All that glitters
It is remarkable that in his conference speech in Liverpool, Sir Keir Starmer hardly mentioned the government’s biggest failures. There…
Is this really the end of the A-level?
The history of education reform is a graveyard of acronyms: TVEIs, GNVQs and so on. There have been many well-meaning…
Solution to 2622: Local call
The unclued lights are PUB NAMES which include the pair 38/31 First prize Mary Newbery, Devizes, Wiltshire Runners-up David Burnside,…
‘I am 35,000 feet above Beirut, and I am smoking a fag’: Spectator writers recall their favourite cigarettes
The next generation will never be allowed to buy cigarettes. So we asked some of our writers for their favourite…
Radical Rishi
The Conservatives gather in Manchester this weekend for what may well be their last hurrah as a governing party. Bookmakers…
Net moderate
The old carmakers were slow to realise the potential of electric cars and didn’t innovate. So Elon Musk, an internet…
Portrait of the week
Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, proposed reaching net zero in 2050 ‘in a better, more proportionate way’ such as by…
Barometer
Within limits Do 20mph speed limits save lives? – A 2018 report by Atkins/AECOM/UCL found that 51% of motorists conformed…
Letters
Whose victory? Sir: Politicians are often accused of engaging in doublespeak, and I fear in the case of Boris Johnson’s…
Solution to: 2620: The right name?
8A/31D, 23A/19D and 36D/7D are eponymous 29D/12A characters. 7D originally suggested D’Urberville, which needed to be changed to DURBEYFIELD, making…
What if David Cameron had been offered EU ‘associate membership’ in 2016?
It can’t be coincidence that led Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron to unveil their proposals for a new class of…
Biden time
As Napoleon is reputed to have said, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. So why are…
