The Spectator

Wednesday

The Spectator

Henry Nowak and the dangers of ‘anti-racist’ dogma

From our UK edition

‘I can’t breathe.’ When those chilling words were uttered by George Floyd in 2020, they provoked global outrage. The combination of the horrific manner of Floyd’s choking by the police officer Derek Chauvin, the pressure cooker of lockdown and the historical tensions around American race relations led to worldwide protests; despite Floyd’s death being 4,000 miles away in Minnesota, Keir Starmer felt compelled to take the knee in solidarity. ‘I can’t breathe.’ These were also the dying words of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old student in Southampton murdered by the 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa. Nowak was coming back from a night out when he was stabbed by Digwa five times with a ceremonial knife. When the police were called, Digwa accused Nowak of having been racist.

Peter Devonald

There is Within Us Eternal Spring

From our UK edition

Who are we to wish the clocks reverse and we are back to spring? Who would deny the falling leaves, the receding hairline of autumn? Who would wish away the change in air, hope to transformation? The elegance of gusty days, leaves flying in eddies of reminiscences, a quiet comfort to becalm the storm, to listen to the fury, out there, elsewhere. We embrace autumn and even winter has its charms, embraced in wonder. Time is a ghost, but we aren’t yet, we welcome new horizons, waiting.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Sturgeon speaks, Henry Nowak’s killer is jailed and Mandelson messages are released

From our UK edition

Home Vickrum Digwa, 23, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years for the murder of Henry Nowak, 18, who was stabbed several times; the victim was handcuffed and arrested while he was telling police he had been stabbed and saying ‘I can’t breathe’. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said that he ‘felt sick’ watching bodycam footage of the incident. Nicola Sturgeon, in a remarkable interview with the BBC about the embezzlement of £400,310.65 by her now-estranged husband, Peter Murrell, said she expected ‘a legal process to recover the money from Peter’, but she emphasised that: ‘I am not guilty of that embezzlement, so nothing that belongs to me should be part of that.

The Spectator

2752: Double trouble

From our UK edition

The unclued lights include a consecutive pair of double letters. 24/31 and 34/2 are the pairs and 13 and 41 include three pairs, albeit not all consecutively.

The Spectator

Letters: arise, Sir Rod!

From our UK edition

Keeping their promises Sir: Matt Ridley is right to assert the conservation role of gamekeepers (‘Ruffled feathers’, 30 May). They, like farmers and crofters, know wading birds are integral to Britain’s rich cultural landscapes. All ground-nesting birds benefit from culling generalist predators. I do this on my croft at my own expense because I love waders and passerines. Where costs cannot be borne by individual goodwill or taxpayer-funded grants, shooting provides a sound economic case for funding the vital combination of predator control and habitat management. A keeper’s livelihood depends on his ability to prove consistent competence in these two skills.

Monday

The Spectator

Broadcast Producer

From our UK edition

The Spectator is Britain’s most influential weekly magazine, reaching more than two million people each week through our digital platforms. With nearly 200 years of heritage and a rapidly growing YouTube and podcast offering, we are at the forefront of political commentary and cultural debate. We are looking for a Broadcast Producer to provide fixed-term maternity cover in our broadcast team. You will help create agenda-setting video and audio content that complements the unique voice of the world’s oldest weekly magazine. You will work across our suite of podcasts – including Quite Right!, Coffee House Shots, Americano and Reality Check – and help maintain and grow our YouTube channel of 500,000 subscribers.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week:  Tony Blair intervenes, Peter Murrell pleads guilty and temperatures hit a May high

From our UK edition

Home Sir Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, said in a 5,700-word essay: ‘The Labour party is playing with fire; or, more accurately, with its future, and that of the country.’ He said the party shouldn’t choose a new leader before deciding policy. In the first part of his government-commissioned report into economic inactivity by young people, Alan Milburn highlighted the 957,000 people aged between 16 and 24 who were not in work, training or education. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, suspended import tariffs on chocolate and biscuits and gave away children’s tickets on buses during the month of August. She reduced VAT from 20 per cent to 5 per cent on children’s meals and zoo tickets from 25 June to 1 September.

The Spectator

We need to demand more from our politicians

From our UK edition

The first mention of Westminster came in a charter of 785, attributed to King Offa, granting land in ‘that terrible place’. The document was a forgery though, drawn up by 12th-century monks to make Westminster Abbey seem a site of holy terror. Even so, ‘that terrible place’ would strike most people today as a good description of SW1. Parliament has failed to cover itself in glory in recent years: the financial crisis, the expenses scandal, the Brexit wars, the prime ministerial merry-go-round, the unfair if unshakeable perception that our politicians are fiddling – with their finances, and possibly their staffers – while Britain suffers. No wonder, then, that politicians of all stripes have tried to boost their popularity by railing against Westminster.

John Fuller

Cups and Bowls

From our UK edition

The kettle doesn’t know it needs a cup To hold the water it was plugged to boil: Where was the I when nature thought me up? When air entered my lungs, made me uncoil? Now that the body starts to flinch and falter, There’s no way that the I is getting out. Nature persists as circumstances alter. The cup’s the part that’s broken, not the spout. Again, what of the primal soup so-called? What consciousness was lurking in that gloop To meet the grateful bowl that holds our brains? Brimful, our life, and what it all contains Is nothing but the sight of death, forestalled By stubborn hope of something more than soup.

The Spectator

2751: Transmission – solution

From our UK edition

COUGHS AND SNEEZES SPREAD DISEASES could explain the three other unclued pairs, which are anagrams of air-borne illnesses: ANNULI + FEZ => INFLUENZA, SEE + MEAL => MEASLES, STRIP + USES => PERTUSSIS (whooping cough). CARNIVOROUS at 8D which is an anagram of CORONAVIRUS had to be highlighted.

The Spectator

Letters: Reform and the Conservatives need each other

From our UK edition

Greco-Roman wrestling Sir: Rod Liddle suggests that some, perhaps many, middle-class voters on the right or centre right are deterred from supporting Reform because of their perception of the party as an unsavoury embarrassment (‘Can Reform smash its class ceiling?’, 23 May). Harold Macmillan in the second world war appreciated that the Americans – ‘great, big, vulgar, bustling people, more vigorous than we are’ – represented the equivalent of the Romans taking over from the declining, but perhaps more cerebral Greeks – the British. But he also argued: ‘We must run Allied Forces HQ [in Algiers] as the Greek slaves ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius.

Thursday

The Spectator

Livestream: Tim Shipman meets Kemi Badenoch

From our UK edition

Watch the livestream here of Tim Shipman meets Kemi Badenoch on Monday 8 June. Tim Shipman is a bestselling author, award-winning journalist and political editor of The Spectator. With a journalism career spanning nearly three decades, he has broken some of the most consequential stories in modern British politics. In our series, Tim Shipman Meets the Party Leaders, he’ll learn the triumphs and setbacks of party leaders, past and present, as well as reveal the behind-the-scenes stories that you won’t hear anywhere else. For our first interview, we’ll be joined by Kemi Badenoch at a pivotal moment in her leadership – the aftermath of the 7 May local elections.

Wednesday

Jamie McKendrick

A Thousand Ships

From our UK edition

That must have been a fairly happy day — squeezed together in the booth and making silly faces. I found the four-leaf photo in a folder from some fifty years ago — she a beauty, me a gurning extra — and wonder how she fared, what stars and headlands she steered by… That year we hitched round Holland, stayed in houseboats and a Javan commune, paid homage to the Van Goghs and the Rembrandts. No trace of her on the nosy internet — though she may have assumed another name. I’m left with the hope, whoever she became, happier days befell her. A fledgling actor, she took the silent part of Helen in Marlowe’s play.

The Spectator

Labour must be honest with voters about the coming crisis

From our UK edition

So far, Labour has staged a contested leadership election in government only once – 50 years ago, in 1976. The New Economics Foundation once declared 1976 to be post-war Britain’s happiest year, judging by income equality and public spending. Cosseted by memories of a hot summer of space hoppers and Swap Shop, the left-wing thinktank brushed over strikes, stagflation and Britain going – to use the obligatory phrase – cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Compared with Labour’s current phoney war, that election was enviably swift. Harold Wilson resigned on 16 March; three rounds of voting by Labour MPs later, and James Callaghan entered Downing Street on 5 April.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Streeting resigns, HS2 stalls and ebola spreads to Uganda

From our UK edition

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, found his position challenged after Wes Streeting resigned as Health Secretary. At the same time Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, announced that her tax troubles had been resolved after a payment of £40,000 in stamp duty that she owed. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, was given permission by the National Executive Committee of the Labour party to stand for parliament in the Makerfield by-election, brought about by the resignation of its MP Josh Simons. Reform chose as its candidate Robert Kenyon, a self-employed plumber, who had stood in 2024. Mr Streeting caused trouble for Mr Burnham by saying that ‘leaving the European Union was a catastrophic mistake’.

The Spectator

2750: Lincoln Memorial – solution

From our UK edition

Solvers had to highlight the BINARY (101010111110) and HEXADECIMAL (ABE) forms of the PUZZLE NUMBER (2750), thereby both filling in the otherwise-isolated squares and, via the latter hex form, explaining the significance of the title.

The Spectator

My late husband’s insatiable appetite for ‘sticky willies’

From our UK edition

Labour’s just deserts Sir: Last week’s leader hit the nail on the head (‘Desperate retreat’, 16 May). You have to wonder what is in the minds of the Labour party and specifically its potential new leaders Burnham, Rayner and Streeting. Their failure to read the room is what gave them the kicking they got at the local elections. Now they’re all expressing a wish to rejoin the EU, although Burnham will not apparently be campaigning on the issue in the forthcoming by-election. I bet he won’t! To bring an anti-Brexit, pro-EU agenda to an area dominated by Reform would be political suicide. Furthermore, if I were a constituent of Makerfield, I’d feel mightily annoyed that my vote was being used as a stepping stone in one person’s political career.

The Spectator

Livestream: Enoch Powell’s complicated legacy

From our UK edition

Watch the live recording of Enoch Powell’s complicated legacy. Spectator Editor Michael Gove and assistant editor Madeline Grant sat down with Simon Heffer, author of Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell, described as ‘the best conservative narrative of postwar British politics’. They explored how Powell’s early life and formidable intellect shaped his thinking, examined how he became a model for populist rhetoric and discussed why his legacy is central to understanding today’s political divisions and the rise of political parties such as Reform.

Monday

The Spectator

Livestream: The Net Zero Debate – bin it or back it?

From our UK edition

On Wednesday 20 May, Lord Lilley and the Telegraph’s Liam Halligan went up against Bob Ward, of the influential Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and Shahrar Ali, former deputy leader of the Green party, to debate whether Britain should scrap net zero. Isabel Hardman, The Spectator’s assistant editor, chaired. You can watch the live recording of the event here.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Which countries see more UFOs?

From our UK edition

Red Wales Labour lost power in the Welsh Assembly for the first time since it was set up in 1999. Labour’s domination in Wales began early. The party’s founder, Keir Hardie, was born in Lanarkshire and made his name as a trade union activist in the Scottish coalfields. He first won election for the constituency of West Ham South. Yet it was during his second Commons stint, as MP for Merthyr Tydfil, that he established the Labour party in 1900. In the 1922 general election Labour won a majority of seats in Wales, a feat it has repeated in every one of the 27 general elections since – a run unparalleled among political parties in the world’s genuine democracies, but which is unlikely to be extended. Space oddity Donald Trump declassified many files relating to UFOs.