All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
With Donald Trump’s threat that ‘a whole civilization will die… never to be brought back again’ looming on Tuesday night, a temporary two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran was agreed. The arrangement, mediated by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is fragile, but showed who the leading players in the current conflict are. Starmer
The abrupt announcement of a two-week ceasefire in the war between the US, Israel and Iran resolves none of the issues which caused the conflict. Beyond an agreement to cease attacks, the arrangements that will hold during the two-week period appear themselves unclear. Each side in the last hours seemed to commit to different versions
As Donald Trump’s 8 p.m. deadline crept closer by the minute, accompanied by increasingly furious posts from the president online, the last-minute scramble to achieve a ceasefire by diplomacy became ever more desperate. Within the final 90 minutes it was announced that there would be a two-week pause in the fighting, based on a ten-point
It’s strange and ironic that higher education establishments in Britain, institutions which ostensibly exist to broaden minds and deepen thought, should today speak in such a cliche-ridden, jargon-infested and deadening variety of English. Yet it’s unsurprising and rather appropriate that they should do so in order to communicate to everyone that they’re no longer interested
At 5 p.m. Washington time, speculation was rife that a deal between the United States and Iran was in the works. Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif pleaded for President Trump to extend his 8 p.m. Tuesday deadline – before he destroyed every bridge and power plant in Iran – by another two weeks in order to give diplomacy more
Was there some failure of communication, do you think, when the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky bought Royal Mail (with the full support of government and opposition) last year? I only ask because it seems to have been taken aback by the full extent of its obligations – to deliver mail to every part of the
We are hours away from Donald Trump’s deadline for Iran to reopen the strait of Hormuz. The President has ‘chickened out’ many times before and offered an extension of some kind, but the threats and posturing ahead of this deadline make it difficult for either side to back down. Will Trump really ‘end Iranian civilisation’
US President Trump has what he so dearly craves – the attention of the global media and the world hanging on his every word. As time ticks down to Donald’s deadline, after which he is threatening to commit war crimes on an unprecedented scale against the Iranian people, the gap for negotiations narrows and the
Liberals don’t realise it yet, and perhaps they never will, but Reform has just done them a massive favour. Nigel Farage’s party has announced that a Reform government would deny visas to nationals of any country seeking slavery reparations from the UK. The party’s home affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf, says those countries which try to
Like US wartime presidents before him, Donald Trump made a priority of, and has succeeded, in attaining air superiority over Iran. Unfortunately, he has failed to acquire even the slightest control over his own mouth. He has now sprayed just about all of his natural allies with friendly fire. His latest jibe yesterday was to
Australia’s most decorated war hero, Ben Roberts-Smith VC, is a mountain of a man. But today, he has been cut down to size. Arriving at Sydney airport this morning on a flight from Queensland, Roberts-Smith was met by Australian Federal police officers, who escorted him to a car waiting on the tarmac. He was arrested, handcuffed
It’s not often noted that the taboo on discussing racial issues goes both ways. While critics of immigration must often tap-dance around their objections to multiculturalism, all but the most gormless of open borders advocates tend to be reluctant to accuse their opponents of racism in response. It’s therefore refreshing to hear a liberal flatly
Geert Wilders was refused entry to the United Kingdom in 2009. A sitting Dutch MP and leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), he had travelled to screen his film Fitna in Parliament. Because the film, and Wilders, are critical of Islam, our government judged his visit to be threatening to community security and public order,
Walker Smith, 54, who has worked as a store assistant at Waitrose for the past 17 years, has been fired for trying to stop a shoplifter. This is the damning series of events that took place at Waitrose’s Clapham Junction branch: a customer alerted Smith to a thief filling a bag with Lindt chocolate eggs
Before the 1980s, our broadcasters had a terrible habit of throwing their own recordings away to save storage space. Videotapes were simply wiped and reused. Every single episode of Doctor Who from the 1960s met this fate, but because the BBC sold the series around the world on film copies about two thirds have survived.
As you may have noticed, we’ve seen rather more wokery than greenery from the Green party since Zack Polanski took the helm. If you’re wondering why, a party policy document on transport, revealed by the Mail, might give you a clue. The party wants to reduce motorway and dual carriageway speed limits to 55 mph,
Monday’s White House press conference came in two distinct parts. The first was an extraordinary tale of heroism in the rescue of two downed pilots. America’s military and intelligence leaders provided details that were new to the public. The danger of a daytime rescue mission in the face of enemy fire. The harrowing climb by
In the emergency department, and on my wards, the strikes sit lightly. My specialty of internal medicine never closes; Easter Monday was a normal working day. The only difference from today until Monday next is that junior doctors will be scarce. Not terribly scarce, in truth, since many are as disenchanted with the strikes as
Weren’t those images beamed back from the Artemis II mission something to catch the breath in the throat? If something in you wasn’t stirred by the sight of Earth, glimpsed through the window of the space capsule past the silhouetted face of the astronaut Christina Koch, I don’t think you can be fully alive. And
How miraculous. Britain is full of people with devastating afflictions, with millions apparently unable to walk a few yards from the nearest car park. And yet these mysterious disabling conditions rarely seem to affect people’s ability to drive a car. Put them behind the wheel and they are transformed as if the Messiah had just
It reminded me a little of that wonderful Christmas Day truce in the first world war, when the two sides briefly came together, put aside their homicidal enmities and played a game of football and sang carols. The venue was the Riverside Stadium in Middlesbrough, fittingly on Good Friday. Boro, then second in the Championship,
Easter is being celebrated by millions of families across our country. It’s one of those moments when we should come together, pause and remember what really matters. As a mother with a very busy job, I value this time with my children more and more each year. It is a time for faith, family and
Reform leader Nigel Farage likes to claim that his latest political vehicle is on course to replace the ‘old fuddy duddy’ Conservative party as the dominant force on the centre-right. While the parallel is not exact, comparing today’s battle for the centre-right with the last major party realignment – when Labour replaced the Liberals as
In a few communities in Victorian England, there was a custom of men tying women to chairs with ribbons on Easter Monday and lifting them up, all the while singing the hymn ‘Jesus Christ is risen today’. On Easter Tuesday the custom was repeated, only this time it was the women who ‘lifted’ the men.
For hundreds of years in Britain, juries have been the cornerstone of the justice system. The right to trial by one’s peers ensures not only that justice is done, but that it is seen to be done. Yet the Labour government is seeking to water down this ancient, and vital, feature of criminal court cases.
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Labour won the 2024 general election in part by focusing on ‘hero voters’ – so called because they may have voted Labour in the past but felt the party had abandoned them. Now they risk losing them again – so how does Labour maintain their support? Chris Curtis, Labour MP for Milton Keynes North and
How religious is Britain? Last week the Bible Society was forced to pull their report into the ‘Quiet Revival’ of Christianity, which was published last year, after YouGov found their polling used faulty data. This report gained significant attention and was the basis of much inquiry in 2025 – including from The Spectator, through our Holy Smoke podcast. The Spectator has a number of broadcasts this Easter that
With a week to go until Hungary heads to the polls, Prime Minister Viktor Orban is fighting to save his political skin. Unusually for a set of Hungarian parliamentary elections, on 12 April, eyes across Europe and beyond will be glued to this set of results. Whether or not Orban remains in power will have
‘WE GOT HIM!’ Donald Trump’s announcement was immediate and emphatic. The operation was ‘one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in US History,’ he said. Two American aircrew recovered from deep inside Iran, in separate missions, without a single US casualty. That was the headline. America has not lost control of the ongoing
Lord Stockwood, the minister for investment, recently floated the idea of universal basic income to cushion AI-driven job losses. Last month, the European Central Bank published a study of 5,000 eurozone firms showing that companies which adopt AI are 4 per cent more likely to hire. Something doesn’t add up. So what’s going wrong? In
There are few figures in Iranian politics as simultaneously familiar and enigmatic as Javad Zarif. To some in Washington he remains the smooth-talking apologist of the Islamic Republic; to hardliners in Tehran, he is still the man who gave too much away in the nuclear negotiations. When such a figure publishes the necessary elements for
Here we go again. Last February I wrote about the latest wave of ‘catphobia’ – my new word, do use it – prompted by a report (more accurately, an anti-cat rant) published by the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission. The report suggested the ‘compulsory containment of cats in vulnerable areas’ and the banning of cats altogether in
A friend who spent much of his life as an archaeologist in Israel once told me that there were three levels of authenticity when it came to Christian pilgrimage sites in the holy land. There were those that were almost certainly inaccurate but soaked in prayer. Those that may or may not be the real
Two young Canadian pilots were killed in a tragic accident on 22 March. What should have been an occasion for sober reflection, compassion and prayer, has regrettably turned into an undignified dispute about bilingualism. Captain Antoine Forest, 30, and First Officer Mackenzie Gunther, 24, died when a fire engine crossed the runway in front of
