Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Sunday

Margaret Mitchell and James Vitali

RC vs CofE: which church should a young Christian join?

There has been discussion over the past few weeks that Britain’s young people are undergoing a religious revival. This Easter weekend, we asked two young writers to write about their church. The Spectator’s Margaret Mitchell is Catholic; Policy Exchange’s James Vitali is Anglican. You can read the discussion below. Margaret Mitchell There’s an episode of The Simpsons that gives an excellent argument for Catholicism. Bart gets sent to Catholic school where he becomes interested in the faith, while Homer becomes taken with the pancake suppers and bingo. Marge is not happy about this. She has a daydream about arriving at Protestant heaven to find WASP-y types with jumpers tied around

Gavin Mortimer

What could France possibly teach America about free speech?

Nearly 300 academics have contacted a French university after it declared itself a safe space for those looking to flee Donald Trump’s America. Aix-Marseille University on the Mediterranean coast responded to the president’s pursuit of American universities he deems to be anti-Semitic by launching a ‘Safe Place for Science’ programme.  Described as a ‘scientific asylum’, the French university will offer three years of funding for up to 20 researchers. So far 298 academics have applied, including staff from Yale, Stanford, Columbia and Johns Hopkins University. Liberation, a left-wing French newspaper, says that some of the applicants have described ‘sometimes chilling accounts from American researchers about the fate reserved for them by

Saturday

Lisa Haseldine

Why Putin wants a truce

At 4 p.m. UK time today, Russian troops were instructed to temporarily lay down their weapons in Ukraine. The order, issued by Russian president Vladimir Putin to mark the Easter weekend, is nominally in force for 30 hours until midnight on Easter Monday. ‘We are proceeding on the assumption that the Ukrainian side will follow our example,’ he said. All military operations, the President added, would supposedly be halted during that time period. From Putin’s statement it doesn’t look as if this ceasefire was discussed with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, or anyone from his administration, before he announced it. But it appears that for the rest of this weekend

Nicholas Farrell

Giorgia Meloni is Europe’s most important leader

Giorgia Meloni has confounded her critics yet again as she proves herself to be the most important leader in the European Union. She has shown in the past two days that she is the vital bridge between America and Europe. As a result, Italy looks set to play a major role on the world stage which it has never done before since the founding of the Italian Republic in 1948 after the defeat of Mussolini’s fascist regime. In Washington on Thursday, where Meloni met Donald Trump for a bilateral summit, she achieved a major breakthrough when the US President accepted her invitation to come to Rome ‘to meet Europe’ about

Svitlana Morenets

Giving Putin Crimea will not end the war

When Volodymyr Zelensky speaks of the Ukrainian territories under Russian control, he always calls them ‘temporarily occupied’. The phrase, first used by Zelensky’s predecessor, has been engraved into Ukrainian politics since 2014, after Vladimir Putin seized Crimea. That terminology is more than symbolic – it’s a promise that Ukraine will one day, even if it takes decades, reclaim all of its land. Now, Donald Trump wants to take that chance away. Trump is reportedly considering recognising Crimea as part of Russia in exchange for a ceasefire in Ukraine. And if the peace agreement isn’t reached soon, he threatens to walk away. ‘If for some reason, one of the two parties

Katy Balls

10 years of politics as Balls bows out

21 min listen

Katy Balls joins Coffee House Shots for the last time as the Spectator’s political editor. Having joined the magazine ten years ago – or six prime ministers in Downing St years – what are her reflections on British politics? Katy’s lobby lunch partner from the Financial Times Stephen Bush joins Katy and Patrick Gibbons to try and make sense of a turbulent political decade, work out where the greatest risk is to the current Labour government, and attempt to make some predictions for the next ten years.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons. 

Julie Burchill

The march of the trans mob is over

I wake up in a good humour most mornings, but today I started the day feeling that this country – which seems, in so many ways, to have been sleepwalking in a hall of distorting mirrors for so long – had taken a definitive step towards the overthrow of the crazed, tyrannical cult which has inexplicably gained power all around the world. In the process of dignifying a male sexual fetish – autogynephilia – into the latest human rights crusade, careers have been ruined and reputations wrecked by trans activists and their creepy ‘allies’: all in the name of the ultimate patriarchal plan; to colonise everything won by women, from

Friday

Mark Galeotti

Why Putin is keeping Trump waiting for a Ukraine deal

There is an odd contradiction in Russian attitudes to the current negotiations with the United States. On the one hand, a sense that the window of opportunity may be closing, on the other no real rush to take advantage of it, or at least to offer Donald Trump any concessions to show willing. Mikhail Rostovsky, a columnist in the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, put it best when he noted that the window is likely to close at the end of this month, which marks the end of the first hundred days of Donald Trump’s second term: ‘No one expected Trump to fulfil his boastful campaign promise and stop military actions during

Gavin Mortimer

Meloni’s mission to ‘make the West great again’ will infuriate Macron

Giorgia Meloni met Donald Trump in the White House on Thursday and stated her ambition to ‘make the West great again’. The Italian prime minister is closer to the Trump administration than any other Western European leader, and later today in Rome she will host J.D. Vance. The American vice-president could be described as Meloni’s ideological soulmate, and it was noteworthy that when Meloni spoke of her ambition to reinvigorate the West she added: “When I speak about (the) West mainly, I don’t speak about geographical space. I speak about the civilisation, and I want to make that civilisation stronger.” This will be music to the ears of Vance This

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, Katy Balls, Olivia Potts, Benedict Allen, Cosmo Landesman and Aidan Hartley

40 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Would Trump really bomb Iran, asks Paul Wood (1:38); Katy Balls interviews Health Secretary Wes Streeting on NHS reform, Blairism and Game of Thrones (8:38); Olivia Potts examines the history – and decline – of the Easter staple, roast lamb (18:25); the explorer Benedict Allen says Erling Kagge and Neil Shubin were both dicing with death, as he reviews both their books on exploration to earth’s poles (22:13); Cosmo Landesman reflects on what turning 70 has meant for his sex life (28:46); and, Aidan Hartley takes us on an anthropomorphic journey across Africa (33:55).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Damian Thompson

Easter special: in praise of faithful dissent, a conversation with Nigel Biggar and Mary Wakefield

24 min listen

The Easter issue of the Spectator includes two provocative articles exploring aspects of Christianity.  Nigel Biggar, Regius professor emeritus of moral theology at Oxford University, now a Conservative peer, celebrates the heroic ‘faithful dissent’ of Christian heroes such as Thomas More and Helmuth von Moltke, who lost their lives rather than defend injustice.  Meanwhile Spectator columnist Mary Wakefield interviews Roman Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. She’s inspired by his holiness but depressed by his use of ‘C of E bureaucratese’ to uphold liberal orthodoxy on subjects such as gender ideology. But, she says they can share an uncomfortable space together within faith. In this episode of Holy Smoke, Nigel and Mary join Damian Thompson, who

Katy Balls

Labour Together? Party morale & the threat of Reform

11 min listen

Former Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth and Patrick Maguire from The Times join Katy Balls for her penultimate Coffee House Shots podcast as The Spectator‘s political editor. Since losing his seat at last year’s general election, Ashworth has been CEO of Labour Together – but not for much longer as he exclusively reveals on the podcast. Less than two weeks to go from the local elections, and only a few months away from marking one year in power, what is morale like in the Labour Party? While Patrick reflects on who might, or might not, be feeling happy, Ashworth provides more reasons for Labour supporters to feel bullish – particularly when thinking about the

Katy Balls

The Deborah Mattinson Edition

29 min listen

Deborah Mattinson joined the House of Lords as a Labour peer in February. Her involvement in politics began when she worked alongside Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould to create Labour’s Shadow Communications Agency for Neil Kinnock. In 1992 she co-founded Opinion Leader Research, and she went on to advise Tony Blair ahead of the 1997 election and later became Gordon Brown’s chief pollster. In 2021 she was appointed Director of Strategy for Keir Starmer, a position she held until stepping down following last year’s landslide victory. On the podcast, Deborah tells Katy Balls about growing up as a Labour supporter with a father active in local Tory politics, the work

Bijan Omrani

What English Heritage gets wrong about the origins of Easter

Easter is, of course, the time of year when Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but don’t expect to learn that on the English Heritage children’s Easter trail. ‘Did you know Easter started as a celebration of spring?,’ children who take part in the trail are told. Any mention of Christ or Christianity is omitted from that sign, which has been planted at English Heritage sites across the country. However, one god does get a look in. This first panel, decorated with children collecting flowers, painted eggs and a cheery Easter bunny, gave the following account of the origin of Easter: ‘Long ago, people welcomed warmer days

Zoe Strimpel

The trouble with Harvard

Harvard is in trouble, but I’m finding it hard to have any sympathy. In the aftermath of October 7th, Jewish students at what is supposedly the United States’s most prestigious university were intimidated, vilified and silenced. It was an intolerable double punch after the trauma of Hamas’s brutal massacre in Israel. The ugly scenes at Harvard became a blueprint for campus protests throughout the US, especially at Columbia, UCLA and the University of Michigan. These all-campus jamborees of Israel-loathing were looked on benignly, and sometimes even joined, by faculty that are otherwise easily angered by crimes such as using the wrong gender pronoun. Now, as threatened, Donald Trump is taking

Stephen Daisley

Why ‘respectable’ Tories don’t like Russell Findlay

The plight of Russell Findlay reveals a lot about how politics works. Findlay was elected leader of the Scottish Conservatives in September 2024, by which point the party’s vulnerability to Reform was already clear. The Holyrood Tories were not made for a populist era. They are a patrician party of the cosy centre, chiefly concerned with the Union, taxes and crime, and so Findlay’s populist style has not been welcomed by some of his MSPs. One of them, Jamie Greene, has defected to the Liberal Democrats and, whether any of his former colleagues join him, there are several who no longer seem at home in the Tory Party. Findlay’s unvarnished

Daniel DePetris

What will Trump do if the Ukraine peace talks fail?

With the war in Ukraine now in its fourth year, Trump administration officials, including Donald Trump himself, have spent the last month dialling their Ukrainian colleagues, jetting to foreign capitals to meet with Ukrainian and Russian officials and huddling with European ministers in an attempt to bring the conflict to a conclusion. The latest meeting happened this week, when U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, traveled to Paris for an all-hands session. Trump, however, doesn’t have much to show for his efforts. U.S. officials continue to put on a brave face and insist that Trump, and only Trump, has the knowledge, skill-set and experience to negotiate

Thomas Munson

The Good Friday Agreement has failed to heal Northern Ireland

‘As if we didn’t have enough to argue about!’ exclaimed the gentleman in front. We were standing just off a busy road adjacent to a looming wall. The road wasn’t any road, and the wall wasn’t any wall. It was Shankill Road, and this was one of Belfast’s infamous peace walls. The man wasn’t picking a fight. He was referring to West Belfast’s increasingly prevalent references to the war in Gaza. Peace walls have adorned murals of Northern Irish paramilitaries for decades. Now, there are a growing number of references to fighting in the Middle East, with Belfast’s Protestant and Catholic communities divided on the issue with sad predictability. Falls

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh

Where the King went wrong on Maundy Thursday

It is an unfortunate truth that the picturesque Maundy Thursday service celebrated today in Durham, in which the King distributes Maundy money to deserving individuals, is a watered down version of the original. It started out in abbeys and churches when clerics would wash each others’ feet in imitation of Christ washing the feet of the Apostles before the Last Supper. Bad King John adopted the tradition in 1210 by washing the feet of poor men and it was maintained by monarchs until about the Glorious Revolution of 1688 – James II was the last to do it properly – until it was finally replaced with the hygienic but not very moving ceremony of distributing money by George II.  If the

The Spectator

Watch: Douglas Murray on Israel’s plight and the plague of western guilt

On Monday evening, The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove and Spectator columnist and associate editor Douglas Murray sat down for a live event at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster.  In front of a packed auditorium with 1,500 guests, they discussed the October 7th massacre; Douglas’s latest book, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas and the Future of the West; and the best and the worst aspects of the MAGA movement. This is a video exclusively for Spectator subscribers.