The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Church service

From our UK edition

From ‘A Mobilisation of the Church’, The Spectator, 8 January 1916: Suppose the Church were mobilised so that the majority of the younger clergy and all the ordinands were set free for service in the Army, the situation at the end of the war might be very different from that which we have been anticipating. There is no life more intimate than that of the barrack-room. There is no life where the essential characters of men are so fully revealed as the life of the trench. Those of the combatant clergy who returned from the war would know all that was worth knowing of the characters of ordinary men…With such men as clergy a new era might dawn for the Church in this land, and the Kingdom of Heaven be brought very nigh.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Jeremy Corbyn’s new shadow cabinet in full

From our UK edition

Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn MP Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Party Chair and Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office Tom Watson MP Shadow First Secretary of State, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Angela Eagle MP  Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell MP  Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Seema Malhotra MP  Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham MP  Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn MP  Opposition Chief Whip Rosie Winterton MP  Shadow Secretary of State for Health Heidi Alexander MP  Shadow Secretary of State for Education Lucy Powell MP  Shadow Secreta.

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 31 December 2015

From our UK edition

In with the new How the new year is being celebrated around the world. From 1 January… BRITAIN: Annual Investment Allowance for businesses cut from £500,000 to £200,000. Deposit Guarantee Limit for savers — the sum which the government will refund to savers after a bank collapse — is cut from £85,000 to £75,000. Drink industry workers face a fine unless they sign up with the Alcohol Wholesaler Registration Scheme. RUSSIA: Food imports from Ukraine banned. SWITZERLAND: Cost of private language schooling no longer tax-deductible. SOUTH AFRICA: Carbon tax introduced. Out with the old In 2015… — 142m people were born and 56m people died, making for population growth of 83m. — 2,030m tonnes of grain were harvested.

The Spectator

Letters | 31 December 2015

From our UK edition

What Blair omitted to say Sir: Mr Blair’s latest in these pages, like his recent Foreign Affairs Committee appearance on Libya, papers over so much history that one hardly knows where to start (‘What I got right’, 12 December). His own Libyan history will do. We all know the ‘deal in the desert’, whereby Gaddafi relinquished a feeble ‘WMD’ programme to come in from the cold, lift the sanctions, and pave the way for oil deals. What was not known until 2011 was the real price of this bargain. The price was a UK-US-Libyan conspiracy to kidnap two whole families from exile and ship them to Gaddafi. Had we not seen the proof in black and white after the dictator’s fall, who would have believed it? But documents don’t lie.

The Spectator

Soggy thinking

From our UK edition

As the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, Lord Deben, observed this week, there is a bizarre dislocation between the government’s pronouncements on climate change and its attitude towards spending on flood defences. Only a month ago, David Cameron was at the Paris climate summit lending his weight to apocalyptic warnings of flood and tempest unless the world acted quickly to reduce carbon emissions. Yet with tracts of northern cities underwater, his government continues with a make-do-and-mend flood-defence policy which, never mind climate change, is incapable of dealing with the climate we already have. While lecturing us on the threat of greater rainfall and rising sea levels, the government has reduced spending on flood defence.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 31 December 2015

From our UK edition

Home Thousands of houses were flooded in York, Leeds, Manchester and other parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, after weeks of repeated flooding in Cumberland and Westmorland. On the River Foss in York, a flood barrier was lifted to avoid even more houses being flooded by keeping it in position. Tim Peake, the British astronaut in the International Space Station, tweeted a photograph of northern England as he passed overhead and said that his ‘thoughts are with all those affected by flooding’. After a fund-raising drive, two brothers from Leicestershire, aged 11 and seven, born without toes, were given silicone ten-toed feet to wear like galoshes over their own. The growth of Britain’s economy in the third quarter of 2015 was revised to 0.4 per cent from an earlier 0.

The Spectator

The Spectator’s Portrait of the Year

From our UK edition

January David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that only electing the Conservatives could ‘save Britain’s economic recovery’. Labour unveiled a poster saying: ‘The Tories want to cut spending on public services back to the levels of the 1930s,’ and Ed Miliband, the party leader, said he would ‘weaponise the NHS’. Two male ‘hedge witches’ were wed under the equal marriage law in a pagan ceremony in Edinburgh. Alexis Tsipras became prime minister of Greece, heading a Syriza coalition. In Paris, gunmen murdered 17 people, 11 at Charlie Hebdo, the magazine that had published cartoons of Mohammed. The price of Brent crude oil dipped below $50 a barrel, down from $107 a year earlier.

The Spectator

Next year’s war

From our UK edition

From ‘The Military Situation’, The Spectator, 1 January 1916: The opening of a new year is a time for taking stock of our situation. When we look back upon the beliefs and predictions of a year ago, we have to admit that there have been many disappointments and that unforeseen things have happened; but war would not be war if it were not full of surprises. We have as much to be thankful for as to deplore, and on the whole we think there is a good balance to our credit. We are a visibly winning people. If we were a losing people, we should be lamenting by this time all sorts of disintegrating movements and crumbling processes.

Monday

The Spectator

The Prime Minister should say it more often: the people of the UK are better together

From our UK edition

Last year, the United Kingdom came within 384,000 votes of destruction. A referendum designed to crush the Scottish nationalists instead saw them win 45 per cent of the vote — and become stronger than ever. Since then, the SNP has taken almost every Scottish seat in the Commons and is preparing for another landslide in the Holyrood election next year — giving Nicola Sturgeon the power to threaten a second referendum. We may be just a few years away from a second battle for Britain. In her short time as First Minister, Sturgeon has established herself as one of the most formidable politicians in Europe. She has raised a rebel army that she inspires with talk of destiny and dreams — while her opponents drone on about banks and the Barnett formula.

Thursday

The Spectator

Justin Welby on imposter syndrome, American exceptionalism and what makes churches grow

From our UK edition

In the Spectator's Christmas treble issue, Michael Gove speaks to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. Below are some outtakes from the interview. On the supposed decline of religious belief I don’t believe that that was then or is now an accurate perception. Church attendance in this country has fallen hugely both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the population. The number of Christians around the world has risen hugely since the nineteenth century and continues to rise at an extraordinary rate: it is over two billion now. So we’re seeing a change in the pattern of where the church is: the Anglican Communion is essentially global, as much for a sub-Saharan woman and not just someone in a church in England.

The Spectator

Christmas tips from Jacob Rees-Mogg, Susan Hill and Alexander McCall Smith

From our UK edition

Jacob Rees-Mogg The three highlights of my Christmas are Midnight Mass at Downside Abbey, children tearing open their presents and the Queen’s Speech. For a successful Christmas, avoid tiresome, Cromwellian stuffiness. Susan Hill A friend always has a pork pie for breakfast on Christmas Day, but I have nothing so original to offer. We do, however, always have smoked salmon for lunch and eat a turkey – with all the trimmings, naturally – in the evening. At Christmas, never ever ever tell the truth. To the cook: ‘Well, I don’t think it was cooked right through.’ To the child: ‘You’re a bit too old to believe in him still.