and former Telegraph editor-in-chief Max Hastings, to uncover the real story of D-Day. They will be discussing Max’s new book, Sword: D-Day – Trial by Battle, which explores – with extraordinary
Ka-shing in Sir: Ian Williams highlights (‘Chasing the dragon’, 3 May) the degree to which the Chinese state has acquired interests in the UK. Yet he overlooks a few tentacles of the Asian octopus that have curled around my home region of eastern England. Swathes of high-quality arable land are being subsumed into solar farms,
19th-century cyber crime M &S and the Co-op have suffered cyber attacks. Cyber crime didn’t quite begin with the internet. The first record of an attack on a communications network was in the city of Tours in 1834, where the Blanc brothers traded government bonds in Bordeaux and bribed the operator of the country’s telegraph
Unclued lights were fictional HOUSES (‘Some Addresses’). Paired lights were HOWARDS END and BAG END (The Hobbit). First prize J. Anson, Birmingham Runners-up Laura Gould, Edinburgh; Mydrim Jones, London WC1B
Democracy was born in the public square. The Athenian agora was the central meeting place of an engaged citizenry where business was transacted, social life flourished and a common direction for the people was determined. The idea of a public square – where individuals operate in a relationship of trust and shared endeavour – is
Home In a day that upset the apple cart of party politics, Reform won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by six votes, with 38.72 per cent of the vote, compared with Labour’s 52.9 per cent last year. Of 1,641 wards in England up for election, Reform won 677. The Tories lost 676, winning only 317.
As a subscriber-only special, get exclusive access to The Spectator’s local elections live post-match analysis with host Spectator editor Michael Gove, former Conservative minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chairman of the Reform party, Zia Yusuf, deputy political editor James Heale and political correspondent Lucy Dunn.
Cruel intentions Sir: Rod Liddle (‘Let’s strike a blow for honesty’, 26 April) seems to have fallen into the same trap as most writers who support the Supreme Court’s ruling on the trans issue – which is to refuse to differentiate between those who have undergone a full gender reassignment, so that they effectively no
Throughout Keir Starmer’s life, a recent fawning profile ran, he has ‘worked to safeguard the value of justice and democracy’, from fighting the death penalty in Caribbean courts as a young human-rights lawyer, to taking on Vladimir Putin by representing Alexander Litvinenko’s widow. ‘Those same principles,’ the profile gushes, ‘have guided him since he became
Home Sir Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, attacked current net-zero policies, saying that ‘any strategy based on either “phasing out” fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail’. Pay review bodies recommended rises for public-sector workers (4 per cent for teachers; 3 per cent for NHS
The seven unclued pairs are BENSON/HEDGES, COUNTRY/WESTERN, TIME/TIDE, MUSCAT/OMAN, TWEEDLEDUM/TWEEDLEDEE, DUMFRIES/GALLOWAY and BITS/BOBS. First prize Roland Rance, London E17 Runners-up Daniel Angel, Twickenham, Middlesex; Heather McLaren, Seaford, East Sussex
As a subscriber-only special, get exclusive access to our Americano Live event with Freddy Gray, The Spectator’s deputy editor and host of the Americano podcast, and special guest Lionel Shriver, as they discuss Trump’s first 100 days. It can be hard to keep up with Donald Trump’s ‘breakneck’ pace in his second term in the White House. What to
Man out of time Sir: That Mary Wakefield left Rowan Williams ‘with my questions for the most part unresolved’ will come as no surprise to his former students, myself included (‘The ABC of faith’, 19 April). As a ‘mature’ student at Cambridge, there was something very inspiring about Williams the academic, but also comfortingly peaceful
The unclued announcement from BBC1’s Pointless quiz is: ‘We gave one hundred people one hundred seconds to name as many cats as they could’. The other three unclued lights are CATS – as well as 25 Across! First prize Jenny Atkinson, Amersham, Bucks Runners-up Peter Turner, Bearsden, Glasgow; Colin Boyce, Heathfield, East Sussex
Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, no longer believes that a trans woman is a woman, his official spokesman said at a lobby briefing. He was asked about this six days after the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that a woman is defined by biological sex in equalities law. The justices unanimously
Papal reign The mostly elderly runners and riders to be the next pope are unlikely to challenge the record for the longest papal reign – still held by the very first pope, St Peter, who served for 34 years in the 1st century. The second-longest reign was the 31 years and 7 months served by
