Politics
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…
Playing Monopoly is not such a trivial pursuit
Games are politics you can touch, says Tim Clare, and a well-designed boardgame can provide a critical experience of society’s systems
The OnlyFans model, the milkshake and me
What better start to a Monday than to attend Westminster Magistrates’ Court? I was there for the trial of the…
Iran is playing a dangerous game
A drone exploded in a sleepy Israeli seaside town yesterday. The target of the attack was Benjamin Netanyahu. By luck,…
Confessions of a political gambler
What could be more exquisite than the life of the professional gambler? I began my career in 2016 with a…
My plans for The Spectator
Shortly after Boris Johnson was selected as the Conservative candidate for Henley, he invited me to lunch at The Spectator.…
Can Morgan McSweeney reboot the government machine?
The Queen is dead: long live the King. This week brought an end to Downing Street’s unhappy experiment in dyarchy.…
The world is on fire – yet navel-gazing still reigns in pop
There is no better cultural weather vane than pop. It’s not that pop singers possess incredible analytical skills – they…
Inside an MP’s inbox
There is nothing so ex as an ex-MP, Tam Dalyell used to say. Now that parliament has returned from recess,…
Falsifying history can only increase racial tension
Frank Furedi argues that historic memory is the key to the identity of any coherent community, and that attacking it undermines a population’s solidarity
Farage’s next move in his plan to destroy the Tories
On Tuesday afternoon, a familiar figure pulled up at a Westminster café to plot the Tories’ downfall. Nigel Farage beamed…
A romantic obsession: Precipice, by Robert Harris, reviewed
In the build-up to the Great War another drama unfolds, as the Prime Minister H.H. Asquith is seen to be distracted from politics by his infatuation with the beautiful Venetia Stanley
Keir Starmer’s mission impossible
Labour backbenchers have spent years dreaming of the day they are in power and get ‘the call’ from the Prime…
Starmer’s first big test
During the election campaign, Keir Starmer confessed to taking Friday nights off. ‘I’ve been doing this for years – I…
Evita meets Thatcher: the woman fighting Venezuela’s autocracy
Maria Corina Machado is showing the world how opposition politicians can fight an autocrat. When President Nicolas Maduro tried to…
Can Starmer control his party?
Labour MPs ought to have been jubilant when they gathered for their weekly all-party parliamentary meeting on Monday. Most were…
Will the Olympics ever be politics-free?
Despite Baron Coubertin’s ideals, nationalistic friction at the Paris Games in 1924 had already prompted a Times headline: ‘Olympics doomed’
Portrait of the Week: Farage returns, Abbott reselected and Trump guilty
Home Nigel Farage took over leadership of the Reform party from Richard Tice and is standing for parliament in Clacton.…
Why South Africans lost faith in the ANC
A red dawn had just broken when Stephanie Sathege joined the queue to vote at her local polling station in…
Inside Labour’s fight with the unions
By the end of the year, Britain may be one of the few countries in the democratic world where the…
Headed for the canon: Withnail and I, at the Birmingham Rep, reviewed
After nearly 40 years, Withnail has arrived on stage. Sean Foley directs Bruce Robinson’s adaptation, which starts with a live…
Exploring the glorious literary heritage of Bengal
Bengalis are renowned for their love of discussion and argument, and a new collection of short stories reflects this passion for cultured conversation
