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The Spectator

22 November 2025 Aus

Drill, baby, drill

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Drill, baby, drill

Net zero is deceased, it has gone to meet its maker, it is no more, it has shaken off its…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Net Zero AI

The next logical target for the Australian right

Features Australia

Dereliction of duty

How China played the weak West

Features Australia

Give Sussan Ley a chance

She’s been leader for only six months, she’s disciplined and determined. And political knifings rarely end well

Features Australia

The Donald’s quarter time report

A few glitches but lots to be proud about

Features Australia

Britain’s Trumpgate

The White House goes to war with the BBC

Features Australia

Why Angus Taylor terrifies the Bedwetters

The factions, the lobbyists and the renewables industry

Features

Features

Would you pay £65 for toothpaste?

Time was, you didn’t look forward to going to the dentist. Even for routine stuff, your highest aspiration would be…

Notes on...

How the hyphen turned political

When Buckingham Palace announced that its errant prince, Andrew, would be known as boring old Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, some surprise…

Features

The catastrophic dumbing down of German education

German teachers are a privileged species. Most of us enjoy the status of a Beamter, a tenured civil servant. We…

Features

Ukraine is on the verge of political collapse

Defeat, political implosion and civil war – those are the jeopardies that Volodymyr Zelensky faces as Ukraine heads into the…

Features

Are we finally about to crack fusion energy?

Imagine dropping a pea-sized capsule through a spherical chamber and hitting it with a colossal bolt of laser energy as…

Features

Britain’s national security must not be sacrificed to net zero

Those who, like myself, experienced life behind the Iron Curtain understand instinctively that centrally planned economies beholden to an ideology…

Features

It’s time to dispose of the Budget

Denis Healey’s ‘caretaker Budget’ on 3 April 1979 is an odd focus for Labour nostalgia. It came a week after…

Features

My teenage brush with a micropenis

Like Adolf Hitler, I have been involved in a Channel 4 documentary about penises. I also share a love for…

Features

The greatest threat to the economy? The Employment Rights Bill

On Monday night, former England manager Gareth Southgate joined MPs and philanthropists for an event in Westminster described as ‘the…

The Week

Ancient and modern

Aristophanes would have loved Zohran Mamdani

Mr Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old elected mayor of New York, who has described the police as ‘racist, anti-queer and a…

Diary

I regret my intolerance over Brexit

Cannabis smoke lingering along the sidewalks of Washington D.C. was the most palpable fruit of liberty since my last visit…

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week: an immigration overhaul, Budget chaos and doctors’ strikes

Home Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, proposed that refugees would only be granted a temporary right to stay and would…

Leading article

It’s not science if you can’t question it

Follow the Science. The Science is settled. Two phrases which invoke the power of open inquiry to close down open…

Barometer

How many illegal migrants does Britain return?

Condemned leaders Former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity, for using lethal force…

Letters

Letters: can you ever come back from Siberia?

Cross channel Sir: As a supporter of the BBC, it pains me to say that Rod Liddle and Lara Brown…

Columnists

Any other business

Why has Peter Thiel dumped his AI stocks?

How, I wonder, did a shortlist of candidates to succeed Sir Mark Tucker as chairman of HSBC come into the…

Columns

Was the BBC’s Trump edit outrageously wrong?

I should begin by making something clear. Splicing together two parts of a speech to give the impression they were…

Columns

Trump’s Epstein gamble

It is always interesting to see who the American left claims are the leaders of the American right. There was…

Columns

It’s not Starmer’s fault that everyone loathes him

Finding someone who ‘likes’ Sir Keir Starmer is a terribly enervating quest, and I have given up on it without…

Columns

Labour may have lost the countryside forever

Before the last election, Keir Starmer promised that his party’s relationship with the countryside would be ‘based on respect, on…

The Spectator's Notes

What my pyjamas taught me about China

About seven years ago, I bought two pairs of pyjamas, one British, the other Chinese. At the time, they seemed…

Columns

Say hello to your AI granny

Doing the rounds on social media is the most disturbing advert I’ve ever seen. And I’m telling you about it…

Books

Australian Books

A Chesterton for our time

This is Greg Sheridan’s third volume of Christian apologetics. The first, Christians, was the case for Christian faith. The second,…

More from Books

How the teenage Carole King struck gold

Aged 18, she wrote ‘Will You (Still) Love Me Tomorrow’ which reached No 1 in the US – and the hits kept coming

More from Books

Cook books for a colourful Christmas

Crab with Calabrian chilli butter, pink-white marbled beetroot labne and carrot, orange and pomegranate salads are among the many good things on offer this year

More from Books

The new power players running the world

An Italian former political adviser warns of the tech bros and autocrats upending the international order while our elected leaders appease and procrastinate

More from Books

A Faustian pact: The School of Night, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, reviewed

In Knausgaard’s latest psychological thriller, Kristian Hadeland, an arrogant Norwegian photography student, is implicated in a crime for which there will be harsh consequences

More from Books

A philosophical quest: A Fictional Inquiry, by Daniele del Giudice, reviewed

The pacing and tone are noirish in this metaphysical detective story, set in Trieste, about the space between writing and life

More from Books

The pedant’s progress through history

The pompous know-it-all despised by classical philosophers became a stock comic character of 16th-century theatre – and finally a bore to be pitied

Lead book review

Is ‘wind drought’ the latest climate catastrophe?

In an enjoyable guide to wind-related topics, Simon Winchester reports that terrestrial wind speeds are mysteriously declining and we are now in the grip of ‘the Great Stilling’

Arts

Australian Arts

Pit full of snakes

What a cheering thing it is that David Szalay has won the Booker Prize for Flesh which is a masterpiece…

Dance

The best thing Cathy Marston has ever done

The Royal Ballet has scheduled what – on paper at least – looks like one of the most dismally dull…

Theatre

The babyishness of Hunger Games on Stage

The Hunger Games is based on a 2008 novel  about a despotic regime where brainwashed citizens are entertained with televised…

Cinema

The cult of Powell & Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going!

I know where I’m going. I’m on the sleeper train chugging out of Euston and heading to Fort William. A…

Pop

The tedium of softboi rap

A male British rapper who is unafraid to show tenderness and vulnerability is not a particularly new phenomenon: Dave, Stormzy,…

Exhibitions

London’s stupidest gallery

Everyone loves a private view, and I am no exception. I don’t know how many hours I must have spent…

Classical

The orchestra that makes pros go weak at the knees

Stravinsky’s The Firebird begins in darkness, and it might be the softest, deepest darkness in all music. Basses and cellos…

Television

Pluribus is a mess

Pluribus is another drama set in the dystopian future. But on this occasion the integrity of the entire human race…

Cinema

Disastrous adaptation of a wonderful book

The Thing With Feathers is an adaptation of Max Porter’s acclaimed novella about a widower who is left to raise…

Arts feature

‘Ballet is antiquated, and it works’: Royal Ballet principal Matthew Ball interviewed

The history of the male ballet dancer is a chequered one. In the early 19th century, he was the star…

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie life

The Victorian government’s ‘treaty’ with the one per cent of its citizens who purport to be Aboriginal is unjust and…

Aussie Life

Language

It is probably time to unpack the word ‘communism’. Zohran Mamdani has been elected Mayor of New York, and he…

Food

‘The food is not the point here’: Carbone reviewed

People say that Carbone is Jay Gatsby’s restaurant – Gatsby being the metaphor for moneyed doomed youth – but it…

Bridge

Bridge

I first met Susanna in 1987 when Ed Victor, the late literary agent, invited both of us for lunch at…

The turf

Only the Tote can save British racing

For the past 30 years Robin Oakley has taken you through the front door of the horse-racing world and kept…

No life

The art of having no friends

Apparently it’s easy to make money on YouTube by teaching a course in your specialism. Mine is having no friends.…

Real life

Why is Westminster Cathedral leaving Jesus in the dark?

Sitting beneath the looming darkness of the unfinished ceiling of Westminster Cathedral, I found myself praying. I didn’t even know…

No sacred cows

Judges need fewer powers, not more

In my brief career as a parliamentarian I have developed a rule of thumb when it comes to evaluating legislation:…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary: How can I catch a ‘re-gifter’ out?

Q. I live in a small house in Hampstead and have taken in a friend of a friend as a…

Sport

Ben Stokes will go down as the greatest captain of modern times

And so it begins, as Donald Trump likes to say, though not usually about cricket. He was offering his thoughts…