The Queen is dead: long live the King. This week brought an end to Downing Street’s unhappy experiment in dyarchy. Out goes Sue Gray, banished to the regions. In her place stands the Irishman who won the No. 10 power struggle: Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s first chief of staff in opposition, is back on top.
We held a small party to celebrate the news that the UK had seen its largest rise in population in 50 years: a jump of 1 per cent in only 12 months to a respectable total of 68.3 million people. Just crisps and soft drinks, you understand. Nothing wildly extravagant. All patriots feel proud of
One of the main arguments against hereditary peerages is that talent and ability are not always passed down across generations. There is much to this. Students of history will know that all the great dynasties see some kind of falloff in capability. Whether the Habsburgs, the Plantagenets or the Kinnocks, the families produce a man
Spectator TV viewers may recall that in last week’s Americano podcast, Freddy Gray interviewed the University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, whose wrist had just been smartly rapped by the administration for her unfashionable generalisations about race and sex. While Professor Wax spoke ably on her own behalf, Amy, as I know her, has
Let me ease you gently into a big and boring-sounding word for a small dishonesty that today corrupts the language of politics. Doubtless we shall be encountering it (though never by name) in Rachel Reeves’s looming Budget. If you step away from levying the new taxes you must then cut the goodies they were to
It is worth upholding the stuffy point which should have prevailed at the start. It was always improper and unethical for Sue Gray (formerly in charge of Propriety and Ethics in government) to leave the civil service to become Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. In her beginning was her end. Carrying with her all
How excited are you to hear the Prime Minister talking tech with Eric Schmidt, an American billionaire who used to run Google? Me neither. But their on-stage conversation is billed as the highlight of the government’s International Investment Summit in London next week, designed to show the world the UK is ‘open for business’. What
