This is the article I have thought about writing for years, but I have always ended up asking what would be the point. And how annoying that some people would call it ‘brave’, meaning shameful. I’ve always earned a lot less money than my wife. There, I’ve said it. Is
It will probably only damn me further in the eyes of many, but when I was a government minister I often used to ask Labour predecessors for advice. Tony Blair especially. He may have felt it was a forlorn exercise ever offering me his wisdom, especially when I went on
As if Hollywood’s elite didn’t have enough to be worried about, the Governor they elected, and whose homelessness laws and fire department defunding is allegedly partly responsible for the catastrophe, has now responded to claims that he is not cracking down hard enough on looters by saying that, ‘Bad actors
It is some time since I could claim any close acquaintance with the daily skirmishes of workaday Westminster. From risers and fallers on the stock exchange of parliamentary esteem I stand somewhat aside these days: no longer a war correspondent sending back dispatches from the battles between tribes in the
White to play. Karthikeyan–Tabatabaei, Qatar Masters 2024. With his next move, Karthikeyaninitiated a winning combination. What did he play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 20 January. There is a prize of a £20 John Lewis voucher for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address.
On 9 January, Labour MPs were three-line whipped into blocking a national inquiry into organised gangs of Pakistani Muslims who raped and tortured vulnerable young girls on an industrial scale across multiple British towns: Rochdale, Rotherham, Oldham, Telford. If justice is to be served, this should prove the death of
One does not like to disagree with one’s editor, but while the image of Rome salting the earth of its bitter rival Carthage is a striking way of describing Labour’s plan to wreck our current system of education, Rome was not in the habit of destroying the advantages that its
Even before his inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump is a casebook study in everything Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is not. Mr Trump’s decisive declaration that there will be hell to pay if the Israeli hostages aren’t freed before he returns to the White House has, at last, forced the terrorists in
What’s in a word? ‘Equality’. ‘Equity’. It’s the sort of thing that Channel 4 newsreaders find impossible to understand. Surely they’re the same thing, aren’t they? And even if they aren’t then what kind of pedant would keep trying to point it out? What difference does it make anyway? Well,
For Competition 3382 you were invited to write a poem to mark this day, officially the dreariest of the year. (This year, as a few pointed out, it doubles as Inauguration Day. Things can only get better!) Responses ranged from Tracy Davidson’s ‘It’s just a Monday. You’ll be fine’ to
Back in the childhoods of the baby boomers everyone seemed to know that Shakespeare was born in 1564 because there was a tremendous fuss about the 400th anniversary of his birth – Richard Burton played Hamlet on Broadway, Christopher Plummer did it at Elsinore for the BBC and Peter O’Toole
This is the article I have thought about writing for years, but I have always ended up asking what would be the point. And how annoying that some people would call it ‘brave’, meaning shameful. I’ve always earned a lot less money than my wife. There, I’ve said it. Is
It will probably only damn me further in the eyes of many, but when I was a government minister I often used to ask Labour predecessors for advice. Tony Blair especially. He may have felt it was a forlorn exercise ever offering me his wisdom, especially when I went on
As if Hollywood’s elite didn’t have enough to be worried about, the Governor they elected, and whose homelessness laws and fire department defunding is allegedly partly responsible for the catastrophe, has now responded to claims that he is not cracking down hard enough on looters by saying that, ‘Bad actors
It is some time since I could claim any close acquaintance with the daily skirmishes of workaday Westminster. From risers and fallers on the stock exchange of parliamentary esteem I stand somewhat aside these days: no longer a war correspondent sending back dispatches from the battles between tribes in the
White to play. Karthikeyan–Tabatabaei, Qatar Masters 2024. With his next move, Karthikeyaninitiated a winning combination. What did he play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 20 January. There is a prize of a £20 John Lewis voucher for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address.
On 9 January, Labour MPs were three-line whipped into blocking a national inquiry into organised gangs of Pakistani Muslims who raped and tortured vulnerable young girls on an industrial scale across multiple British towns: Rochdale, Rotherham, Oldham, Telford. If justice is to be served, this should prove the death of
One does not like to disagree with one’s editor, but while the image of Rome salting the earth of its bitter rival Carthage is a striking way of describing Labour’s plan to wreck our current system of education, Rome was not in the habit of destroying the advantages that its
Even before his inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump is a casebook study in everything Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is not. Mr Trump’s decisive declaration that there will be hell to pay if the Israeli hostages aren’t freed before he returns to the White House has, at last, forced the terrorists in
What’s in a word? ‘Equality’. ‘Equity’. It’s the sort of thing that Channel 4 newsreaders find impossible to understand. Surely they’re the same thing, aren’t they? And even if they aren’t then what kind of pedant would keep trying to point it out? What difference does it make anyway? Well,
For Competition 3382 you were invited to write a poem to mark this day, officially the dreariest of the year. (This year, as a few pointed out, it doubles as Inauguration Day. Things can only get better!) Responses ranged from Tracy Davidson’s ‘It’s just a Monday. You’ll be fine’ to
Back in the childhoods of the baby boomers everyone seemed to know that Shakespeare was born in 1564 because there was a tremendous fuss about the 400th anniversary of his birth – Richard Burton played Hamlet on Broadway, Christopher Plummer did it at Elsinore for the BBC and Peter O’Toole
