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Spectator TV Presents

Why Labour’s fate will be decided in the Strait of Hormuz – with Julie Bindel & Cleo Watson | The Edition

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Spectator Life

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

Tanya Gold

The Mini: ‘a car for people who want to be different but aren’t’

From Spectator Life

The car is populist modern art – I am sorry, reader, meet your plug-in Raphael – and a mirror of the driver’s soul. I am small and raging, and I love the Mini, because it is like me. I wonder if people used to feel this way about horses. Probably.   The Mini is like a lot of British people apparently: we are over-represented in the small and raging. It’s the best-selling British car of all time and if it wasn’t in Bond – I mean around Bond - it was in The Italian Job, which is both sexier – anyone can have Bond, Caine is slightly more detached – and more relatable.

Spectator TV

Event

The Brexit Debate: Ten years on

  • Wednesday 17 June 2026, 7:00pm
  • Emmanuel Centre, London
  • £27.50 - £37.50
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Magazine

This week's magazine

Dire straits

The Hormuz crisis is about to cause huge economic turmoil

John Power

Burnham’s fate will be decided in the Strait of Hormuz

In the last few days, the government has performed two extraordinary about-turns. On Tuesday, it was revealed that the Treasury is covertly pressuring supermarkets to freeze prices on essential goods. This was odd: when Rishi Sunak floated a similar idea as prime minister, the Labour opposition accused him of acting like Ted Heath. On Wednesday, we woke up to even stranger news: Keir Starmer would be lifting some sanctions on Russian oil to ease our supply problems. This is a prime minister who has spent the past year telling anyone who will listen that Nigel Farage is in league with Vladimir Putin; a prime minister who loves nothing more than being pictured with Volodymyr Zelensky on the steps of No. 10. So how do you explain these two politically painful manoeuvres?

John Power

Burnham’s fate will be decided in the Strait of Hormuz

In the last few days, the government has performed two extraordinary about-turns. On Tuesday, it was revealed that the Treasury is covertly pressuring supermarkets to freeze prices on essential goods. This was odd: when Rishi Sunak floated a similar idea as prime minister, the Labour opposition accused him of acting like Ted Heath. On Wednesday, we woke up to even stranger news: Keir Starmer would be lifting some sanctions on Russian oil to ease our supply problems. This is a prime minister who has spent the past year telling anyone who will listen that Nigel Farage is in league with Vladimir Putin; a prime minister who loves nothing more than being pictured with Volodymyr Zelensky on the steps of No. 10. So how do you explain these two politically painful manoeuvres?

Culture

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

Martin Gayford

Derek Jacobi on playing Lucian Freud

From the magazine

Lucian Freud almost had a second career in the cinema. He acted as an extra in a couple of films during the early 1940s; the only one in which he made the final cut was a farce starring the ukulele-playing comedian George Formby in which his 19-year-old face can be seen peering out of the background in one scene. Years later, Lucian claimed, John Huston asked him if he’d like to play the part of his grandfather Sigmund in a biographical screen drama from 1962 entitled Freud: The Secret Passion (which had, at one point, a script by Jean-Paul Sartre). Eventually Montgomery Clift was cast instead, which was just as well because Freud was definitely an observer rather than a performer.

Podcasts

Cartoons

KJ Lamb

‘‘I’m sorry, Marjorie – I just don’t have the headspace for this.’’

Cartoon

Grizelda

‘‘It’s ok, ladies, we’re left-wing men!’’

Cartoon

A J Singleton

‘‘I’ve decided to dedicate the rest of my life to saving the pub.’’

Cartoon

Zak Asgard

Rent reforms haven’t fixed the real problem

From Spectator Life