Politics
Delightful nostalgia for political wonks: The Gang of Three, at the King’s Head Theatre, reviewed
The Gang of Three gets into the nitty-gritty of Labour politics in the 1970s. It opens with the resignation of…
My apology to Reform
I have read countless commentaries explaining why we shouldn’t take Reform’s victories last Thursday too seriously. They are all wrong.…
A football regulator would be an own goal
It’s that time of the year again in football when the Championship sweeps all before it: it’s full of joy…
The benign republic of Julian Barnes
The novelist presents his utopia – of unilateral disarmament and the public ownership of transport – in the tone of a thoughtful vicar giving an anodyne sermon somewhere in the Home Counties
My brush with a rabid monkey
India A crowded bus station. A lady monkey with a baby clinging to its neck sidled past me, eyeing the banana…
Meet the Zoomer Doomers: Britain’s secret right-wing movement
One of the striking aspects of the AfD’s success in the German elections was the party’s popularity among the young,…
Modernisation has sent Russia spinning back to the Stone Age
Howard Amos portrays a once hopeful country now sweeping the past under the carpet as it alternates between pitying itself and pitting itself against the rest of the world
Reversing our economic decline is not easy, but it is simple
We are becoming poorer because we keep choosing to increase spending, taxes and debt, rather than incurring any short-term discomfort, argues Jon Moynihan
It’s moving to think how happy Van Gogh was in Brixton
When a phrase really takes off in the political sphere, you will recognise it by the frequency with which it…
My guide to liberals
Last Saturday I was making my way across the road from St Pancras to King’s Cross when I noticed a…
Time is running out to tackle the dangers posed by AI
While we can all appreciate the benefits of AI, it is developing faster than anyone imagined, with no consensus on what constitutes acceptable risk
‘There’s been a vibe shift’: welcome to the new political disorder
Donald Trump isn’t back in the White House yet, but already his victory is being felt across the world. Greenland…
Brutal and brilliant portrait of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford
The Last Days of Liz Truss? is a one-woman show about the brief interregnum between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.…
Portrait of the year: Subpostmasters scandal, Rishi in the rain and Syrian rebels topple regime
January After an ITV drama, the government suddenly proposed to do something about the unjust prosecution of sub-postmasters. Junior doctors…
‘Was I cast because you couldn’t get anyone else?’ Cate Blanchett discusses Rumours
At last, a film about the G7. There have been more movies than you can shake a stick at set…
The Ginger Rogers theory of information
I had a friend whose approach to entrepreneurialism was to take two separate things that seemed stupidly popular and somehow…
Can Labour’s reset see off Reform?
Arriving on stage to accept ‘Newcomer of the Year’ at The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards, Nigel Farage gave…
The origin of The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year Awards
Forty years ago, a whisky company, Highland Park, which advertised its Famous Grouse in The Spectator, approached us with a…
How Aesop’s fables apply to today’s politics
Aesop’s animal fables, as Robin Waterfield points out in his new translation, were certainly not written for children: the animals…
‘We want to put common sense into Irish politics’: inside Ireland’s new populist party
When the Taoiseach Simon Harris called a snap election for 29 November, Ireland’s electricity board asked political parties not to…
The chilly charm of Clarissa Eden
Glamorous, enigmatic and well read, Anthony Eden’s wife was a discreet but unmistakable influence in Downing Street in the mid-1950s
Assisted dying is becoming Starmer’s mess
In the months before the general election, the Labour party had an internal debate about starting a ‘national conversation’ on…
I listened to a solid week of Woman’s Hour…
I was a weird kid, and though I harboured the usual innocent girlish ambitions of being a drug fiend and…
Does being right-wing make you violent?
I notice that the police are not treating the killings of those children in Southport as a terrorist attack. While…
Has the term ‘racist’ become devalued through overuse?
Adam Rutherford 4 January 2025 9:00 am
Quite possibly. But racism remains all too real today – even though half the British population deny it exists