The nice young man in the library had told us he was worried about protests when I booked tickets for Drag Queen Story Hour. We only began to hear the chants halfway through the show; they drifted up from the courtyard in front of St John’s Hall, the council building that houses Penzance library, through
The Conservative leadership contest has descended into a low-tax auction, which is not a good thing. The implication is that the Conservatives think government should be minuscule at the very moment when private enterprise is letting us down – the energy companies are raking in cash and spending it on stock buybacks – and the
Montpellier France is going through a sexual civil war. After the great carnal outburst of the free-loving soixante-huitards, some have reverted to abstinence and prudishness, while others are pushing sexuality to new extremes. The crisis in French sexuality has exposed itself this summer as the clothes have come off. It’s not always a pretty sight,
It’s hardly surprising that China feels emboldened. Xi Jinping must look at America and see not just a superpower in decline but a gerontocracy that has lost its marbles. Last week, Nancy Pelosi, the 82-year-old Speaker of the House of Representatives, visited Taiwan as a gesture of solidarity, in spite of China’s fierce warnings that
This week, the world is gripped by the risk of conflict between the US and China. The People’s Liberation Army has fired live missiles into the Taiwan Strait in retaliation for US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei and those who fear that China vs America is the next world war see Taiwan as
You’ve just become prime minister. The public finances are in a mess, the Bank of England has stoked inflation, cutting taxes may make it worse, energy prices are through the roof, people are hurting so you can’t cut social spending, the Health Service is lengthening its waiting lists despite record budgets. What can you do?
When Tom Tugendhat announced he was backing Liz Truss for prime minister, his former supporters were dismayed. He was the candidate for the ‘One Nation’ caucus of moderate MPs, who defined themselves against the Tory right. ‘Anyone but Truss’ was their mantra – and they lined up behind Rishi Sunak. Yet here was their former
Don’t believe Vladimir Putin’s hype. The Russian economy is not OK. With western sanctions jeopardising up to 40 per cent of the country’s GDP, Putin’s assurances of an economic pivot to the East are a sham. And his weaponising of gas supplies to Europe is the financial equivalent of strapping on a suicide vest. That,
‘I’ve cancelled my exercise class for this! I hope he’s worth it,’ said Selina in the hotel lobby. Rishi Sunak was coming to West Suffolk to meet members of our Conservative Association. Would he be worth a listen? Clearly our members thought so. More than 90 of us rocked up at one day’s notice to
We have been on a family holiday to Tangier, Morocco, and of course my mobile phone came too. Not that I was intending to use it much – minimum impulse roaming; I would mostly wait until we had wifi for the purposes of Instagram and the rest of it. And I don’t tend to use
‘The word “Terror” is so generally and universally used in connection with everyday trivial matters that it is apt to fail to convey, when intended to do so, its real meaning.’ Thus begins the third chapter of The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag (1947), part of the Man-Eater series by the great Anglo-Indian hunter and naturalist
Just a couple of weeks ago, Rishi Sunak was the clear bookies’ favourite in the Tory leadership contest. He had the largest parliamentary support and was set to top every round of MPs’ voting. He had 20,000 volunteers, a well-organised team, a slick launch – and (he thought) all of August to convince party members
The morning after the first one-on-one Tory leadership debate, Rishi Sunak came to 22 Old Queen Street to speak to Charles Moore for SpectatorTV. This is an edited transcript of their conversation. CHARLES MOORE: Rishi Sunak, welcome to the offices of The Spectator. Just a preliminary – because you mentioned it first in the debate
The Chinese Communist party can congratulate itself on another sign of its rise: for the first time it has become a factor in deciding the fate of British politics. During Monday’s televised leadership debates, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak tried to appeal to Tory members by outdoing each other on their commitment to protect our
I would be the first to admit that the NHS has done a lot for my mother this year. It gave her the emergency blood transfusion that undoubtedly saved her life, followed by several iron infusions and umpteen scans and tests. It has treated a series of infected leg ulcers and provided consultations with senior
The latest trend among the scions of Generation Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – is posting ‘throwback videos’ on TikTok. Talk about a snake eating its tail. Having reached the ripe old age of, say, 11, Generation Z is digging through their archives to offer a wan critique of that embarrassing haircut
‘We don’t need another hero,’ sang Tina Turner back in the sexy-greedy 1980s. How times have changed. These days we have Superheroes Are Everywhere, a children’s book written by the Vice-President of the USA, Kamala Harris. Puffs tell us that ‘the book teaches that superheroes can be found everywhere in real life, from family members,
Labour has sneered at talk of ‘Singapore-on-Thames’ as a post-Brexit economic model, while the tax-cutting wing of the Conservatives has embraced it with a passion. But neither seem to know much about how Singapore actually achieved its remarkable prosperity. Lee Kwan Yew, the country’s prime minister from 1959 to 1990 (and one of the greatest
After the last televised leadership debate was cancelled when Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak pulled out, we asked the remaining three candidates if they would come on SpectatorTV to face questions before Tory MPs’ final vote. (Since going to press the contenders will have been whittled down to two.) This is an edited transcript of
Kenya Life in the poorest continent is so hard you get a lot of knowing laughs with the joke: ‘What happens when you play a country and western song backwards? Your wife comes home, your children suddenly respect you, you get sober and your dog wakes from the dead.’ In Kenya and other parts of