Donald trump

Home An official analysis by the Cabinet Office said that if Britain left the EU it would lead to a ‘decade of uncertainty’. Opponents of Britain remaining in the EU called the report a ‘dodgy dossier’. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the economy would suffer a ‘profound economic shock’ if Britain left, echoing a communiqué of the G20 which referred to ‘the shock of a potential UK exit’. Boris Johnson revised his suggestion that a vote to leave could bring about a better deal from Brussels; ‘Out is out,’ he told the Times. Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, declared that ministers opposing government policy on

The Third Wayists are quaking in their boots. The middle-class, middle-of-the-road technocrats who have dominated politics for the best part of three decades are freaking out. These people who bristle at anything ideological, are disdainful of heated debate, and have bizarrely turned the word ‘moderate’ into a compliment feel under siege. And no wonder they do, for on both sides of the Atlantic their very worst nightmare — a revenge of the plebs — is becoming flesh. You can see this sometimes clumsy but nonetheless forceful reassertion of pleb power in everything from Trumpmania to the staggering back to life of Euroscepticism — or what snooty moderates call ‘Europhobia’, because

The Spectator’s fifth most-read article of the week was Nigel Farndale on what life was like on board a warship in our ‘much reduced’ Royal Navy. Nigel joined the crew of HMS Bulwark in the Mediterranean where he found a Royal Navy undergoing an identity crisis amidst swingeing cuts. Our fourth most-read piece was Damian Thompson on the furore surrounding the last-minute decision to pull an incendiary book about the Church of England. Publisher Bloomsbury sent a panicky message to reviewers asking them to return their copies of ‘That Was The Church That Was: How the Church of England Lost the English People’. You can read Damian’s article about why

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, made a speech in Wiltshire about a letter from Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, on Britain’s demands for renegotiating terms of its membership of the European Union. Mr Cameron said: ‘What we’ve got is basically something I asked for.’ In the House of Commons, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition, said: ‘It’s rather strange that the Prime Minister is not here…’ instead of ‘…in Chippenham, paying homage to the town where I was born.’ Mr Tusk proposed that in-work benefits for migrants might be subject to an ‘emergency brake’. As for child benefit, this could still be sent home to children