Fraser Nelson

In the end, it took just over a week for Prince Harry to announce and finalise the terms of his exit from the royal family. But Queen seems to have told him that, while he's free to leave the firm, out means out. He and Meghan have agreed to give up their 'royal highness' titles so they will "no longer be working members of the royal family". Their idea of being hybrid royals, "collaborating" with the Queen, has been politely but firmly quashed. They’ll perform no more royal duties and – ergo – receive no more taxpayers’ money. Moreover, they’ll refund the £2.4 million cost of refurbishing Frogmore Cottage outside Windsor, which they’ll keep as their UK home.

In all the madness of last year, we had to delay The Spectator's Parliamentarian of the Year awards until later this month. The first step is to agree the categories. Last time, we had "Resignation of the Year" - such a hotly-contested category that it had to be shared between David Davis and Dominic Raab, the first two Brexit secretaries. So what categories this time And any nominations? Suggestions, please, not on the comments but to editor@spectator.co.uk. A pair of free tickets for the best one.

The next Budget will signal some pretty big changes in the way government spending is distributed, with investment directed towards the parts of the country that have tended to be denied it. The shift in policy was first disclosed by the Prime Minister to James Forsyth and Katy Balls in an interview during the election campaign. The Treasury, he said, judged potential infrastructure projects in a way that always tended to point investment to London and the South East. 'I take a different view. That this country is so underprovided for in brilliant infrastructure that you can make a good business case for many things.' A few days later, Sajid Javid elaborated on this argument in an interview with me, only part of which was published in the magazine.

Is a wind of change blowing in the Arab world and bringing Muslims and Jews closer together? Ed Husain made the case for this in an article in our Christmas special issue: a younger generation is tiring of the hardliners, he said, asking what all the angst has achieved and wondering if Israel might be a decent ally for the Arab world. His article explored what he described as new maps of the Muslim mind, with 'old hatreds on the run'. It drew predictable criticism from some quarters: surely this is wishful thinking, and his narrative of reconciliation has no real support in the Middle East? But that critique was blown apart a few days ago when the article was tweeted by the Emirati foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, to his four million followers.

As a lifelong Europhile, I rather liked the love letter to Britain from Frans Timmermans, vice president of the new European Commission. We in this country do love Europe, its people, its culture, its quirks, its diversity. Never has Britain been integrated more closely with the rest of Europe, never have we done more trade, never have more Brits lived in Europe and vice versa. The links between our peoples have never been stronger - and, after Brexit, will become stronger still. The idea of a union of governments, however, was not a model that worked for the UK: that much was decided in a referendum and reinforced in two general elections. It’s nothing personal against Europe or the likes of Timmermans. We just value the ability to elect (or boot out) the people who make our laws.

As we reach the end of an incredible year, we at The Spectator are delighted to announce our latest sales figures: 81,900 for the third quarter of this year. That means we close this decade with sales up 43 per cent, in a magazine market that has declined by 63 per cent. Not bad for the world’s oldest weekly. And while we have a lot of digital-only sales, our print sales are also at all-time high: so digital is driving the success of print. There has been an avalanche of political news in Britain, but the same is true all over Europe. So we looked at 36 European current affairs magazines over the last five full years (2013-18) using the standard industry figures.

If Boris Johnson wins next week, it will be on a manifesto of change. He will not deliver the fourth term of the same Tory government, he says, but a new agenda guided by a new philosophy — and the big difference will be spending. Gone are the days when Tories defined themselves by a determination to balance the books. Sajid Javid, the Chancellor, promises a ‘new economic plan for a new era’, which would mean investment on a scale that would have made George Osborne baulk. Providing, of course, that his party is still in government by the end of the next week. ‘There is a path to victory,’ he says when we meet while he is campaigning on the outskirts of Birmingham. ‘But it’s a narrow path.