The Spectator’s Notes
Does Burnham really want an ‘honest discussion’ about free movement?
Andy Burnham says in a couple of interviews that he wants an ‘honest discussion’ about free movement, and then Downing…
Trump, Putin and Xi are three old men in a hurry
‘For the sake of this… message of peace… this farrago of superlative nonsense… all business… is to be impeded and…
Jeffery Archer’s guide to interviewing Jeffery Archer
Just back in London from Israel, I give breakfast to Oleksandra Matviichuk. She, with her Centre for Civil Liberties, is…
How long has Ranulph Fiennes been under some sort of control?
It is repeatedly pointed out – I have probably written it myself – that the triple lock on the state…
The fourth plinth is racist
As Labour meet in Liverpool, from Sunday, Andy Burnham and his advisers are worrying about his lack of a mandate.…
Where are my reparations?
The natural coalition of rural people which was forged 25 years ago, before the hunting ban, is forming once more.…
Where have all the Normans gone?
Does Britain understand where Javier Milei’s move on the Falklands is heading? It is becoming clearer that, behind the nationalist…
Why is there so little protest about Russia’s brutality towards Ukraine?
Reporting of the war in Ukraine suffers from the tendency of journalism to exaggerate a trend. The most recent one…
The questions Cambridge still has to answer about Jason Arday
If poor Jason Arday killed himself, it will be necessary to work out why. To do so, it will help…
How I got Rod Liddle sacked
The organised hard left has moved fast after the fall of Jason Arday at Cambridge. They are furious with the…
The utter utopian unwisdom of AI bros
In my belated quest to develop a faint sense of what AI is doing, I have just read Sebastian Mallaby’s…
Burnham’s solutions must not lie in the 1970s
Andy Burnham is right. The cost of living is foremost in people’s minds just now. Naturally his electricity bill VAT…
Burnham’s bogus toughness
The horrible murder of Ann Widdecombe is being used both by Reform and its critics as a means of fighting…
Prince Harry and Nigel Farage have more in common than they might like to admit
At about 2 p.m. on Tuesday, two cases with a common characteristic coincided. One was Nigel Farage’s long statement about…
‘No. 10 North’ won’t work
It would be dangerously premature to say that Ukraine is winning the war with Russia, but Russia is undoubtedly doing…
Even Andy Burnham doesn’t know what Andy Burnham stands for
The British constitution is an admirably flexible thing, so I would not claim that Andy Burnham’s leadership campaign, and the…
Don’t avoid the right questions about Preston Davey’s murder
It is now retrospectively acknowledged that great harm was done by the refusal to investigate serious crimes and dangerous mental…
The posh are persecuted for their accents
Mark Nowak, father of the murdered Henry Nowak, spoke powerfully in public after Vickrum Digwa was convicted of the crime.…
Devolution makes corruption likelier
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, stands explicitly in the tradition of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum 135 years ago.…
The £10 pint explains the rise of Reform
I bought my first pint of bitter, in a pub in Slough, in 1972. It cost 12 pence. The Bank…
Cling on, Sir Keir
People laugh at Sir Keir Starmer for failing to acknowledge that he has almost no hope of survival. This is…
Keir Starmer is downplaying the Islamist threat to Jews
At Tuesday’s anti-Semitism ‘summit’ in Downing Street, Sir Keir Starmer achieved a personal first. He used the word ‘Islamists’. But…
Can you answer this quiz intended for seven-year-olds?
‘Modernity’ is often behind the times. On Wednesday, parliament pushed out all remaining hereditary peers, although we live in an…
No one seems sure about why Olly Robbins had to go
This session of parliament is due to end between 29 April and 6 May. Now the government is desperate for…
How nice it is we no longer have to think about John Bercow
On Tuesday, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport approved the sale of my employers, the Telegraph Group, to Axel…
