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Labour contenders jockey for position

They say you should never waste a good crisis. And that certainly seems to be the mantra of certain senior figures within the Labour party, given...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Steerpike

Poll: half of voters unaware of ‘Boriswave’

What likelihood of a Boris Johnson comeback? Well, according to the man himself, there is, apparently, ‘more chance of a baked bean winning Royal...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Steerpike

Politics / How big will the Labour welfare rebellion be?

This afternoon Liz Kendall will update the House of Commons on her revised plans for welfare, following the concessions wrung out of her by Labour...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

James Heale

Television / None of Mitfords sounds posh enough: Outrageous reviewed

There aren’t many dramas featuring the rise of the Nazis that could be described as jaunty, but Outrageous is one. Oddly, this seems to be the...

yesterday 30

The Spectator

James Walton

Politicians, not ChatGPT, caused the recruitment slump

The machines are already smarter and better organised than humans. They never ask for a pay rise, and they don’t ask any awkward questions about...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Matthew Lynn

Architecture / The architects redesigning death

Unesco doesn’t hand out world-heritage status to absences, but if it did, there would be memorials all over the western world to our genius in...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Stuart Jeffries

Should Chris Coghlan be denied Holy Communion?

It is not, it’s fair to say, a universal view among Catholic priests that MPs who vote the wrong way on assisted dying and the decriminalisation of...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Melanie Mcdonagh

Why we still lust after gold

On Tuesday, as the world teetered on the brink of war in the Middle East, the Financial Times’ front page focused on the possibility that holders...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Nigel Jones

Books / What was millennial girl power really about?

The 1990s and the following decade were, it is widely agreed, a bad time to be a girl. Which is strange, because a girl seemed like the best thing...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Sarah Ditum

Barbecues are almost always bad

I will never forget the horror of walking into the breakfast room, jet-lagged to hell, in a hotel in Chicago, looking for coffee and a sugar hit to...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Julie Bindel

Sport / Why I hate Wimbledon

Here we go: two weeks of wall-to-wall coverage of the sport for people who hate sport. The most boring game ever invented, played by the most...

yesterday 9

The Spectator

Stephen Pollard

Festival fever / Take me back to Glastonbury

Judging by the coverage of this year’s Glastonbury festival, and the reaction in certain quarters, you would be forgiven for thinking that it was...

yesterday 9

The Spectator

Alexander Larman

Woolworths cancels The Spectator

The Spectator has thousands of readers in South Africa, many of whom get their weekly magazine from Woolworths, the country’s upmarket retailer....

yesterday 9

The Spectator

Lukas Degutis

The bluster and waffle of George Freeman

Retromania is well and truly upon us. Neil Young just headlined Glastonbury. Noel Edmonds is back on the telly. And a Tory MP has been turned over...

yesterday 7

The Spectator

Sam Leith

Will Putin really rein in Russia’s defence spending?

At the very time when those warmongering Nato nations are pledging to raise their defence spending substantially, that doveish peacenik Vladimir...

yesterday 8

The Spectator

Mark Galeotti

The state needs to chill out about the hot weather

Since the year dot, it’s got rather warm in southern England at some stage most summers. Not scorching. In recent years, it’s usually reached...

yesterday 8

The Spectator

Robert Taylor

On the Israel-Syria border, death is always close

Syria’s new president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, is desperate to stay on the sidelines of the Iran-Israel war. Most middle eastern states have strongly...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Fin De Pencier

Britain is facing a doomy economic future

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has confirmed the economy grew by 0.7 per cent in the first three months of the year. The figures,...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Michael Simmons

No sacred cows / The secret to ‘womankeeping’

God, men are pathetic. At least, that’s the view of Angelica Puzio Ferrara, a researcher at Stanford, who has come up with a new term to explain...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Toby Young

Gueux / Meet France’s new anti-green movement

A new anti-green social movement is gathering momentum in France seven years after the Yellow Vests rocked the establishment. The ‘Gueux’, which...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Gavin Mortimer

Watch / Pro-Palestine mob in Leicester chant 'death to the IDF'

Pro-Palestine demonstrators on the streets of Britain have been led in a chant of ‘Death, death to the IDF’ – in a sick imitation of punk duo Bob...

yesterday 1

The Spectator

Steerpike

PIP / Labour MPs are still sceptical of the Welfare Bill

Liz Kendall tried to use her Commons statement on the government’s U-turn on some of the disability benefit cuts to persuade her colleagues that...

yesterday 1

The Spectator

Isabel Hardman

Chris Coghlan / Being a Christian isn’t easy

Spare a thought for Chris Coghlan, who has learned to his horror that not only is the Pope a Catholic, his own priest is one too. The Liberal...

yesterday 1

The Spectator

Stephen Daisley

Glastonbury / How did the BBC end up broadcasting Bob Vylan?

Until last weekend, Bob Vylan were not a household name. I admit that I had never heard of the rap group before. If you’d have asked me, I’d have...

yesterday 1

The Spectator

Danny Shaw

The Spectator presents: Living with a Politician

Exclusive to subscribers, watch our latest event Living with a Politician live.  Join Sarah Vine, (author of How Not to Be a Political Wife), with...

yesterday 0

The Spectator

The Spectator

Liz Kendall’s humiliating welfare climb-down

‘This government believes in equality and social justice,’ began Liz Kendall. Which government she was describing is anyone’s guess. I suspect...

yesterday 0

The Spectator

Madeleine Grant

Red tape is ruining Britain’s pubs

Red tape is ruining Britain’s pubs

Takings were falling. Regulars were drifting away. Our pub was in a bad way. It was clear that things needed to change. But, paralysed by fear of...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Rory Hanrahan

Exclusive: Met won’t prosecute Kneecap over ‘Kill your MP’

Exclusive: Met won’t prosecute Kneecap over ‘Kill your MP’

How low is too low? Kneecap seem determined to find out, judging by their never-ending mission to troll the UK. But last month even the West...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Steerpike

Junior doctors won’t stop striking? Sack them

Junior doctors won’t stop striking? Sack them

The medics we knew and loved as ‘junior doctors’ were redesignated ‘resident doctors’ as part of their last pay settlement in September. If...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Mary Dejevsky

Glastonbury has become a sinister festival of anti-Semitism

Glastonbury has become a sinister festival of anti-Semitism

They’re chanting for the death of Jews at Glastonbury. Yesterday a swaying mob of faux-virtuous poseurs blithely howled for ‘Death, death to the...

previous day 30

The Spectator

Brendan O’Neill

Fast food / How the drive-thru took over Britain

Fast food / How the drive-thru took over Britain

Britain has received many things from America that we have little reason to be grateful for: Black Lives Matter, Instagram, the word ‘gotten’ – and...

previous day 20

The Spectator

Alexander Larman

Last orders / Red tape is ruining Britain’s pubs

Last orders / Red tape is ruining Britain’s pubs

Takings were falling. Regulars were drifting away. Our pub was in a bad way. It was clear that things needed to change. But, paralysed by fear of...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Rory Hanrahan

No spin / What pundits could learn from Sky cricket

No spin / What pundits could learn from Sky cricket

A great Test match at Headingley on Tuesday, the first of five this summer against India, brought a famous victory for England’s cricketers....

previous day 10

The Spectator

Michael Henderson

'The West isn't read for Putin's hybrid war'

'The West isn't read for Putin's hybrid war'

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is sounding the alarm. The end of the war in Ukraine, whenever it comes, won’t mean the end of Vladimir Putin, he says – nor...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Lisa Haseldine

What pundits could learn from Sky cricket

What pundits could learn from Sky cricket

A great Test match at Headingley on Tuesday, the first of five this summer against India, brought a famous victory for England’s cricketers....

previous day 10

The Spectator

Michael Henderson

The vicious genius of Adam Curtis

In an interview back in 2021, Adam Curtis explained that most political journalists couldn’t understand his films because they aren’t interested in...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Sam Kriss

The Guardian: let babies vote

The Guardian: let babies vote

I think I have just located Peak Guardian. It can be found on page 57 of the newspaper’s latest Saturday magazine, ‘Saturday’. And it rests...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Trump cannot be a fascist

Trump cannot be a fascist

The global left and their many friends in the media are insisting with increasing hysteria that Donald Trump is imposing fascism on America. Their...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Nicholas Farrell

How the drive-thru took over Britain

How the drive-thru took over Britain

Britain has received many things from America that we have little reason to be grateful for: Black Lives Matter, Instagram, the word ‘gotten’ – and...

previous day 20

The Spectator

Alexander Larman

Brexit betrayal is driving Tory voters into Farage’s arms

Brexit betrayal is driving Tory voters into Farage’s arms

Since returning to the political front line during the middle of last year’s election campaign, Nigel Farage has enjoyed remarkable success in his...

previous day 9

The Spectator

John Curtice

Arrests over speech are the real danger, not Glastonbury lefties

Arrests over speech are the real danger, not Glastonbury lefties

It is with some measure of irritation, I must confess, that I am drawn away from this balmy weekend to discuss the idiotic antics of a so-called...

previous day 4

The Spectator

Laurie Wastell

Oxfam’s Gaza propaganda

Oxfam’s Gaza propaganda

An astonishing email from Oxfam, one of Britain’s oldest and biggest humanitarian charities, dropped into my inbox this week. Dramatically titled...

saturday 9

The Spectator

Nigel Jones

Demographics is the new dividing line on the right

Demographics is the new dividing line on the right

It’s an ominous time for a state-of-the-nation conference. Each week, the shores we defended against Hitler, Napoleon and the Spanish Armada are...

saturday 20

The Spectator

Laurie Wastell

Unsociable media / The dark side of LinkedIn

Unsociable media / The dark side of LinkedIn

I’d always assumed that LinkedIn is Instagram for people with lanyards. A place for earnest self-congratulation, polite emoji applause, and lightly...

saturday 10

The Spectator

Octavius Black

Emma Thompson is wrong about sex

Emma Thompson is wrong about sex

I watched most of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande when it was on TV some months back. I wondered whether to write something about it. But I can’t...

saturday 10

The Spectator

Theo Hobson

Henry VIII turned England upside down

Henry VIII turned England upside down

Henry VIII, who was born on this day in 1509, is the only English monarch other than William the Conqueror who can claim to have destroyed a...

saturday 10

The Spectator

Travis Aaroe

Why Jews aren’t enjoying Glastonbury

Why Jews aren’t enjoying Glastonbury

I’ve never been to Glastonbury. As more of a heavy metal girl, it’s not really my music scene and, frankly, I don’t believe in camping. Did it...

saturday 9

The Spectator

Charlotte Henry

Tom Skinner and the triumph of Essex Man

As a teenager, my first husband was an Essex Man. It ended badly – all my fault – but I still retain a fondness for the breed, who I associate with...

saturday 8

The Spectator

Julie Burchill

Is your restaurant halal?

Is your restaurant halal?

Dos Mas Tacos opened recently next to Spitalfields Market, one of London’s trendiest and busiest areas. Two beef birria tacos cost £11.50; two...

saturday 7

The Spectator

Angus Colwell

Let Kneecap play

Let Kneecap play

During the Troubles, some 2,500 people were victims of kneecappings – punishment shootings, dished out by paramilitaries, for perceived crimes...

saturday 3

The Spectator

The Spectator