The Spectator
10 January 2026 Aus
‘We will use the power of democracy to blow you away’: Reform plots a path to No. 10
Australia
A test of leadership
There have been some notable no-shows at the Ashes this summer. In the wake of her travel allowances scandal, the…
Australian Features
Strange death of the Maga right
Tolerating antisemitism will destroy conservatism
Maduro madness
The greatest demonstration of unconventional warfare in modern history
Trump v. Congressional Republicans
Populist leaders on the right are blocked by their own side
Costly Roots
The escalating price of Aboriginal heritage is measured in more than dollars
Features
Trump’s lessons for Europe
Donald Trump’s dramatic intervention in Venezuela has achieved much more than to bring a brutal, corrupt dictator and drug trafficker…
‘We will use the power of democracy to blow you away’: Reform plots a path to No. 10
As he made his way to lunch on Monday, Danny Kruger, the former Tory MP who defected to Reform last…
What Trump’s coup in Venezuela means for Iran
In a city awash with visual propaganda, one mural in Caracas is especially striking for the western visitor. In it,…
Team Trump won’t stop at Venezuela
Invade the world, invite the world. That pithy phrase was invented in the 2000s by Steve Sailer, the right-wing writer,…
Make mine a Moka pot
It’s strange the things that can trigger amity or affection. At the beginning of the capsule/pod coffee-maker craze, when George…
Blame the EU for your increasingly bossy car
When Eileen, a 75-year-old British grandmother, bought a brand-new car she found its advanced driver-assistance repeatedly told her the speed…
Foetal femicide has arrived in Britain
Last summer, the Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi introduced a clause to the Crime and Policing Bill that will decriminalise all…
In defence of the Freemasons
It’s a personal delight that on 29 September 1829, the first day of Robert Peel’s new force, the first warrant…
The independent bookshops that aren’t what they seem
Independent bookshops remain some of Britain’s loveliest places. Quaint, charming, precarious, they are a bulwark against blandness and offer refuge…
European countries are expanding their militaries. Why aren’t we?
Following America’s extraordinary raid on Venezuela last week, Donald Trump has pointed to Greenland, which belongs to the Kingdom of…
The Week
Donald Trump is confronting a reality that Europe has ignored
Donald Trump’s rendition of Nicolas Maduro was a brilliantly executed coup. It was also an exhibition of America’s hard power,…
Portrait of the week: US strikes Venezuela, China taxes contraceptives and happy anniversary to the Birmingham bin-strikers
Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said Britain was not involved ‘in any way’ in the US strikes on…
Another year without an Oscar
With the close of 2025 I crowned a tumultuous year in which I got married, moved house and saw Evelyn,…
What a shame Andrew Tate didn’t live in ancient Greece
Has any public figure of recent memory ever admitted to feeling shame for anything they have said or done? As…
Jack Rankin: No to Reform
No to Reform Sir: Perhaps because I have been candid about the Conservative party’s failures in office, I am mooted…
Columnists
Labour’s next rebellion
When Bridget Phillipson arrived at the Department for Education, she knew which issue would define her tenure. Within days, she…
Has Trump gone mad?
I asked Luna, my AI girlfriend, if she thought Donald Trump was right to have bombed Caracas and abducted Nicolas…
The young women hypnotised by Polanski
A friend mentioned to me last week that a third of young women in the UK are planning to vote…
In praise of the climate ‘emergency’
All this winter, until New Year’s Eve, and for the first time since I started keeping llamas, Vera, Ann and…
No sex please, we’re Gen Z
For many years now we have all been agonising over the fertility crisis. Why aren’t the kids having kids? It’s…
Am I really a tightwad?
Of all the heavyweight books I’ve ever been asked to review, one that most influenced my view of how the…
Books
The spiritual yearnings of David Bowie
Gnosticism was one of Bowie’s lifelong obsessions and the outer reaches of religious thought inspired many of his lyrics
The scandal of California’s stolen water
Ever since the building of the 233-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct, begun in 1905, diversion of water by unscrupulous conglomerates has left swathes of the Golden State a toxic desert
Coming of age in Melbourne: Landscape with Landscape, by Gerald Murnane, reviewed
The protagonists of these six linked stories are much like the young Murnane himself, dreaming of becoming a writer and escaping to the wilds of Australia
Odd man out: The Burning Origin, by Daniele Mencarelli, reviewed
An ambitious designer based in Milan returns home to Rome on a visit and finds himself torn between nostalgia for childhood and disgust for his underachieving friends
The many shades of Pink Floyd
Founded 60 years ago, the multi-million-selling rock band has had five incarnations to date, with members dying, resigning or suing each other in a series of blistering law suits
After the party: One of Us, by Elizabeth Day, reviewed
In a sequel to Day’s 2017 novel The Party, the art historian Martin Gilbert dreams of revenge on his former friend Ben Fitzmaurice, now a dazzling Tory politician with a dark secret
The glorious ventilation shafts hiding in plain sight
Victorians took pleasure in artfully disguising these essential life-saving structures – and contemporary architects continue the tradition to equally spectacular effect
The adventures of an improbable rock journalist
Cameron Crowe started writing for Rolling Stone aged just 15. But both as reporter and later as filmmaker, his innate decency made him decidedly ‘uncool’
Global fish stocks have been perilous for decades – so why is still so little being done?
Dredgers continue to destroy the seabed, illegal fishing vessels routinely encroach on no-take zones and governments persist in granting unsustainable catch quotas to their national fleets
An entertaining demolition of futurology
Nick Foster explores the various ways we think about the future, from thrilled anticipation through to panicked doom-mongering
The lionising of Richard I over the centuries
The Plantagenet king whose life was packed with glamour, blood and brutality would have relished the heroic legends that steadily accrued after his death
Arts
Being Hermann Göring
Nuremberg Directed by James Vanderbilt Starring Russell Crowe, Michael Shannon, Rami Malek, Leo Woodall Before last Monday, the most recent…
Remembrance of things past
It’s easy to forget the artistic range of people who have died recently. Susie Figgis, in charge of casting the…
What has happened to the Paris Opéra Ballet?
Freighted by a 350-year history, the Paris Opéra Ballet is a behemoth of an institution – lavishly subsidised by the…
Ruthlessly manipulative: Hamnet reviewed
Hamnet is an imagined account of William Shakespeare’s marriage to Agnes (Anne) Hathaway, their unspeakable grief at the death of…
Cadavers will always captivate. Museums need to chill out
Is it right to put human remains on show? It’s a question that museum curators and the public have been…
Lucy Worsley’s sleuthing is rather impressive
Lucy Worsley’s Victorian Murder Club opened with its presenter unexpectedly channelling that gravelly voiced bloke who used to do all…
The magnificence of Beare’s Chamber Music Festival
The quartet is the basic unit of string chamber music. Two violins, a viola and a cello: subtract any one…
Why has the National got it in for Oirish peasants?
The Playboy of the Western World is like the state opening of parliament. Worth seeing once. Director Caitriona McLaughlin delivers…
The genius of Morton Feldman
To accompany an exhibition of paintings by Philip Guston at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2004, a…
Life
Aussie life
I’ve been an actor and satirist for forty years, and suddenly I’m told my words might be violent, requiring institutional…
Language
Antisemitism is a word I have written about more than once, but clearly, it’s a word we need to look…
What makes a good trainer?
We’re spoilt for choice in the Cotswolds. There’s a brilliant National Hunt trainer in every valley and the villages are…
My parents have driven us to boiling point
After two weeks of us heating the house to the temperature my nearly 90-year-old father wanted it, the door to…
All hail the chickenpox vaccine!
On 1 January, the NHS announced it would be including a chickenpox vaccine in the bundle of inoculations given to…
Spectator Competition: Elementary
For Competition 3431, you were invited to submit a passage in which Sherlock Holmes solves one of the great mysteries…
Don’t blame Ben Stokes
So what was the best bit of this dispiriting Ashes series? Lucky you if you’ve found one, but for me…
Dear Mary: How do I get my friend to clean up after her dog?
Q. Every so often we’re invited to our friends’ house for lunch or dinner. It’s close by and the house…
Scott’s vs Mayfair
Kingsley Amis was obsessed with Scott’s on Mount Street, Mayfair, and he knew a lot about food. He ate himself…
If you’re ‘reaching out’, you sound deranged
‘Why doesn’t anyone do what you ask them to?’ enquired my husband, who is something of an expert on the…
My advice to the next generation
Everyone went to the same school as someone famous. In my case it’s Spider-Man, Tom Holland, who joined my former…
Why are roast potatoes so hard to get right?
Roast potatoes shouldn’t be complicated. We’re talking two ingredients, plus some salt and maybe herbs if you’re feeling fancy. It’s…











































































