Labour MPs couldn’t handle the truth from Kemi Badenoch at PMQs
Click here to view the latest charts on our data hub
PMQs / Did Kemi Badenoch take the personal jibes too far?
UN / No, Israel isn’t ‘deliberately targeting’ children in Gaza
Media mess / The problem with the BBC’s compulsory Islamophobia training
Gone to seed / Britain must finally embrace gene editing
Hat tip / Why do men think it’s acceptable to wear a hat in church?
Aussie rulers / The rise and rise of Australia’s Nigel Farage
Cooling off / I just want to swim
Real thing / Rugby belongs to Cornwall
Faux amis / The French love affair with Scotland
Gone to seed / Britain must finally embrace gene editing
Hat tip / Why do men think it’s acceptable to wear a hat in church?
Aussie rulers / The rise and rise of Australia’s Nigel Farage
Cooling off / I just want to swim
From Spectator Life
Real thing / Rugby belongs to Cornwall
From Spectator Life
Faux amis / The French love affair with Scotland
From Spectator Life
Latest from Coffee House
All the latest analysis of the day's news
Good intentions alone won’t fix Britain’s maternity crisis
Would Andy Burnham scrap the triple lock?
Labour ministers lose it with Badenoch after PMQs
The £5 million question that Farage still can’t answer
Watch: New SNP MP mocks swearing-in
The Defence Investment Plan won’t save Starmer’s legacy
Why is Baroness Cass backing another puberty blocker trial?
Why I’m taking on the architectural establishment
What exactly are ‘Labour values’?
Spectator TV Presents
Starmer is gone – can King Andy Burnham save Labour? | Quite right!
Most popular
Writers
Spectator Life
An intelligent mix of culture, food, style and property, plus where to go and what to see.
My first trip to Britain’s best racecourse
From the magazine
The secret to dressing exceptionally well
From the magazine
Is the Princess of Wales watermaxxing?
From the magazine
The French love affair with Scotland
From Spectator Life
To survive the heatwave, drink beer
From the magazineHeat and dust, plus nonsense. If the high temperatures had arrived earlier, the England cricket authorities could claim that their brains had been cooked. But the dégringolade over Messrs Atkinson and Stokes had already occurred. Curfews: what nonsense is this? We are dealing with Test cricketers, not schoolboys. If a batsman can decide when to leave a ball outside the off stump or a bowler whether to go round the wicket or over it, the chaps can also decide when to draw stumps on their celebrations after a match. I have a rule for walking in boiling foreign cities. Move at funeral pace and never pass a bar These are the same authorities who want us to refer to batsmen as batters. Some battering may indeed be in order, though only verbal.
Chicken Milanese is the king of homemade fast food
From the magazine
Magazine
This week's magazine
Burnham’s odyssey
Can he resist the siren call of the left?
Can Burnham resist the siren call of the left?
Power, when it is gained and lost, is transferred in stages: the actual, the visual and the constitutional. The latter took place on Tuesday evening when the prime minister presumptive sent a letter to Antonia Romeo, the Cabinet Secretary, requesting that she commence access talks with his team. Keir Starmer had already given permission for them to proceed, but the propriety and ethics team in the Cabinet Office had told Romeo she could not initiate proceedings. Andy Burnham had to ask first. To all intents and purposes, he is already the vessel from which power flows. At the same time, it became clear that James Purnell, the former Blairite cabinet minister, will lead the transition team and stay on to become chief of staff in 10 Downing Street.
Can Burnham resist the siren call of the left?
Power, when it is gained and lost, is transferred in stages: the actual, the visual and the constitutional. The latter took place on Tuesday evening when the prime minister presumptive sent a letter to Antonia Romeo, the Cabinet Secretary, requesting that she commence access talks with his team. Keir Starmer had already given permission for them to proceed, but the propriety and ethics team in the Cabinet Office had told Romeo she could not initiate proceedings. Andy Burnham had to ask first. To all intents and purposes, he is already the vessel from which power flows. At the same time, it became clear that James Purnell, the former Blairite cabinet minister, will lead the transition team and stay on to become chief of staff in 10 Downing Street.
Culture
The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Dull, duller and Dulles – was Churchill’s jibe about America’s Cold War icon unfair?
From the magazineIn the era of Trumpian foreign policy incoherence, a new intellectual biography of the American Cold War icon John Foster Dulles might seem welcome for hawks and doves alike. Indeed, Dulles’s tenure as secretary of state during the first six years of the Eisenhower administration could be viewed – even by the harshest left-wing critic of American imperialism – as a useful and reassuring point of reference, despite its narrow anti-communist dogma and too cavalier approach to the dangers of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union and China. After all, the Eisenhower administration extricated the United States from President Truman’s stalemated Korean War and started no major new wars before the end of Eisenhower’s second term in January 1961.
Nagging doubts: Twenty Minutes of Silence, by Hélène Bessette, reviewed
From the magazineChinese puzzle or matryoshka doll – the complexity of Sino-Russia relations
From the magazine
Hot and bothered: Trouble Was, by Charlotte Edwardes, reviewed
From the magazine
Blame the Enlightenment for species extinction
From the magazine
The imaginative genius behind the Great Exhibition
From the magazine
Who needs an Italian beach when we have our own lidos?
From the magazine
Cartoons
‘‘OK, try counting something other than Brexit benefits.’’
Cartoon
‘‘I’ve got a tie!’’
Cartoon
‘‘I think I preferred it when she was doomscrolling.’’
Cartoon
