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![]() Anne McelvoyThe Guardian |
I too have felt the full beam of the Justin Trudeau charm – and watched it wane. Ten years ago, when the suave heir to a political liberal dynasty...
George Orwell’s Animal Farm is the sturdiest of political satires for good reason. At the end of the account of a failed revolution by the porcine...
Two countries thousands of miles apart begin 2025 with their fates linked in blood by the interventions of Russia and their consequences. One is...
What would the period between turkey and New Year’s Day detox be without a row to enliven the torpor? The Reform-Conservative spat livened up the...
Rachel Reeves hosted a Downing Street bash for MPs, associates and children this week – part of her charm offensive to reassure colleagues and...
It must be bad, because Prince Andrew is ceasing all contact with yet another figure whose public face may have cloaked sinister purposes. A senior...
Well, it is better than a billing at the International Criminal Court or, more expeditiously, being hung from a Damascus lamp post in a feast of...
Angela Rayner always makes an impact. Watching her on stage at the Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards last week was a blast as she...
To govern is to choose between disadvantages, as the wily General de Gaulle diagnosed. Keir Starmer is less categoric. At the Lord Mayor’s...
The early months of this Government have been rock and roll – and not in a Rolling Stones kind of way. Sore heads about rising taxes and farmland...
Rod Stewart is playing Glastonbury next year at the age of 80, beating Stevie Wonder, rumoured to also be performing, at a mere 74. Elton John did...
Brexit, to many European leaders at the time and since, has been a swearword. On my professional shuttles between Brussels, Berlin and Paris, it’s...
Britain has had a sleepy agricultural lobby compared with more excitable European counterparts. Occasionally, the pro-hunting and shooting...
The Keir-miles are mounting fast. A leader whose previous experience of the world beyond Holborn and St Pancras and legal London was limited to...
Six thousand miles away from Washington, DC, the ghost of a Donald Trump victory hangs in the oil-tinged air on the Caspian Sea at the COP29...
Democratic campaign merch, like Kamala Harris’s election bid, is now in the clearance bin – in the airport gift shop in Washington DC, I spotted a...
So much for the anticipation of a “first gentleman”. One consequence of electing another male White House incumbent is that the tradition of glossy...
The Spectator editor’s office comes with a battered antique leather chair and distressed sofa so old that I can remember sitting on it when I...
Sitting in a parliamentary office with Kemi Badenoch shortly before the close of the Tory vote last week, two things struck me. The first was that...
The style was brisk, the pussy bow blouse had echoes of the Margaret Thatcher Powerfrau era – but alas it proved a bit droopy in the heat of the...
It looked like an election devoid of an “October surprise” – the kind of last-minute turnaround that could shift the White House race from...
Whose fault is the upcoming Budget – an event that will leave many more of us paying more tax? The run-up to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s speech...
It is an image that channels chirpy, geezer gangsters on TV: a convicted armed kidnapper released early from jail in Kent yelling, “big up Keir...
In his recent memoir, Tony Blair retells an American joke for election season. A politician arrives at the pearly gates and St Peter offers him a...
No one wishing for a quiet life would suggest voting for Kemi Badenoch in the Conservative leadership race. One of the last two competitors for the...
The Government’s skirmish with DP World, the large Dubai-based investor to the UK, has ended in a peace treaty at the expense of the Transport...
A year on from the Hamas’s attack on Israel, most of us can remember the anxiety and horror of the days afterwards as the images of human carnage...
Well, that was quick. As Keir Starmer nears his 100 days milestone, a pinnacle used by incoming governments to declare their early successes and...
On it rumbles, the quarrel about donations to support trendy prime ministerial spectacles, posh frocks for the the first lady of No 10, freebies to...
It was the battle for second place – the chance for the vice presidential contenders to amplify their respective campaigns. Tim Walz, the stolid...
For the depleted tribe of Tory members, a thin crowd of diehard acolytes and the weary leadership candidate teams arriving at the party’s...
There’s never much va-va-voom about Keir Starmer’s rhetoric, which is heavily dependent on well-trodden metaphor. After the “sunlight of hope”...
It has often been claimed in this election year that “violence has no place” in American politics. Reality begs to differ: the election season got...
Keir Starmer is bedding into the less enjoyable side of being Prime Minister. This weekend, it is a cash-for-dresses moment over alleged failures...
‘Expect the unexpected” is the bland but pointed advice given by the evasive editor of the Daily Beast to the bemused William Boot, accidental...
Given the propensity of both sides to project a winning streak, it is often clearer to ask who lost a campaign debate than who won it. Donald Trump...
The art of power play in the Royal Family has taken many forms down the centuries. In the case of the Princess of Wales, a video happily announcing...