All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The sentencing this week of Jan Jahanzeb and Israr Niazal for the rape of a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa has reignited the immigration debate. The two 17-year-old Afghans arrived in the country by small boat, claimed to be minors, and were duly absorbed into the British care system before they committed this horrific crime.
Johannesburg, the wealthiest city in Africa and home to more than 12,000 millionaires is about to become a ghost town. Just over a week before Christmas, there’s a lull in the traffic as homes in both the suburbs and the sprawling black townships empty out. On 16 December, the Day of Reconciliation marks 187 years
They call them the roses of Sarajevo: scars ripping through the concrete and painted red, marking where an artillery round claimed a life during the longest siege of modern history – a full three-and-a-half years, longer than even the siege of Leningrad. From May 1992 until December 1995, an average of 329 shells struck the
Everyone recognises that teenagers today are unduly anxious. Many people attribute this to a rise in smartphone use. Some even blame an education system that places too much pressure on young people. Yet the acute dysfunction of adolescents and young adults these days could have a more simple, and more serious, explanation: they don’t spend
The news that King Charles’s cancer treatment will be moving into a new phase as of next year is undeniably welcome, both for him on a personal level and for those who have been anxiously wishing him well since his diagnosis in January 2024. He offered the nation an update on his situation last night
In Ukraine, as elsewhere in Europe, Donald Trump’s new national security strategy is being met with a mixture of incredulity and incomprehension. ‘What does it actually mean?’ a general who advises Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked me on Tuesday as we met in the presidential administration building in downtown Kyiv. It’s not an easy question to answer. Is it
It’s hard, in 2025, to call out anti-Semitism. You’ll find yourself besieged by digital armies of apologists for bigotry. ‘It’s just criticism of Israel!’, they’ll wail if you express alarm about someone calling the Jewish State a ‘Nazi entity’ or protesters carrying a Jew effigy complete with horns and bloodstained mouth. It’s all the rage
Mulled wine and Heckler & Koch assault rifles don’t belong together, except in Christmas films like Die Hard. Festive visitors to Christmas markets in Berlin, London or Strasbourg this year will notice the pairing all the same. Concrete blocks surround fairy lights, and the scent of cloves and cinnamon wafts over armed police carrying submachine guns.
This week, there’s a strange absence in Oxford. For years, in December, you’d suddenly see a strange invasion of the streets of the university town. White-faced, terrified 17-and 18-year-olds, preparing for their university interviews. Colleges, tea rooms and restaurants were haunted by these poor, clever souls, mumbling equations and gerundives to themselves. Well, no more.
‘Full steam ahead’: That was the verdict on the Aukus alliance from Defence Secretary John Healey after the United States concluded its review of the alliance this week. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered the good news to Healey and Richard Marles, Australia’s Minister for Defence, in Washington this week. But there’s a catch:
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The Spectator heads into Christmas a little bit less Scottish as we bid farewell to our political correspondent Lucy Dunn. Before Lucy leaves for STV, she joins Coffee House Shots – with fellow Scots Michael Simmons and Labour MP Gordon McKee – for one final episode reflecting on the state of Scottish politics. They discuss
We are in the pre-Christmas dog days and politics has, finally, slowed down a bit. Reflecting on 2025, here are my top 12 key moments which tell us the most about where we are in politics and how things might pan out in 2026. Keir Starmer had a decent start to the year, while Nigel
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The British economy is shrinking. Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that GDP fell by 0.1 per cent in the three months to October. The contraction came after growth of 0.1 per cent in the three months to September. On a monthly basis, the economy shrank by 0.1 per cent
Since the Romans themselves wrote about the subject, we have a clear idea of the good things they did for Britain. Roads, towns, stone and brick buildings, plumbing, writing (IOUs), vineyards and leather bikinis were some of the many gifts of what used to be called Rome’s civilising power. Thanks to archaeology, we know some
Imagine you are a keen Brexiteer and opponent of net zero plans, especially of the idea of being forced to buy an electric vehicle (EV). There are plenty of people like you; there is much evidence to suggest that the two things go together. But you must now be feeling a little confused. It must
The British economy is shrinking. Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that GDP fell by 0.1 per cent in the three months to October. The contraction came after growth of 0.1 per cent in the three months to September. On a monthly basis the economy shrank by 0.1 per cent
Painfully and chaotically, the outline of the peace deal that will eventually end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is emerging as the US leans on Kyiv to abandon key red lines. It may still be months before the guns finally fall silent. But one by one various roadblocks to an eventual agreement are falling away. Crucially,
France’s Jordan Bardella has promised to stop the boats. Now where have we heard that before? The president of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally made his boast on a day trip to London on Tuesday. After lunching with Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, the 30-year-old outlined his strategy for curtailing the passage of illegal immigrants between
Europe’s leaders flocked to London this week, determined to show the world a united front. Like school boys at a bus stop, Ukraine’s president Zelensky stood beside Keir Starmer, German chancellor Friedrich Merz and French leader Emmanuel Macron in a carefully staged tableau of Western resolve. It was designed to send a message to Moscow:
It’s election time in the Falklands, where every four years we choose eight members of the Islands’ legislative assembly. They say you don’t want to know how laws or sausages are made. But the way such a far-flung and tiny parliament is put together is actually pretty interesting. In the Falklands there are only two
The NHS is facing a ‘worst-case scenario’ for flu this winter. That was the verdict of Professor Meghana Pandit, national medical director for the NHS, this morning as she warned the tsunami of ‘super-flu’ cases sweeping the UK is ‘unprecedented’. Worse still, the peak of this wave is ‘not in sight’. Her warning came as
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How does Reform go from political insurgents to a government in waiting? Political editor Tim Shipman gives an insight into his interview with Nigel Farage, which you can read in The Spectator’s Christmas edition. In the background at party headquarters, discussions are under way to work out how Reform would bring sweeping changes to the
A woman confronts a biological man in a female changing room. She is later found to have harassed him because he identified as a woman. Many thought this sort of madness was over, but the findings of Sandie Peggie’s tribunal against the NHS confirm that the battle is not won. This year will be remembered
Myanmar’s junta has once again shown its true self: calculated, despicable, and violently unrestrained. Last night, warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs onto a crowded hospital in Rakhine State. The blast tore through the building with surgical cruelty, sending glass and metal through wards where patients slept. Dozens were killed instantly; others bled out in the
Be afraid, be very afraid. That’s what we’d been told in the advertising and commercial production industry. AI is coming for your job. It’ll be faster than you, more creative than you and certainly more cost-effective than you. Well, if the McDonald’s new – but swiftly deleted – Christmas ad was anything to go by, we haven’t, for
Time was, we took lessons from brute creation. Medieval bestiaries, books of beasts, weren’t simply descriptions of animals; these compendiums of their home lives and habits, mostly derived from a text called the Physiologus of the second century, were for the edification of the reader. The upshot of the research is that we are roughly
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US historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson joins Americano for a wide-ranging assessment of Donald Trump’s first year back in office, from the economy and immigration to Ukraine and the future of the West.
Benjamin Disraeli once observed that the difference between a misfortune and a calamity was that if Mr Gladstone fell in the Thames it would be a misfortune, but if someone pulled him out it would be a calamity. As the government moves indisputably from being victims of misfortune to being agents of calamity, so we
Kemi Badenoch’s good form at Prime Minister’s Questions continues. The Tory leader visibly enjoyed herself again today as she feasted on Labour’s misfortune, and she did a good job in covering the breadth of problems in the government. She used her six questions to ask about different departments and how they were faring: an approach
Would someone please think of the luvvies? While the rest of the nation is furious about our out-of-control borders and the heinous crimes committed by those who should never have been allowed to stay here in the first place, the Great and Good are furious that the government is taking even modest steps to try to clean up this
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Kemi Badenoch’s good form continues at Prime Minister’s Questions. The Tory leader was once more visibly enjoying herself today as she feasted on Labour misfortune, and she did a good job in covering the breadth of problems in the government. She used her six questions to ask about different departments and how they were faring: