Politics Archives

Saturday

21 February 2026

The joy of the British euphemism

In the midst of a quiet afternoon tidying my home library – that noble pursuit which always begins with ambition and ends in nostalgia – I unearthed what must surely be the most British book I own: How Not to Say What You Mean: A Dictionary of Euphemisms, published 30 years ago by Oxford University Press. This delightful book contains hundreds of euphemisms for avoiding the truth in every area of life, including work, sex, death, politics, money, and the human body. This is not a dry book; it is a peaceful treatise on the art of implication, a cheerful guide to avoiding the truth with wit and tact. Britain

Iain Dale

Why by-elections matter – with Iain Dale & Jon Craig

17 min listen

Two titans of broadcasting – LBC’s Iain Dale and Sky’s Jon Craig – join deputy political editor James Heale for a whistle-stop tour of British by-elections. From Oxford City in 1938 to Chesterfield in 1984 right up to Runcorn in 2025, why do by-elections matter? When have they been most significant? And are longer vote counts the product of fractured politics in the modern age? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Friday

20 February 2026

Tim Shipman

Palace ‘terrified’ Andrew could have shared secrets of defence deals

Keir Starmer has had a pretty torrid couple of months but, as the curtain comes down on another turbulent week, not even Donald Trump attacking the Chagos Islands deal again, or the exposure of how the pressure group that got Starmer elected was smearing journalists, compares with the turmoil in the royal household. The royals are known to keep excellent records in their archives. The ultimate concern is that the King might be asked to give evidence against his brother The Prime Minister waits anxiously to see what further demons are released from the Pandora’s box of the Epstein files, but for now No. 10 has done what it can

Freddy Gray

Has the Supreme Court just ‘SCREWED’ Trump’s administration?

‘If the Supreme Court rules against the United States of America on this… WE’RE SCREWED!’ said Donald Trump on Truth Social last month. Well, the Supreme Court has finally now ruled, and it is indeed a very serious blow to Trump’s economic agenda. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which the White House used to impose his sweeping levies, ‘does not authorise the President to impose tariffs,’ said the court. Quite what this setback means for Trump’s tariffs remains unclear. There’s already much talk of the United States having to pay back duties to foreign companies, but that is a fraught legal question. Another highly contentious subject is what now

James Heale

James Heale, Lisa Haseldine, Simon Heffer & Lloyd Evans

25 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: James Heale reflects on Nigel Farage’s leadership team; Lisa Haseldine argues that Europe is in denial over its defence; Simon Heffer looks at the extraordinary rise – and tragic fall – of the first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald; and finally, Lloyd Evans reviews the plays I’m Sorry, Prime Minister and American Psycho. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

James Heale, Lisa Haseldine, Simon Heffer & Lloyd Evans

Jacob Heilbrunn

The Supreme Court is right to reject Trump’s tariffs

At a rally in Georgia on Thursday night, President Trump declared that he couldn’t wait ‘forever’ for the Supreme Court to rule on the legitimacy of his sweeping tariff policy. Whether or not it was listening to his complaint, forever arrived today as the court handed Trump a thumping defeat. It struck a blow not only for fiscal but also political sanity. The language of the ruling was as lapidary as it was persuasive. ‘President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope,’ Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the 6-3 opinion. ‘In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he

Brendan O’Neill

The hunting of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

The first thing the mob kills is its own humanity. Long before they sink their collective claws into the target of their flapping ire, they lay waste to their own decency. We see this in the digital hounding of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Behold the ugly gloating over a man’s downfall. Witness the peddling of false accusations. The shame, right now, belongs less to Andrew than to those who have made a bloodsport from his troubles. We don’t even know if Andrew is guilty. He hasn’t even been charged What do we want from Andrew? When will the mass stalking of him like a wounded deer finally be satiated? When his head

Sang-Hwa Lee

How my choir is fighting back against Britain’s decline

In certain corners of the Westminster village, what was once regarded as the lunatic ravings of Dominic Cummings have begun to seep into the mainstream. Britain is broken, so echo pubs up and down Whitehall, because a system that rewards failure, blocks talent, and invites venality has produced a Parliament of media-obsessed show ponies and a civil service where domain expertise hinders advancement. If today’s Westminster is filled with too many amateurish professionals, the original ideal has not yet been extinguished elsewhere One upshot has been the rise of a quasi-Bolshevik start-up culture imbuing nerdy topics like system design, tech and AI, nuclear, planning and infrastructure reform with an unprecedented

Nigel Biggar

The University of Sussex must stop force-feeding students bad history

Earlier this month, an SOS dropped into my inbox. It came from a student at the University of Sussex. Lest her repressive professors punish her for what I am about to report, let’s call her ‘Emma’. ‘I am in a mild state of despair,’ she wrote. This week alone I have been told that the history of kinship theory has been, up until now, ‘Eurocentric and cisgendered’, and another anthropology module must be viewed through a ‘queer and trans lens’. The word ‘decolonisation’ comes up in almost every lecture. If university campuses represent a microcosm of the greater society, then I fear we are doomed. I’m not surprised. After all, Sussex

Matthew Lynn

Is it time for Rachel Reeves to give Britain a tax cut?

The self-employed have paid up. And investors are paying record amounts of capital gains tax. The public finance figures for January have been published, showing record tax receipts and handing the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, a surprise £30 billion bonus. It is great news that the public finances are stabilising. Manchester mayor Andy Burnham may not be able to complain about being ‘in hock to the bond markets’ for much longer. And yet, surely this also shows that Britain is being overtaxed? Is it perhaps time to hand some of the money back? The UK’s public finances are suddenly in much better shape, with a record surplus recorded for January. The

Oscar Edmondson

Andrew's arrest spells trouble for Labour

12 min listen

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been released under caution after he was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office – the image of him sat slumped in the back of a car while leaving Norfolk police station on his 66th birthday splashes all the morning papers. Focussing on the politics, his could throw up lots of difficult questions for Labour and Keir Starmer – and governments famously don’t much like talking about the Royals. What problems will this cause Starmer? In other news, it is not shaping up to be an easy return after recess, not least with Donald Trump’s latest intervention on the Chagos deal. How many more setbacks can the

Stephen Daisley

The crisis of confidence in Scotland’s Crown Office

It wouldn’t be Scottish politics if there wasn’t an abstruse scandal that requires a half-hour of background information to explain. So, here goes: Dorothy Bain KC is the Lord Advocate, the title given to the head of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. In addition to being the chief prosecutor north of the border, she is also a minister in the SNP-run Scottish Government, where she serves as the top legal adviser. Bain was summoned to the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday to answer questions about a minute she emailed to John Swinney, who is first minister and therefore head of the ministry in which Bain sits, as well as

Ross Clark

What does the ONS mean by living in ‘good health’?

Living longer but spending more of our lives in ill health. That is the rather shocking picture presented by the figures for ‘healthy life expectancy’ published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) yesterday. They show that while life expectancy continues to rise modestly, the proportion of our lives lived in ‘good’ health is falling sharply. Between 2022 and 2024 men enjoyed 60.7 years of good health and women 60.9 years. This was, respectively, 1.8 years and 2.5 years down on the previous period for which data was collected, 2019 to 2020. We now appear to spend less of our lives in good health than we did at any time

Mark Galeotti

Only one person knows what Vladimir Putin really wants

Another round of trilateral Ukraine peace talks has wrapped up in Geneva with the ritual claims that they were ‘businesslike’ and ‘productive’. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president Zelensky took to social media to announce that he doesn’t ‘need historical shit to end this war’ and accused the Russians of doing nothing but engaging in delaying tactics. So is there any point to the talks? Central to this question is quite what Vladimir Putin really wants. If granted the remaining, unconquered portion of the Donetsk region that he is demanding – itself potentially a concession too far for Kyiv – will he be willing to call it quits and allow the rest of

Jacob Heilbrunn

Is Donald Trump becoming a globalist?

It was a banner day for Donald Trump. On Thursday, at the US justice department, a long perpendicular banner with his stern visage was unfurled, proclaiming ‘Make America Safe Again’. And just across from the state department, Trump convened his shiny new Board of Peace at the former US institute of peace, which has a dove-shaped white roof. It was seized in 2025 by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and renamed after Trump. ‘I had no idea,’ Trump said. But for all his disclaimers, Trump was not shy about expressing his delight at the new name that adorned the building’s entrance. A bevy of strongmen, including Vietnam’s general secretary To

William Moore

Britain is not ready for war – and Labour isn’t doing enough

38 min listen

Britain is defenceless, declares the Spectator’s cover piece this week. From the size of the armed forces to protection against cyber warfare, the government is not spending fast enough to meet the UK’s security challenges. But is the public ready to choose warfare over welfare? And can we blame the young people who don’t want to fight for their country? For this week’s Edition, host William Moore is joined by opinion editor Rupert Hawksley, columnist Matthew Parris, and Whitehall editor of the Financial Times Lucy Fisher. As well as meeting Britain’s defence challenge, they discuss: whether the Mandelson scandal is bigger than the Profumo affair; the organised gangs terrorising rural

Thursday

19 February 2026

Eliot Wilson

Why Starmer must raise defence spending fast

Britain’s armed forces lack the mass, readiness and resilience needed to produce a credible deterrent in an era of intensifying threats. The danger comes not only from an aggressive and expansionist Russia but from a reckless and murderous Iranian régime with its back currently to the wall, while China continues to use any means at its disposal to advance its interests globally. To begin to meet these threats, His Majesty’s government must give an absolute and unqualified commitment to increase core defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, with a clear timeline for delivery. This cannot wait. This argument has been set out in an open letter to the

Matthew Lynn

Bring on Rachel Reeves’s boring Spring statement

For the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to tell everyone in advance that her Spring statement will be ‘boring’ is a little like Nigel Farage telling us he might be popping out for a pint, or Sir Keir Starmer telling us he might change his mind. It is useful information, but hardly a huge surprise. Still, the new ‘no drama’ Reeves will at least be an improvement on her former tax-raiding iteration – the British economy could use a break from her attempts to improve it. With the Spring statement looming in just under a fortnight’s time, we will at least be spared the constant leaks of madcap ideas that led up

Edward Howell

What Yoon’s prison sentence means for South Korea

South Korean presidents have gained infamy for meeting untimely fates, whether death, imprisonment or suicide. And now, former president Yoon Suk-yeol is the latest addition to this list. Earlier today, the man whose presidency will go down in history for his abortive declaration of martial law on 3 December 2024 was sentenced to life in prison on account of masterminding an insurrection. Supporters and detractors of South Korea’s thirteenth president gathered outside Seoul’s central district court to hear the fate of the leader they either loved or loathed – a fate which was also broadcast on live television to the Korean nation. This sight – and today’s decision – hammers home

Laurie Wastell

Why the Equality Act has to go

If the Equality Act 2010 made discrimination illegal, then why we have seen the rise of persistent and widespread discrimination against white males across the public and private sectors? Today, some form or other of anti-white social engineering can be found in practically any institution you care to name. Famously in 2023, the RAF, in a bid to make ‘the few’ even fewer, discriminated against 31 ‘useless white male pilots’ in a recruitment scheme. But we can add the NHS, universities, all manner of coveted white-collar grad schemes and internships, the Premier League, GCHQ and local councils.Or just take what we’ve seen in the police. In 2024, three white officers