We are coming to the end of the first week of an election campaign that few were expecting when this week began. The parties are drawing their battle lines: the Tories are warning of a happy Vladimir Putin and a ‘coalition of chaos’ involving the SNP, Labour and the Lib Dems, while Labour is making
Len McCluskey has been re-elected as General Secretary of Unite. It was something of a messy fight: his rival Gerard Coyne was suspended yesterday – we still don’t know why – and the contest was much narrower than had been expected, with McCluskey winning by just 5,000 votes. The dismal turnout of 12 per cent also
Forget the phrases ‘long-term economic plan’ and ‘propped up by the SNP’, which came to define the 2015 election. Lynton Crosby, political mastermind and Conservative campaign director extraordinaire, has a new approach. It’s called ‘strong and stable leadership’ and its poster-girl is Theresa May. After having triggered the starting gun of the election earlier this week,
It seems the rush to blame the Borussia Dortmund bus bombing on Islamist extremists was wrong. German police have now arrested a 28 year-old man in connection with the incident; and despite initial assumptions that this assault was the work of Islamic terrorists, it appears this latest suspect has no connection with Islamic State. A week ago,
It’s easy to mock Nigel Farage over his decision to turn down an ‘easy win’ in Clacton or some other Westminster constituency in preference for the hard graft of the European Parliament and its excruciating regime of expenses and allowances. Easy, but quite likely wrong. Whether or not he ever sets foot in Parliament, Farage
The fact that nothing leaked about Mrs May’s snap election tells you much of what you need to know about her. It shows how iron is her discipline and how close her inner circle (so close, in fact, that it is a triangle rather than a circle). It suggests that she takes neither her cabinet
Theresa May’s surprise call for a snap election on Tuesday led many to praise the Prime Minister for running such a tight ship — with no leaks to the press ahead of the announcement. However, is May now paying a price for having such a small inner circle? As Charles Moore notes in this week’s
‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.’ This famous quote, attributed to Benjamin Franklin, holds as true today as it did at the time of writing in 1789. Given that versions of this sentiment date back to the early 18th century, and continue to be in use in 2017,
Allies of Pope Francis are saying that he’s planning to follow the example of Benedict XVI and retire. But he’ll only do so once he’s appointed enough liberal cardinals to make sure that the next conclave doesn’t elected a conservative who will interpret Catholic doctrine more strictly than he does. This, at least, is what allies of
This week’s Best Buys, provided by Moneyfacts, are Unsecured Personal Loans, £7,500 over five years.
“The happiest days of your life?” This week in the Books Podcast I ask the authors of two recent books about boarding schools whether the system that has formed the characters of the British ruling classes for several centuries is a blissful idyll or the Stanford Prison Experiment in cricket-whites. I’m joined by Ysenda Maxtone-Graham,
Len McCluskey has seen off a challenge to be elected to a third term at the helm of Unite. And what a seeing off it was. When the votes starting to come in, and reportedly showed the top two contenders neck-and-neck, McCluskey’s rival was promptly suspended. Gerard Coyne was stripped of his duties as West Midlands
Last night, an Islamic terrorist opened fire with an assault rifle on a police van on the Champs Élysées in Paris, killing one policeman and wounding two others before he was shot dead. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack and according to the French newspaper, Le Parisien, the gunman was a 39-year-old called Karim
Theresa May is riding high in the polls and there’s much talk of a Tory landslide – but that doesn’t mean the Government should rest on its laurels, says the Daily Telegraph. It’s vital, the paper says, that the PM does her best to ‘create a sense of urgency among the voters’; ‘They have to
On Tuesday morning I was thinking to myself how oddly pleasant social media seemed. Then Theresa May dropped her election bomb. Immediately the posts started appearing: ‘Tory scum’ and ‘Tories launch coup’, then came the memes and I thought: I can’t take another two months of this. I’d only just tentatively returned to Twitter and
The British Chess Magazine is the oldest continuously published chess magazine in the world. Recently it has been boosted by the appointment as co-editor of the Belgrade journalist Milan Dinic, who cut his teeth on the news journal Svedok (Witness). The last issue contained an interview with the entertaining and controversial Nigel Short, as well as
White to play. This position is from Costachi-Toma, Calimanesti 2017. Can you spot White’s winning coup? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 25 April or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks
Gemma Arterton’s new film, Their Finest, is about second world war propaganda. Her character, who is bookish and sensitive, is allowed — because of war — to write film scripts. She discovers two girls — two ordinary, pale, unhappy girls — who steal their father’s boat and sail to Dunkirk for the rescue. She thinks
John Constable was, as we say these days, conflicted about Brighton. On the one hand, as he wrote in a letter, he was revolted by this marine Piccadilly, populated with: ‘ladies dressed & undressed — gentlemen in morning gowns and slippers on, or without them altogether about knee deep in the breakers — footmen —
Back to the Foot year This year’s election has been likened to that of 1983 when, under Michael Foot’s leadership, Labour scored its worst result since 1918. What happened? — Labour’s vote share fell 36.9% to 27.6% and their seats from 261 to 209. — The Conservatives also lost vote share, down 1.5% to 42.4%.