All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
As the United States marks 250 years since the country’s unilateral declaration of independence, most of the 4 July celebrations have focused on the rebels. But Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson have hogged the limelight for too long. What about the American Loyalists, those who defied the intense social pressure and stayed loyal to the
‘Too big to go down’ is an old football maxim and a cautionary tale. It refers to the complacent attitude that creeps up on established clubs, a deluded conviction that given their consistent achievements, they will never be relegated. The same attitude pervades in the world of business. Former household names on either sides of the Atlantic, such as Pan Am, TWA, Atari, Woolworths, BHS and C&A (in the UK) all went bust largely because they thought themselves invincible. The same mood exists at Boots today, which is overpriced and over-reliant on being a source of NHS prescriptions. It also used to be the case at Marks & Spencer until a few years ago, when it woke up to the fact that the likes of Primark and online shopping had arrived in earnest.
With less than three weeks to go until he enters No. 10, Andy Burnham has adopted a ‘Ming vase’ approach to public appearances. With victory inevitable, why expose himself to media scrutiny at the risk of binding his hands on taking up office? Since his devolution speech on Monday, the new Makerfield MP has kept his interventions to a minimum, with a planned appearance at the New Economics Foundation cancelled last night. But having declined to take journalists’ questions on Monday, Burnham did decide to submit to a radio interview with Andrew Marr on LBC tonight. The party is split on whether its current malaise is ‘comms or policy’.
On Wednesday, the largest traditional Catholic order of priests in the world, the Society of Saint Pius X, consecrated four bishops without a papal mandate. The Vatican’s response was swift and brutal. Today, it announced that not only have the four new bishops and the two consecrators been excommunicated but, shockingly, so will all the priests and faithful who continue to adhere to the Society’s work – an edict that will likely affect more than a million Catholics worldwide.
It should come as no surprise that ministers have accepted all the recommendations made in the first phase of the Southport inquiry. The investigation identified a raft of failings by public bodies to prevent the murder of three girls by Axel Rudakubana, which the government has promised to ‘urgently address’. The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, vowed to ‘right the wrongs’ identified by the investigation and said that the government will do ‘whatever is needed to protect the public’. Strong words indeed, but it is by their actions that ministers will be judged, and rightly so.
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Boris is (sort of) on manoeuvres, as Tim Shipman reports in this week’s magazine. There are signs that the former Conservative prime minister and one-time editor of this magazine could emerge from his frontline political hiatus to throw his weight behind the Tory cause. He has already been advising Kemi Badenoch and is said to be driven, in part, by a ‘hatred’ of Nigel Farage. Should Reform fear the return of Boris? It has been a damaging month for Reform, following the Makerfield by-election, a plateau in the polls, rumbling questions about Farage’s £5 million gift and now suggestions that he did not declare his full property portfolio to parliament. Has Reform peaked? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Tim Shipman and James Heale. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
For a country that pumps roughly 9 million barrels of oil a day – the third highest of any country in the world – Russia has managed to achieve something genuinely remarkable: it cannot keep its own petrol stations stocked. More than half of its regions are now reporting shortages, the consequence of a Ukrainian drone campaign that has struck with increasing frequency and precision at the refinery infrastructure on which the country's civilian economy depends. The sometimes hours-long queues that have appeared – even in Moscow, for what may be the first time in the war – carry a symbolic weight that no amount of official reassurance from the Kremlin has managed to dispel. How this has come about is obvious enough.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) have announced they are investigating two officers who attended the scene of Henry Nowak’s death. This does not necessarily mean they will face disciplinary proceedings, merely that such proceedings are now possible. This was probably the only course of action open to the IOPC, particularly after last week’s release of a transcript and more video footage of the incident, seemingly with the consent of the Nowak family. They paint both the police and the Digwas in an even more damning light. The video shows Vickrum Digwa being questioned by police while Henry lay dying on the ground nearby. Henry was manhandled by police and cuffed behind his back.
The weather is glorious, England have soared through to the World Cup round of 16 and one Sir Keir Starmer has just weeks left as Prime Minister. So where better to celebrate – or commiserate, if you are so inclined – than at The Spectator’s annual summer party? The jamboree remains the most sought-after social ticket of the Westminster summer season, bringing together the most senior politicians, journalists and political aides, alongside the crème de la crème of the arts and media world. From Kemi Badenoch to Morgan McSweeney, The Spectator garden is filled with notable faces. Mr S noted strong contingents representing the Tories, Labour and Reform.
There’s one member of the royal family that most women of a certain age would truly like to hang out with, and that’s the Queen. Camilla gives every impression of enjoying a stiff gin, a risque joke and a crafty fag. Better still, she seems sufficiently down-to-earth to have little time for wokery. She’d give short shrift to men in dresses who think they have a right to be in female-only spaces. So of course Her Majesty met with the champion of women’s sex-based rights, JK Rowling, in Edinburgh this week. The only question is: why hasn’t this royal blessing happened sooner? To our national shame, rather than being celebrated, Rowling is all too often overlooked or shunned By any metric, Rowling should be a national treasure.
War! What is it good for? A ding-dong political row. The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) continues to dominate Westminster, following its unveiling by Keir Starmer yesterday. An extra £15 billion will now be spent on military budgets – a figure far short of the £28bn that John Healey was demanding prior to his resignation as defence secretary. That shortfall has been roundly condemned as insufficient by both opposition parties and much of the military establishment. If the chiefs do not think it is enough, the argument goes, then why should the British public? Starmer was not unreasonable on the subject at Prime Minister’s Questions.
Labour has never had a female leader. But some of the party's MPs have alighted on a solution: make Andy Burnham put women in top jobs anyway. Female Labour MPs are demanding that Burnham gives half of ministerial jobs to women and that 50 per cent of No.10 staff are female. The Parliamentary Labour Party is also calling for Labour’s new leader to commit to appointing a female Deputy Prime Minister. Perhaps they were spurred on after The Spectator’s political editor Tim Shipman revealed, in last week’s magazine, that one senior Labour figure believes Burnham could be ‘Labour’s first woman prime minister’.
The Prime Minister began today’s PMQs by wishing a ‘happy 78th birthday’ to the NHS. This is the sort of weird, abstract and inanimate thing he is comfortable showing affection for. What next? Happy Birthday to the Nuclear Deterrent, to the Protestant Succession? How will everyone be celebrating? Being left on a trolley for 48 hours? Perhaps by the time the NHS has turned 80, you’ll be able to get an appointment. He has essentially painted a Burnham shaped tunnel on the side of a sheer rock face, failing to commit the requisite money to defence Next came a bit of – unexpected – mutual congratulation, courtesy of Sir Keir and Mrs Badenoch.
https://twitter.com/Conservatives/status/2072263303200440548 Like it or not, in this day and age, success in politics requires a strong presence on social media. A sizeable following, paired with witty and authentic content, can genuinely shift popularity ratings and boost an MP’s prominence, regardless of party. Sir Keir Starmer’s excruciatingly cringeworthy and try-hard social media output did him no favours. But the slick digital operations around Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe and, yes, even Andy Burnham have helped increase their exposure and win them supporters. While many will no doubt hanker after the days when talent, ideas and acumen determined political popularity, one upside of the social media game is that it has produced some very creative spoof content.
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As the nation holds its breath to see if England will be progressing in the World Cup, the bottles of Pol Roger are on ice for the post-match after party: the Spectator's summer party, taking place this evening. Opening the doors of the Spectator to listeners of Coffee House Shots, James Heale, Freddy Gray, Noa Hoffman and Tim Shipman talk about their favourite memories, how to survive events like this – and which politicians handle their drink best. Plus, with Starmer on the way out, will Labour politicians be partying – or plotting? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
At today’s Prime Ministers’ Questions there was only one subject anyone was discussing. The Defence Investment Plan is supposed to be Keir Starmer’s big legacy so there is no surprise that is deeply suspect and lacking in fiscal credibility. Kemi Badenoch chose to ask all of her six questions on the subject. She began by asking about the gulf between the £15bn promised and the £28bn which John Healey wanted to then effortlessly narrowing her focus to whether Andy Burnham was signed up to a plan with a £4.7bn black hole in it. ‘Any Labour Prime Minister would stand behind this plan’, insisted Starmer. ‘Cheers Keir’, his predecessor must be thinking. It was not just Badenoch asking about defence. The Lib Dems and even the SNP both queued up too trying to have a go.
Berlin is currently convulsed by a culture war – and one all too familiar in a country and capital which, nine decades after World War Two ended, can still never seem to escape the long shadow of its Nazi past. Just a few yards away from that bunker site stands another sombre memorial to those evil days The German capital’s Housing Senator, Christian Gaebler, of the Social Democratic SPD party, has announced plans to demolish the last remnants of a bunker dug beneath Hitler’s long demolished Reich Chancellery building to make way for sorely needed modern apartments.
If you want to understand why the traditional mainstream parties struggle to gain support, and why Reform is leading the polls, one name will suffice: Shabir Ahmed. Ahmed will reportedly be released from prison this week, having served 14 years of a 19-year sentence for multiple counts of rape and sexual offences against girls. Ahmed is a Pakistani national (he was formerly a dual British-Pakistani citizen but his British citizenship was removed after his conviction). There will, of course, be anger that the leader of a Rochdale rape gang – who made his victims call him ‘Daddy’ – has been released five years early. But that anger is as nothing in the context of what will happen to Ahmed after his release, which is said to be happening tomorrow: nothing.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood published her Immigration and Asylum Bill yesterday, claiming that it would ‘save the asylum system for a generation’. At the heart of her approach was the idea that the government would ‘open new legal routes for genuine refugees’ while at the same time ‘closing loopholes that have too often been abused’. The 53-clause Bill runs to over 80 pages and would establish an independent immigration appeals authority. It would make changes to the way that the courts approach Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, introduce a power to require payments from the recipients of asylum support and change rules relating to modern slavery.
The World Cup’s new ball is the most technologically advanced ever, Fifa tells us. It has a 500Hz motion sensor chip, which lets VAR and analysts figure out precise positioning, speed and even the spin on the ball, for some weird reason. But former England goalkeeper Joe Hart says the Trionda ball is making life harder for goalkeepers trying to save shots. ‘It’s that kind of shoulder height,’ he continued: As soon as [players] are not using the curling technique, as soon as that ball is not spinning, the goalkeepers are struggling. Hart obviously has lots of experience in the area and was particularly known for his ability to deal with shots around the head and shoulders, but is he right?
When he came to write of 1942-3 in his magisterial, if idiosyncratic, ‘History of the Second World War’, Winston Churchill called that period, ‘The Hinge of Fate’: it was the turning of the tide, when from El Alamein, to Stalingrad, and to Midway in the Pacific, the Axis Alliance ground to a halt. There was much hard fighting to be done and the contours of victory were still unclear but as Churchill declared, in November ’42, “…this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” So too in Ukraine. Ukrainians have been able to reach-out beyond this extended ‘No-Mans Land’ The much vaunted Russian Spring Offensive has achieved nothing except thousands more Russian dead.
One of the many likeable characteristics of Queen Camilla is that she has a clear, full-throated passion for literature. She has taken her husband, the King, away from his usual diet of intellectually respectable but slightly stuffy authors – such as his mentor Laurens van der Post – and introduced him to the likes of Jilly Cooper, Elizabeth Jane Howard and E. F. Benson. Yet for all her bookish associations, the latest meeting that she had with the country’s bestselling – and most controversial – author is likely to arouse strong passions on both sides of the political divide. It has also prompted a particular question: is Camilla herself a Terf? The picture that was posted on the royal family’s social media accounts yesterday was innocuous enough. The Queen met J.K.
In his highly entertaining history of alcohol and the British, Empire of Booze, Henry Jeffreys observed how one effect of the Napoleonic Wars was to make Scotland a popular destination for English holiday makers. What with the continent being isolated and everything, there weren’t many more exotic places for the richer, more adventurous traveller to visit. I’m a huge admirer of how the Scots put national identity to its most benevolent and noble purpose: using it to milk wealthy Americans of their money The country was until then largely unknown to many people south of the border, something also true of its trademark drink.
Ben Stokes has retired from international cricket in the middle of a Test match which England were well on the way to losing against New Zealand, the country of his birth. He had just returned to the captaincy after being dropped for breaking the newly imposed (and absurd) team curfew, the night after beating New Zealand at Lord’s. In this first Test of the summer, Stokes, in the field, had at times seemed little more than a disinterested spectator. Before that, he had, in Australia, presided over arguably the most shambolic performance ever by an England side in pursuit of the Ashes. They lost 4-1 and the behaviour of some of the players was such that it became known as the ‘stag party’ series. This all amounts to a pretty considerable debit balance for Stokes.
Americans have been enjoined, as we approach our country’s 250th anniversary, to be a bit more grateful. Good advice. It is not just the freedom of speech and the purple mountains’ majesties we should be taking stock of. It is also our knack, in recent decades, for miseducating ourselves, failing to read the signs of the times, making wrong choices – and then profiting from the fallout. In the global financial crisis that ran for a decade after 2008, blunders in American financial engineering, from complex derivatives to mortgage-backed securities, bankrupted debtor countries and cost several others their sovereignty, most notoriously Greece.
In Hong Kong the calendar has become political. Today marks 29 years since Hong Kong was returned to China after more than 100 years of British rule. Before the introduction of a wide-sweeping national security law, on July 1 there was an official flag-raising ceremony held by the government. In the afternoon crowds would gather in Victoria Park and march to government headquarters, chanting slogans against the Chinese Communist party. The anniversary marked the return of Hong Kong to China but also represented mass public participation. Activists say that even a small gathering is seen as an act of public defiance Now politics has become a more private affair. Anniversaries that once drew crowds to the streets bring police surveillance.
Andy Burnham used his big speech this week to unveil his spiffing new idea to solve all the country’s terrible problems: moving its head office somewhere slightly different. This he calls ‘place-based collaboration’. Apparently, all the collaboration we’ve been doing up till now has not been place-based, and has presumably been in a mysterious, spooky void outside the normal realm of space and time. I wish politicians would can this talk of collaboration and playing nicely. If anything, politics should be more confrontational But along the way, he also found time to inform us how he intends to ‘reach out to other political parties, to find as much common ground as we can and build that more collaborative approach.
There is so little substance to Andy Burnham that it seems almost churlish to attack the one area where he amounts to more than ambition, sentiment and unfathomable vanity, but his big policy idea happens to be one with which I have some familiarity. In his speech this week at the People's History Museum in Manchester, the soon-to-be prime minister pledged ‘new opportunities to extend devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland’ and the devolution of employment support to mayors in England.
As Pride Month comes to an end, please indulge me in a confession. I think I’m in love with Thomas Tuchel. Obviously, like you, I wish to God he wasn’t a kraut. But that’s only because he’s manager of the England football team. Otherwise, as far as I can tell, he’s perfect. The rock star charisma. The thrilling sturm und drang style of play. Very clearly, he’s a heaven-sent antidote to the touchy-feely corporate torpor of the Sir Gareth Southgate era. The German is a manager of the national side suddenly in keeping with the times Is that too harsh on Gareth? Perhaps. As the media narrative that developed quickly around the man never ceased to remind us: Southgate was just a good guy doing his best in a difficult job.
As this year’s World Cup got under way, a pub called MacGregors on Shore Street in the Scottish town of Gourock installed two Saltires and two Lion Rampant flags on poles above its front door. The Scottish national side has not advanced past the first round in any of the nine World Cups in which it has appeared, but every time it heads off to compete against the best teams on the planet, the country enters a sort of fever dream of expectation. Sadly, 2026 was not to be Scotland’s year either. And so, even before crashing out in the tournament's group stage at the weekend, the nation had switched to its default setting during the second phase of a World Cup summer: England-baiting.
There are still people out there – with access to the full gamut of unblunted cutlery – who maintain that Sir Keir Starmer is one of the great public servants of our time, cruelly brought down by unfair events. One easy way to disprove this, in the unlikely event that this theory’s proponents are susceptible to appeals to reason, is by pointing to his government’s defence record. The person who was in charge of this department, John Healey, resigned rather than be held responsible for the total abandonment of the nation’s defences. One of these Starmer defenders is Rachel Reeves. Or at least she is one of them now that it’s become clear Burnham will sack her as quickly as you can say ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’.
