All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The emergence of Yasser Abu Shabab and his ‘Popular Forces’ militia in eastern Rafah has become an unexpected fault line in the shifting landscape of Gaza. In recent days, a flurry of claims, counterclaims, and raw facts has begun to seep through the fog of war. Cracks are appearing in Hamas’s once unchallenged grip, and
The last week has been a rare cheery one for the Left; not only did Elon Musk and Donald Trump fall out and part ways with all the vim and venom of two teenage sweethearts, but Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf also split briefly – at least until the Reform chairman had second thoughts and
Rachel Reeves was visiting a gardening club for the retired. ‘Do you come here every week?’ she simpered at some pensioners. No, but plenty of people wish you did. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was here to announce a U-turn on winter fuel allowance and so chose this almost comically soft-ball context to do so.
Having already angered older voters with their controversial changes to winter fuel payments last autumn, Labour has now achieved a generational symmetry by angering younger voters with its subsequent U-turn. Rachel Reeves has today announced that more than three quarters of pensioners will receive the winter fuel payment this year. It means any individual with
When Rachel Reeves last week tried to shift the narrative around her spending review – from one of fiscal restraint to ‘spend, spend, spend’ – she ‘unveiled’ £113 billion in infrastructure investment. But for those in Westminster with more than a short-term memory, they will have felt a distinct sense of déjà vu. That’s because
‘Our ambition is to reindustrialise Wales,’ Reform’s Nigel Farage announced to a small room lit up with turquoise lights at the back of Port Talbot’s Plaza Café. The Reform leader had chosen the ideal place to launch his long campaign for the Senedd next May. The town’s last traditional blast furnace closed in October; Farage wants
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In the new edition of Spectator World, author and anthropologist Max Horder argues the US is experiencing a change in its psyche, and left-wing violence is being normalised. He joins Freddy Gray on the Americano podcast to discuss the various examples attached to this, and what the dereliction of democratic disagreement means for us all.
A change in politics is coming. Until now, the progressives were the ones with networks, stemming from Joe Biden’s White House, to think tanks, and the legacy media. For the right, politics was not a fair fight. The internet has changed that. Karol Nawrocki’s win in Poland’s presidential election marked a key moment in the
This weekend’s immigration protests in LA showed every element in American politics at its absolute worst. The right was rabidly xenophobic, President Trump belligerent and authoritarian. Democratic leadership clueless, unfocused, weak and in denial – and the left manipulative and deliberately violent. Anyone with a whit of sense stayed as far away from the proceedings
Say what you like about the Duchess of Sussex – and I try to – but she has a knack for coming up with the provocative. While the world is still reeling from the recent video of her twerking (and a thousand thinkpieces solemnly debating exactly whether she has a right to twerk or not), she has
For years, Steerpike has been warning about the dangers of a new Chinese ‘super-embassy’ being built in Tower Hamlets. Located on the site of Britain’s old Royal Mint, there are plans to build Beijing’s largest overseas outpost, sitting opposite the Tower of London. Local residents, many of whom are Uighur Muslim, are viscerally opposed, while
Fair play to Draco Malfoy. (Now there are five words I never thought I’d write.) Tom Felton, who played Harry Potter’s platinum-blond nemesis in the films, has done what so many of his young co-stars have failed to do: he has defended the woman to whom he owes his career. Tom Felton, who played Harry
This afternoon Rachel Reeves finally completed the longest U-turn in British politics. Ahead of her spending review on Wednesday, the Chancellor confirmed she intends to reverse most of the cuts to winter fuel that she announced last summer. In July, she removed the benefit from ten million pensioners; today she admitted she will restore it
In last Friday’s early evening rush hour, three police vehicles had parked by the side of the North Circular Road in west London to deal with an incident involving a car and a van. A woman was sitting on a foldaway camping chair, looking shocked. Beside her was a young, uniformed officer, diligently writing an
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James Nation, formerly a special adviser to Rishi Sunak and now an MD at Forefront Advisers, joins the Spectator’s deputy political editor James Heale and economics editor Michael Simmons, to talk through the latest on the government’s spending review, which is due to be announced on Wednesday. The last holdout appears to be Home Secretary Yvette
Good news for British bobbies: you are about to get a real-terms pay rise. Yes, that is right: Yvette Cooper has reportedly wrung the change out of Rachel Reeves, amid some eleventh-hour pay negotiations ahead of Wednesday’s spending review. But while few would begrudge those working hard some extra cash, Mr S is not alone
High-level talks have started in London today between American and Chinese officials aimed at dialling down the trade tensions between the two largest economies in the world. If they result in a breakthrough, perhaps it will be known as the ‘London accord’. But can President Trump strike a ‘grand bargain’ with China? There is every
The secret is out: vegetarians are ‘tougher’ and more ‘power-hungry’ than meat eaters, according to a study in the Times this morning. Well, as a vegan I suppose I must be even tougher and more megalomaniacal. I’m surprised, then, to not find myself doing a whole lot of street brawling or holding any subterranean meetings to discuss how I’ll
Back to Scotland, where yet another ferry is facing further delays. The MV Glen Rosa, which is being built at the Ferguson Marine shipyard in Port Glasgow, has been hit by another setback – despite already being six years behind schedule and more than £100 million over budget. Talk about incompetent, eh? This isn’t the
Gary Lineker may have been finally forced out of the Beeb, but the ex-footballer is still managing to make headlines. Now it transpires that the son of the late award-winning football journalist Brian Glanville – who was made football correspondent for the Sunday Times in 1958 and covered every World Cup for the next 44
Kemi Badenoch says the Conservative party will take a look at withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), freeing us at a leap and a bound from the tyranny of human rights lawyers. The Tory leader would give Britain the power to deter the cross-Channel influx of asylum seekers, by withdrawing protections from
An e-scooter revolution is coming to Britain whether the country likes it or not. “The revolution will hurt a little, but it’s necessary,” declared the vice-president of one of Europe’s leading e-scooter rental companies. Christina Moe Gjerde of Sweden’s Voi Technology has said her ambition was to have 50,000 more e-bikes and scooters on the streets
Once again, the Mediterranean has hosted a familiar theatre of self-satisfied spectacle. This time, however, the curtain has come down swiftly. The latest vessel to set sail in defiance of Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza – the Madleen, a boat bloated with virtue signalling and the vanity of performative compassion – has been intercepted by
So, there we have it. The President of the United States wants to bypass state governors and deploy the National Guard and the US Marine Corps against his own citizens. This comes after Donald Trump’s administration, apparently impatient with the existing legal immigration process, started bundling black and brown people into vans with a view
The country is slipping away. The whole place, slowly, but London suddenly, blinding glass slabs becoming East End blocks, ‘SPLENDID NEW APARTMENTS!’ turning to marshland, to golf clubs, to small towns and a train station, Laindon, Essex, which has a nice 4×4 Porsche parked outside. Decline is the mood of Britain, and I was going
This country still has a problem with a radical ideology. News that the government’s anti-radicalisation programme, Prevent, now classifies concerns about mass migration, or ‘cultural nationalism’, as a potential ‘terrorist ideology’ reveals the magnitude of this problem. And the problem in question is hyper-liberalism, a radical ideology that remains endemic in Prevent and elsewhere in the arms
If the problem with Labour is that it believes in nothing, the problem with Reform is that it believes in everything. The dispute over the burqa is only the latest example. Few things unite supporters of Reform like opposition to benefits for anyone other than themselves In pushing Keir Starmer to ban the burqa ‘in
Remember when Leo Varadkar egged on someone with male strength who was punching women in the face? It sounds made up, I know. Varadkar, the former Taoiseach of Ireland, is painfully PC. He might have started his political career as a small-c conservative. But he ended up guffawing with Justin Trudeau over their shared penchant for
My memory is that October is cold in Sutherland in the Highlands of Scotland. Come to think of it, my memory is that June can be cold too. Nature might well abhor a vacuum, but whether anything can convincingly fill the one left by the Kirk’s role in Scottish life remains to be seen As
The Prison Officers’ Association (POA) and its national chair Mark Fairhurst have a reputation for always wanting prisons to be more secure and more punitive. So it was a surprise when Fairhurst told me he opposes the government’s new prison building programme, and went on to describe his ideal justice system in terms which the
Since its general election a month ago, Australia’s politics have endured their biggest upheaval in fifty years. Its Labor government was re-elected by a massive majority, when just months ago it was in danger of being tossed out, and the conservative opposition parties are in existential turmoil and even briefly severed their coalition. Erin Patterson
Well, that was quick. Within 48 hours of his resignation as party chairman, Zia Yusuf has returned to the Reform fold. In a joint Sunday Times interview with Nigel Farage, Yusuf has admitted to making a ‘mistake’. He will now take up a new revised role within the party, focusing on policy formation and leading on the
Israeli forces operating inside Gaza have retrieved the body of Thai agricultural worker Nattapong Pinta, bringing to a close one of the many grim and unresolved chapters from the October 7th atrocities. In a joint operation by the Shin Bet and the IDF, based on intelligence gleaned from captured militants, the body was recovered in
Does the Metropolitan Police have more respect for the rights of aggressive protestors than it does for Parliament itself? That’s the unavoidable question after the Met handled the latest demonstrations outside the Palace of Westminster with the usual kid gloves. If the police were not aware of the protestors’ plans, how could such a failure