All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
By this time next week the Johnson era will surely have begun. ‘We can, we will, we must now escape the giant hamster wheel of doom,’ our new Dear Leader will have declared in Downing Street. Or something like it. He will be rewarded with headlines such as ‘BoJo gives us back our mojo’. We
The time has come to disestablish the Church of England. As a deeply partisan Prayer Book Anglican – a churchmanship naturally inclined to support the cause of antidisestablishmentarianism – I say that rather grudgingly. But it pains me to admit the established church and mother church of Anglicanism is no longer fit for purpose. Atheists,
I’m glad the Foreign Secretary thinks it ‘unacceptable’ of Iran to have seized a British-flagged oil tanker in the Straits of Hormuz. But wouldn’t it have been a decent idea to give any British-flagged ships sailing through that tiny strait a naval escort? The risk was always there, ever since we seized an Iranian tanker
My voice is often recognised by people who don’t know me. My face, which is unmemorable, less so. But once I open my mouth it’s not uncommon at railway stations, on buses or at the supermarket till for someone to approach and ask me to confirm I’m Mr Parish, or Malcolm Parris, or whatever. I
Tom Watson has had more reinventions than Kylie Minogue has had mid-performance outfit changes. His performances over the years have ranged from baronial backroom fixer loathed by Blairites to scourge of Fleet Street when he took on Rupert Murdoch. There was a brief counter-culture period when he went around wearing a beret, a foray into
An old joke among political journalists is that you know a writer has run out of topics when they start producing columns either on their children or the Liberal Democrats. With so many other things going on, perhaps this is why Westminster has been oddly indifferent to the leadership contest taking place between Jo Swinson
Before he even gets in to Number 10, Boris Johnson must make one of the most important calls of his premiership. As I say in the Sun this morning, he must decide what his Brexit plan is. On Wednesday, calls with European leaders will begin—and Boris Johnson will have to know what he wants to
There are little in the way of festivities but today is nonetheless a landmark in Israeli history: Benjamin Netanyahu becomes the country’s longest-serving prime minister, displacing beloved founding leader David Ben-Gurion. Netanyahu has been in charge for 4,876 days, governing for a three-year term in the late 1990s then continuously since 2009. His Israel would
There will be exhibitions, television documentaries, and a gala concert organised by Nasa. Over the course of this weekend, the world will quite rightly be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the first time a man walked on the surface of the moon. Even after the passage of half a century, it remains an unchallenged achievement
Darren Grimes has won his appeal against a £20,000 fine imposed by the Electoral Commission. Grimes, the 25-year-old who ran the BeLeave campaign group, was accused by the watchdog of breaching expenditure rules during the EU referendum. Following proceedings which saw Grimes crowdfund his legal campaign, Judge Marc Dight has ruled that the fine be
Interviewing Boris Johnson is like staring long and hard into an expressionist painting: there are pyrotechnics, the shape of commitments and policies, but it might all be mirage. After I spoke with him on Wednesday for my show, my abiding sense was that he would dearly love a root-and-branch renegotiation of Theresa May’s Brexit deal,
If, as expected, Boris Johnson heads off to Buckingham Palace next Wednesday to become Prime Minister, I fear that a fleet of ambulances may be required at the Guardian’s headquarters in King’s Cross – as the newspaper’s collective Boris Derangement Syndrome moves into its final, and possibly terminal, phase. All week the Guardian has been
When Labour moderates tried to oust Jeremy Corbyn in 2016, their attempt only made him stronger, protected by swathes of loyal members. But this year, is the tide turning for Corbyn, as even supporters begin to doubt him? First, there were the abysmal European Election results, which for many Corbynites were particularly painful because they
The Democratic Party faces a test of character. Most mainstream institutions have failed such tests in recent years but, in the spirit of Samuel Beckett, let’s try again and fail better this time. The trial confronting the electoral vehicle of American liberalism is whether liberals still have a firm grip on the wheel or the
Why are increasing numbers of children designated as transgender? Are the resulting medical interventions safe and justified and in the best long-term interests of those children? These are questions of public interest. Some of the answers being offered are troubling, to say the least. One such answer came this week, and deserves attention from politicians
Jonathan Ray reviews our recent Spectator Winemaker’s lunch with James Simpson MW of Champagne Pol Roger As readers well know, Pol Roger is pretty much the Spectator house pour. Anything of note that happens at 22 Old Queen Street is marked with a bottle or so of Pol. Indeed, the fabled Spectator Summer Party the
It wasn’t so long ago when Beto O’Rourke, the punk-rock band member and three-term congressman from West Texas, was the man to beat. O’Rourke was the energetic, dashing politician who looked like a Kennedy and talked like a Kennedy. He may have lost his Senate campaign to the incumbent Ted Cruz, but he made history
Congratulations to Gary Lineker OBE, who has just been appointed a visiting fellow to Lady Margaret Hall, an Oxford college. This coup was announced on Twitter earlier today by Alan Rusbridger, principal of LMH and ex-editor of the Guardian: Lineker is among nine new fellows appointed by LMH, with Emma Watson becoming an associate fellow,
As parliament voted today on an amendment which would make suspending parliament to prevent a no-deal Brexit more difficult, one MP was conspicuously absent from the events. After the vote it was noted that Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who has ruled out proroguing parliament if he becomes the next leader of the Tory party, was listed
In a much heavier than expected defeat, the government lost by 41 votes in its attempt to take an anti-prorogation amendment out of the Northern Ireland bill. The vote was essentially a proxy for whether the Commons would accept no deal, and the size of the government’s loss is a reminder of how difficult any
Leo Varadkar certainly talks tough when it comes to Brexit, but is the Irish PM preparing to back down? Mr S. only asks because the Taoiseach conceded this morning that he is ‘willing to compromise’ over Brexit. This marks something of a change from his earlier comments in which he has repeatedly dismissed alternatives to the
Sajid Javid. Liz Truss. Dominic Raab, or perhaps even his old City Hall colleague Kit Malthouse. There are plenty of well-qualified candidates to move into the house next door when Boris Johnson becomes prime minister next week. But one thing is surely now certain. The incumbent will have to be removed. In the dying days
It’s the end of an era tonight as This Week goes out for the very last time. The BBC’s late-night politics show has built up a cult following since it first aired in 2003. A host of politicians, from Diane Abbott and Jacob Rees-Mogg, to Charles Kennedy and Ken Livingstone have all appeared. Singer Pete Doherty,
I do love the Guardian. As the years go by almost no publication continues to give me such constant amusement. This week has been no exception. A couple of days after first reading it I still remain almost impossibly amused by the paper’s lead, front-page story from earlier this week. The banner headline read ‘Boris Johnson
London Bridge station has been shortlisted for the Riba Stirling architects prize. The jury said its “impressive” new concourse had “significantly improved the experience of those who use it daily”. That’s nonsense, says The Spectator’s Wiki Man, Rory Sutherland: In the shadow of the Shard, not far from Borough Market, is a £1 billion public artwork,
There’s nobody who writes true-life spy stories like Ben MacIntyre — and with his latest book The Spy and the Traitor out in paperback, Ben joins me to talk about the astonishing career of Oleg Gordievsky, a single spy who really did change the whole course of the Cold War. Ben tells me about Oleg’s
‘The Labour Party welcomes everyone* irrespective of race, creed, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (except, it seems, Jews)’. So says an unprecedented advert in the Guardian today, which is signed by more than 60 Labour peers. It could hardly be more damning. Yet while the advert is shocking, it stops short of pointing out
A thin turnout for Theresa May’s penultimate PMQs. Labour members were skulking in corridors plotting to oust their leader. And Tories, especially devout Remainers, were busy talking to journalists about their lifelong commitment to a no-deal Brexit. Mrs May seemed to be angling for the post of chief attack dog at the next election. Jeremy
Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions provided a rather dispiriting summary of the current political scene. The two leaders of the main political parties ended up having a fight on whose party had the bigger racism problem, sparked by tweets from the US president telling black and minority ethnic Congresswomen to ‘go back’. Jeremy Corbyn tried to
What has it come to in the Labour Party when the only way Labour peers feel they can communicate with their leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is to pay to take out an advert in the Guardian? No major party has ever been this dysfunctional. The advert has been signed by roughly a third of Labour Lords.
Theresa May’s final weeks in Downing Street have been much like the rest of her tenure: ungracious, uninspiring and unprincipled. May’s latest departing gesture is a gigantic £500 million loan guarantee to Jaguar Land Rover to help with the development of electric cars. This follows on from the government’s £120 million loan to British Steel (which is now in
A perfectly sensible observation from Matthew Parris has incurred the wrath of his colleagues on the Times. Speaking of Trump’s “racist” comments, Parris writes: “I don’t like his attacks but I think they will strike a chord among millions who should not be called racists. It’s just futile to suppose that arrivals from another country,
What next for English cricket? The first and most immediate answer is also an age-old one: thump the Australians in the forthcoming Ashes series. The second answer, which is more difficult to achieve, is: don’t waste this moment. English cricket staked a lot on winning the world cup. The tournament will not be held in