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Spectator TV Presents

Rory Stewart: Boris ‘went mad’ on immigration – we should send every small boat back to France

Writers

Spectator Life

An intelligent mix of culture, food, style and property, plus where to go and what to see.

Podcasts are making us stupider

From Spectator Life

The most insufferable person you know is a Podcast Person. They’re on the tube each morning, sat with a smug smile on their face, AirPods thrust into their earlobes and a performative Metro – it won’t be opened – on their lap. They’re probably tuning into The Rest is History, preparing to bore every colleague they meet at the tea station with a glowing review of Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland’s dissection of battles and monarchs of centuries past.‘I did a History degree at Durham, you know, and I’m still learning SO MUCH! SO MUCH!’, they’ll drone on, unknowingly intent on making you abandon your mug and jump out of the nearest window.

Spectator TV

Event

The Free Speech Debate

  • Monday 12 October 2026, 7:00pm
  • Westminster, London
  • £27.50 - £37.50
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Magazine

This week's magazine

Just start oil

Labour lacks the energy for growth

Labour must go further and faster in the North Sea

John Healey stood in front of two giant robotic arms this week and promised to ‘make Great Britain Growth Britain again’. The Chancellor also promised, borrowing a catchphrase from his neighbour in No. 10, to deliver ‘good growth in every postcode’. In the North Sea, 150 miles east off the coast of Aberdeen, lies the first big test of this promise. The 6,000-ton Jackdaw extraction platform is ready to start pumping gas from a field three miles below the surface. Twenty years after the Jackdaw field was first successfully prospected, it will, at the stroke of a ministerial pen, finally be allowed to operate.

Labour must go further and faster in the North Sea

John Healey stood in front of two giant robotic arms this week and promised to ‘make Great Britain Growth Britain again’. The Chancellor also promised, borrowing a catchphrase from his neighbour in No. 10, to deliver ‘good growth in every postcode’. In the North Sea, 150 miles east off the coast of Aberdeen, lies the first big test of this promise. The 6,000-ton Jackdaw extraction platform is ready to start pumping gas from a field three miles below the surface. Twenty years after the Jackdaw field was first successfully prospected, it will, at the stroke of a ministerial pen, finally be allowed to operate.

Culture

The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.

Why has the National chosen to put on this cumbersome old play?

From the magazine

The National Theatre’s latest show, written in 2003, has bundles of energy and ideas. A thrusting young reporter, Yvonne, investigates the shooting of a yuppie in a rundown part of a teeming US metropolis. She learns that the murder was committed by a cross-dressing gang of all-female muggers, known as AOBs, whose leader, Latisha, is a teenage genius. Her parents were alcoholic derelicts and yet she taught herself several European languages while growing up in poverty. Yvonne, who also happens to be multilingual, banters with her in Italian and German. But will Latisha confess and give the newspaper an exclusive?

Podcasts

Cartoons

Grizelda

‘‘We’re an opposition-in-waiting.’’

Cartoon

muffuletta

Olivia Potts

My quest for the perfect muffuletta

From Spectator Life