The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Britain’s decline is a threat to democracy

From our UK edition

Democracy was born in the public square. The Athenian agora was the central meeting place of an engaged citizenry where business was transacted, social life flourished and a common direction for the people was determined. The idea of a public square – where individuals operate in a relationship of trust and shared endeavour – is embedded in the life of our democracy. But today, increasingly, our public squares are squalid, lawless, derelict spaces, as Gus Carter records in our cover piece. Shoplifters go unpunished, fly-tipping is unpursued, drug-taking and dealing are commonplace.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Reform party’s victories, Duke of Sussex’s defeat and Deliveroo’s takeover

From our UK edition

Home In a day that upset the apple cart of party politics, Reform won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by six votes, with 38.72 per cent of the vote, compared with Labour’s 52.9 per cent last year. Of 1,641 wards in England up for election, Reform won 677. The Tories lost 676, winning only 317. The Lib Dems gained 163, winning 370 in all. Labour lost 186, winning 99. Reform won control of ten of the 23 councils in contention. The Liberal Democrats won three councils. The Tories lost all their 16 councils. Dame Andrea Jenkyns, a former Tory minister, was elected Reform mayor of Greater Lincolnshire; Luke Campbell, the former boxer, became Reform mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Livestream: Coffee House Shots Live – The local elections shake-up

From our UK edition

Watch the live recording of The Spectator’s post-election analysis with host Spectator editor Michael Gove, former Conservative minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chairman of the Reform party, Zia Yusuf, deputy political editor James Heale and political correspondent Lucy Dunn. This livestream is exclusive to Spectator subscribers.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: the cruelty of the Supreme Court trans ruling 

From our UK edition

Cruel intentions Sir: Rod Liddle (‘Let’s strike a blow for honesty’, 26 April) seems to have fallen into the same trap as most writers who support the Supreme Court’s ruling on the trans issue – which is to refuse to differentiate between those who have undergone a full gender reassignment, so that they effectively no longer have the same bodies they were born into, and those who simply put on a dress and call themselves a woman. While it can clearly be argued that a man in a dress might pose a risk to women in single-sex spaces, it can hardly be suggested that a trans woman who has undergone full gender reassignment is in the same category, and should be refused access to women’s toilets and other similar places.

The Spectator

The EU is luring Starmer away from Brexit

From our UK edition

Throughout Keir Starmer’s life, a recent fawning profile ran, he has ‘worked to safeguard the value of justice and democracy’, from fighting the death penalty in Caribbean courts as a young human-rights lawyer, to taking on Vladimir Putin by representing Alexander Litvinenko’s widow. ‘Those same principles,’ the profile gushes, ‘have guided him since he became the UK’s Prime Minister.’ The author of these words? Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, who had the dubious honour of penning the Prime Minister’s entry for Time’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. She is glad, she claims, ‘to have someone with Starmer’s dedication and strong principles as a partner’.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: power cuts, local elections and the Pope’s funeral

From our UK edition

Home Sir Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, attacked current net-zero policies, saying that ‘any strategy based on either “phasing out” fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail’. Pay review bodies recommended rises for public-sector workers (4 per cent for teachers; 3 per cent for NHS employees) that are higher than the 2.8 per cent budgeted for by the government.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Livestream: Americano Live – Trump’s first 100 days

From our UK edition

Watch the live recording of our Americano Live event with Freddy Gray, The Spectator’s deputy editor and host of the Americano podcast, and special guest Lionel Shriver, as they discuss Trump’s first 100 days. It can be hard to keep up with Donald Trump’s ‘breakneck’ pace in his second term in the White House. What to make of his headline-making, eyebrow-raising executive orders? Will his tariffs derail the US economy or usher in the ‘golden age’ he has promised? Is he going to achieve ‘peace through strength’ – or mire the US in yet another endless conflict in the Middle East? Watch Freddy and Lionel discuss all of the above and more.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Bring back mutton

From our UK edition

Man out of time Sir: That Mary Wakefield left Rowan Williams ‘with my questions for the most part unresolved’ will come as no surprise to his former students, myself included (‘The ABC of faith’, 19 April). As a ‘mature’ student at Cambridge, there was something very inspiring about Williams the academic, but also comfortingly peaceful about the man; someone always on the journey of discovery and therefore reluctant on many issues to be dogmatic or final about them. His genuine surprise at how the real world operated one easily forgave; his naive approach to other issues, such as Islam, was dangerous but never disingenuous. As an Arabist I did find this hugely irritating.

The Spectator

2697: Futile felines – solution

From our UK edition

The unclued announcement from BBC1’s Pointless quiz is: ‘We gave one hundred people one hundred seconds to name as many cats as they could’. The other three unclued lights are CATS – as well as 25 Across!

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Pope dies, EU cheese banned and trans women aren’t women

From our UK edition

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, no longer believes that a trans woman is a woman, his official spokesman said at a lobby briefing. He was asked about this six days after the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that a woman is defined by biological sex in equalities law. The justices unanimously allowed an appeal by the campaign group For Women Scotland in a case against the Scottish government. Sex-based protections, notably in the Equality Act 2010, the court found, only apply to people who are born in that sex, not to those whose gender is reassigned. The court emphasised that transgender people still have protections against discrimination and harassment written into the Equality Act. J.K.

The Spectator

Which pope has served the longest?

From our UK edition

Papal reign The mostly elderly runners and riders to be the next pope are unlikely to challenge the record for the longest papal reign – still held by the very first pope, St Peter, who served for 34 years in the 1st century. The second-longest reign was the 31 years and 7 months served by Pius IX between 1846-78, while third was Pope John Paul II (1978-2005). John Paul II was preceded by one of the shortest papal reigns in history, that of Pope John Paul I, who died just 33 days after being chosen in August 1978. Nine have lasted less than a month: Urban VII lived for just 13 days in 1590.  Power play Ed Miliband claimed that Britain has such high electricity prices because of our reliance on gas. Is that true?

The Spectator

The law that is choking civil society

From our UK edition

If one were to ask for a quintessential display of the British character it would be hard to better the Shrewsbury Flower Show. Officially the world’s ‘longest-running flower show’, according to the Guinness World Records, it is held over two days in August, attracting 60,000 visitors. This summer should be the show’s 150th birthday. Last week, however, the Shropshire Horticultural Society abruptly cancelled it. Rising costs were cited as a factor. But the main reason was the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act – known as Martyn’s Law. The legislation, which was given royal assent this month, requires organisers of events with more than 200 people to engage in lengthy bureaucratic and state-monitored protocols to protect visitors from terror attacks.

Monday

The Spectator

World leaders pay tribute to Pope Francis

From our UK edition

Pope Francis has died aged 88. At 7.35 a.m., the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had ‘returned to the house of the Father’ at his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. Cardinal Farrell, who announced the death, added that Francis ‘taught us to live the values of the Gospel with fidelity, courage and universal love, especially in favour of the poorest and most marginalised’. Tributes are already pouring in from political and religious leaders around the world. These are the messages that have been sent so far: J.D. Vance, the US Vice-president Vance, the last statesman to meet Francis, having been granted a brief audience with the pontiff yesterday morning, wrote: I just learned of the passing of Pope Francis.

Thursday

The Spectator

Watch: Douglas Murray on Israel’s plight and the plague of western guilt

From our UK edition

On Monday evening, The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove and Spectator columnist and associate editor Douglas Murray sat down for a live event at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster.  In front of a packed auditorium with 1,500 guests, they discussed the October 7th massacre; Douglas's latest book, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas and the Future of the West; and the best and the worst aspects of the MAGA movement. This is a video exclusively for Spectator subscribers.

The Spectator

How much steel does Britain produce?

From our UK edition

Double date This year, Orthodox Easter is on the same date as the western Easter, 20 April. How common is that? The Orthodox Church has a different date for Easter because it still calculates the date according to the Julian calendar, which runs 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. But the dates coincide when the first full moon after the spring equinox occurs relatively late. The dates last coincided in 2017, but eight years is a relatively long run without this happening. This year is the ninth occasion this century when western and Orthodox Easters have been on the same day. A common date for Easter will next happen in 2028, followed by 2031, 2034, 2037 and 2041.

The Spectator

Letters: Donald Trump’s messiah complex

From our UK edition

He’s not the messiah Sir: To Freddy Gray’s meticulous dissection of Trumpian chaos theory (‘Shock tactics’, 12 April) I would add one element: religion. Donald Trump seems to believe the blood he spilt in the failed assassination attempt anointed him his country’s Redeemer: ‘I was saved by God to make America great again.’ Messiahs look to a higher authority than rational argument. Whatever ideas pop into the President’s head he judges right by definition. Tariffs will achieve miracles and wars will cease at his command. There is a strong Gnostic element to this cult, its followers believing Trump has some secret knowledge guiding his apparently wayward actions. To keep him in check, the rest of us will have to put our trust in the bond markets.

The Spectator

The Easter story reminds us of the importance of truth

From our UK edition

Live not by lies, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned the West half a century ago, but we have hardly heeded him since. Fictions have bewitched our minds and captured our culture. Hard truths struggle to be heard. Last week BBC presenters took the leader of the opposition to task for her failure to watch a Netflix drama, Adolescence, which purported to explore the risks to young women from misogyny. At the same time they ignored Kemi Badenoch’s questions about real male violence – the abuse of thousands of girls by rape gangs in 50 British towns and cities.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: British Steel seized, army sent to Birmingham and slim told to stay home in Beijing

From our UK edition

Home Parliament was recalled from its Easter recess to sit on a Saturday for the first time since the Falklands War of 1982 to pass a bill to take control of British Steel, which amounts to no more than the works at Scunthorpe owned by the Chinese company Jingye since 2020. Scunthorpe, which employs 2,700 directly and thousands indirectly, is the last plant in Britain capable of making virgin steel. The bill, passing through the Commons and Lords, received the Royal Assent on the same day. The race against time was to supply the blast furnaces with coal before they were ruined by going cold; supplies from the United States were unloaded at Immingham docks, 25 miles away. The Secretary of State for Business, Jonathan Reynolds, received powers to give orders to the board and staff.