Looking back, 2023 didn’t have all of the fireworks that the previous 12 months brought. As December fast approaches, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer remain in post – a change from 2022 and the year of four Chancellors, three premiers and two monarchs as well. But at this year’s Spectator Parliamentarian Awards, the gossip| The Spectator
On Monday supermodel Naomi Campbell was pictured posing with her new baby daughter for the first time on the cover of British Vogue. Having become a mother in her 50s, she described having a child as ‘the biggest joy I could ever imagine.’ And yet it’s a ‘joy’ few members of the younger generation want to share. New statistics reveal that half of| The Spectator
It was gratifying to see the recent Unesco report recommending moderation on the topic of tech in the classroom. I do hope the Department for Education, Ofsted and every school head in the country has read it. Britain seems to have submitted to the tidal wave of digital learning without so much as a minnow| The Spectator
Hundreds of thousands of children in Years 11 and 13 are currently in the middle of exam season, but for what purpose?| The Spectator
It might have been forgiveable if the legislation had stopped at the word gender, but sex itself was dragged into the debate.| The Spectator
It’s an ominous time for a state-of-the-nation conference. Each week, the shores we defended against Hitler, Napoleon and the Spanish Armada are breached by hundreds of foreign men, while asylum seekers make up ‘a significant proportion’ of those currently being investigated for the grooming of British children. Earlier this month, there were days of violent anti-immigration riots| The Spectator
Weekly magazine featuring the best British journalists, authors, critics and cartoonists, since 1828| The Spectator
Weekly magazine featuring the best British journalists, authors, critics and cartoonists, since 1828| The Spectator
Now that everyone insists that the oppressed must be lifted up – or platformed, if you’re that way inclined: why does no one in the West give a second thought to the most obviously powerless group: kids in care – children who’ve been abandoned by or taken from their parents? An astonishing amount of kids| The Spectator
Wes Streeting has just given a striking statement on arrival at the Department of Health and Social Care in which he announced that ‘from today, the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken’. Parties make campaign threats that there are ‘24 hours to save the NHS’, but this description of Labour’s sacred| The Spectator
Something pretty big is missing from Labour’s historic landslide: the voters. Keir Starmer has won 63 per cent of the seats on just 33.8 per cent of the votes, the smallest vote share of any modern PM. Lower than any of the (many) pollsters predicted. So Labour in 2024 managed just 1.6 percentage points higher| The Spectator
The porn star Bonnie Blue offers a straightforward explanation for her decision to join OnlyFans. She was in her early twenties, married to her teenage sweetheart, pursuing a career in recruitment and living in Derbyshire, the county of her birth. As she told an interviewer last year: ‘I used to work an office job, nine| The Spectator
Lord Hermer KC has done it again. Delivering RUSI’s annual security lecture this week, the Attorney General set out to ‘depolarise’ the debate about international law, before promptly comparing those who are open to withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) with Carl Schmitt, the notorious German jurist who joined the Nazi party| The Spectator
Here’s a full transcript of the speech that JD Vance gave at the Munich Security Conference this afternoon. One of the things that I wanted to talk about today is, of course, our shared values. And, you know, it’s great to be back in Germany. As you heard earlier, I was here last year as| The Spectator
Putin may agree to the ceasefire on condition that Ukraine's forces in the Kursk salient withdraw fully from Russian territory.| The Spectator
Philip Hensher There were some very good novels this year, but they came from surprising directions. It is astonishing that one as original as Kate Barker-Mawjee’s The Coldest Place on Earth (Conrad Press, £9.99) couldn’t find a major publisher. A friend recommended this wonderfully controlled and evocatively written novel about a heart coming to life| The Spectator
As the days slip by, the likelihood that anything will be learned from the recent rioting looks ever more remote. And with that suspicion comes the inevitable sense of déjà-vu. Because we have indeed been here before. In 2011 England was engulfed by riots, originating in London but leading to copycat violence across the north| The Spectator
Weekly magazine featuring the best British journalists, authors, critics and cartoonists, since 1828| The Spectator
If there is one thing that can be said about Elon Musk, whether you like him or not, he is certainly an argument for the great man theory of history. Rather than the human story just being just a series of social forces pushing us like waves, a single individual can steer events in a| The Spectator
Weekly magazine featuring the best British journalists, authors, critics and cartoonists, since 1828| The Spectator
Perhaps JK Rowling should be the leader of the opposition. She describes herself as ‘left leaning’, she has a huge following, and she also knows what a woman is. Writing in the Times this morning, Rowling defends her friend Rosie Duffield – the Labour candidate for Canterbury – following the appalling abuse she has suffered| The Spectator
One of Professor Richard Dawkins’s most influential ideas was the concept of the ‘meme’, which he coined in The Selfish Gene. A meme is an idea or form of behaviour that spreads by imitation from person to person. Memes can be beneficial or harmful to the individual and the wider community. The most successful have| The Spectator
Tom Holland recently invited me to attend a service of Evensong with him at London’s oldest church, St Bartholomew the Great. Holland, who co-hosts the phenomenally popular The Rest is History podcast, has been a regular congregant for a few years. He began attending while researching Dominion, his bestselling book which outlined the way the| The Spectator
There’s a way of getting children to eat something they dislike – medicine, for example – where you bury the goods in a spoonful of jam. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are trying this method with their Online Harms Bill C-63. But it may not go down as well as they hoped. The stated intent of the Bill is| The Spectator