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No, Ed Miliband: zonal pricing won’t cut energy bills

Is Ed Miliband going to announce a move towards a zonal electricity market, where wholesale prices would vary between regions of Britain? It would...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Ross Clark

Siddiq hits back at Bangladesh over arrest warrant

Back to the curious case of Tulip Siddiq, Labour’s former anti-corruption minister who has been issued with an arrest warrant by Bangladesh over,...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Steerpike

Starmer’s trade deal vote hypocrisy

Well, well, well. While Rachel Reeves enjoys a week in Washington DC at the International Monetary Fund spring talks, back in the UK concerns are...

yesterday 1

The Spectator

Steerpike

Newsnightmare / When will the BBC ever learn?

They say that death and taxes are the only certain things in this life. I would add BBC bias into that mix. It was probably about 20 years ago that...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Douglas Murray

The extraordinary scale of the crisis facing the next pope

At 9.47 a.m. on Easter Monday we heard the words ‘con profondo dolore’ from a cardinal standing in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta. Two hours...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

Long live the long lunch!

I keep on my bedside table, where others might place religious texts, Keith Waterhouse’s seminal The Theory and Practice of Lunch. Waterhouse, that...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Kenton Allen

The case for replacing nurses with robots

Tending is a work of activism on behalf of the NHS. The script brings together the testimony of 70 nurses in a show spoken by three performers....

yesterday 5

The Spectator

Lloyd Evans

Keir Starmer is a shallow man

Keir Starmer thinks ‘this is the time now to lower the temperature’ on the gender debate. To ‘move forward’. To ‘conduct this debate with...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Stephen Daisley

Swinney’s ‘anti-Reform’ summit didn’t achieve much

John Swinney’s cross-party civic gathering – or ‘anti-Reform summit’ – met in Glasgow on Wednesday, with political party leaders from across...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Catriona Stewart

Pope Francis had his priorities right

After Pope Francis emerged from the Gemelli hospital in Rome last month, a reflection attributed to him a few years ago returned to circulation. It...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Melanie Mcdonagh

Conservatives all over the Anglosphere are paying the price for Trump

It is the great good fortune of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to be united by a common language, and a misfortune of even greater...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Henry Hill

The polarising poet, sculptor and ‘avant-gardener’ who maintained a private militia

Not many artists engage in the maintenance of a private militia, and it seems fair to assume that those who do may be bound to polarise. The...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Digby Warde-Aldam

Middle-class parents are creating a new breed of brat

I recently reconnected with an old friend; I went to his house and met his children for the first time. One of them looked up from his screen as we...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Arthur Mann

Honest truth / The hidden violence behind the trans ruling

It is ten months since the then merely aspirant education secretary Bridget Phillipson addressed the important issue of where transgender people...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Farage plans ‘Minister for deportations’

Machinery of government is not the sexiest of subjects – but it is a useful way of signalling a politician’s priorities. Rishi Sunak used his first...

yesterday 1

The Spectator

James Heale

The joy of Channel Island hopping

Matthew Parris has narrated this article for you to listen to. Seldom has a collective term been less appropriate: ‘the Channel Islands’ – as...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Matthew Parris

Concrete history / The joy of Channel Island hopping

Matthew Parris has narrated this article for you to listen to. Seldom has a collective term been less appropriate: ‘the Channel Islands’ – as...

yesterday 1

The Spectator

Matthew Parris

What the exploding DHL packages tell us about the Kremlin

The unfolding tale of incendiary devices planted in DHL packages across Europe not only highlights the dangers of Moscow’s campaign of direct...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Mark Galeotti

Poulenc’s Stabat Mater – sacred, fervent and always on the verge of breaking into giggles

It’s funny what you see at orchestral concerts. See, that is, not just hear. If you weren’t in the hall during Poulenc’s Stabat Mater would you...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Richard Bratby

It should be illegal for TV baddies to profit from their psychopathic acts

I’m about to give away the opening scene of the latest gangsters-are-cool drama MobLand. Don’t worry. It won’t spoil anything. By the end of this...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

James Delingpole

MobLand / It should be illegal for TV baddies to profit from their psychopathic acts

I’m about to give away the opening scene of the latest gangsters-are-cool drama MobLand. Don’t worry. It won’t spoil anything. By the end of this...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

James Delingpole

No sacred cows / Is the end of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ in sight?

Could the end of non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) be in sight? As the head of the Free Speech Union, I’ve been campaigning for their abolition for...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Toby Young

How Rome copes with the Conclave

Owen Matthews has narrated this article for you to listen to. Ordinary Romans, famous for their cheerful working-class familiarity, loved Pope...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Owen Matthews

America / Conservatives all over the Anglosphere are paying the price for Trump

It is the great good fortune of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to be united by a common language, and a misfortune of even greater...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Henry Hill

‘I’ve seen controllers come and go’: Radio 3’s Michael Berkeley interviewed

A few years ago I had a panic-stricken phone call from a female friend. ‘Help!’ she wailed. ‘Remind me what classical music I like. I think...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

Sport / A football regulator would be an own goal

The UK now has a political class that seems to have lost all interest in sport It’s that time of the year again in football when the Championship...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Roger Alton

Renewing the promise of ‘never again’

What does it mean to say ‘never again’? It is etched into memorials, inscribed in textbooks, whispered in the shadows of history’s darkest hour....

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Jonathan Sacerdoti

We need to crack down on music on public transport

Hold the front page, sound the alarm, remember where you were – the Lib Dems have come up with a good idea for once. Reinforcing the old adage that...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

James Hanson

Scotland’s school toilet ruling is another win for women’s rights

In the Scottish Borders, Earlston Primary School’s newly built campus has no single-sex toilet provision. This astonishing planning decision was...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Jenny Lindsay

The danger of banning face coverings at protests

As the government’s Crime and Policing Bill makes its way through parliament, MPs on the Public Bill Committee are scrutinising its clauses today –...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Freddie Attenborough

Bunker mentality / Why won’t Hitler conspiracies die?

Eighty years ago, as Red Army shells rained down over Adolf Hitler’s Reich Chancellery garden, a group of his remaining friends and colleagues...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Luke Daly-Groves

Pirates beseige maritime minister over ferries farrago

It’s not just the SNP who can’t sort out their ferries. A new row has broken out much further south over the failure to provide affordable...

yesterday 0

The Spectator

Steerpike

Fact check: is Ed Miliband right to say tax rises don’t affect gas prices?

It’s official: subjecting oil and gas companies to a 78 pence tax rate (which is corporation tax plus the government’s windfall tax) doesn’t...

yesterday 0

The Spectator

Ross Clark

Can Rachel Reeves get a US trade deal over the line?

As the Chancellor Rachel Reeves flies into Washington for a series of high-level meetings, there is lots of spin from the Treasury that she is...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Matthew Lynn

Leading article / The law that is choking civil society

If one were to ask for a quintessential display of the British character it would be hard to better the Shrewsbury Flower Show. Officially the...

yesterday 1

The Spectator

The Spectator

Northern Europe doesn’t get salads: Claro reviewed

We eat frena bread, hot puffs of flour and olive oil, with labneh, matbucha, harissa and olives Claro is at 12 Waterloo Place, St James’s, and, when...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Tanya Gold

Can Rachel Reeves woo Trump’s team – without alienating the EU?

The government is on a charm offensive in Washington. Tonight, Britain’s ambassador to the US, Lord Mandelson, will host officials from Donald...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Michael Simmons

Worth watching for the dog: The Friend reviewed

The Friend is an adaptation of the novel by Sigrid Nunez starring a harlequin Great Dane. If I remember rightly, Naomi Watts and Bill Murray are...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

The disturbing ambient music of William Tyler

One could argue that all musical forms are essentially incomplete until the listener joins the party, but ambient music seems more needily co-...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Graeme Thomson

‘Vladimir, STOP!’ / Trump is being humiliated by Putin

Theodore Roosevelt was a believer in speaking softly but carrying a big stick. But where does that leave Donald Trump, who today resorted to...

yesterday 0

The Spectator

Owen Matthews

A football regulator would be an own goal

The UK now has a political class that seems to have lost all interest in sport It’s that time of the year again in football when the Championship...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Roger Alton

I’ve had enough of crimewave Britain

Knife crime, shoplifting and fraud is on the rise in Britain. Fraud was up by a third in the last year, according to figures released by the Office...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

James Snell

Is an Epsom renaissance on the way?

Through 30 years of living within walking distance of the Derby course I was ever hopeful of seeing Epsom’s status revived to the 600 horsepower...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Robin Oakley

Why can’t the BBC Proms stick to classical music?

Welcome to this year’s BBC Proms, the self-styled ‘World’s Greatest Classical Music Festival’, whose programme was revealed today. Every year...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Stephen Pollard

The AfD is surging in the polls

Friedrich Merz, the victor of German elections in February is struggling even before he takes office. Outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social...

yesterday 1

The Spectator

Leon Mangasarian

It’s good that we can see the Pope’s body

On Wednesday, the lying in state for His Holiness Pope Francis began, with tens of thousands of mourners filing past his open casket in St Peter’s...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

Kevin Toolis

Books / Time is running out for the world’s great rivers

That rivers have a life of their own is an ancient idea become current again. Shape-shifting, vital and recognisably capable of being sickened or...

yesterday 2

The Spectator

David Profumo

Watch this space / We should be excited about signs of alien life

Last week, a team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge professor Nikku Madhusudhan announced that they had found tentative evidence for...

yesterday 0

The Spectator

Adam Frank

Tax and spend / Britain’s borrowing is spiralling out of control

Britain borrowed nearly £152 billion in the financial year to March – almost £21 billion more than at the same point in the last financial year,...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Michael Simmons

Is net zero possible without slave labour?

So, Ed Miliband has relented, and decided that after all it is not a good idea to build his green energy revolution on the back of slave labour in...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Ross Clark