Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
We at The Spectator are delighted to announce that Lionel Shriver is joining us as a columnist. As regular readers will know, she has written a few diaries for us and is one of the very best writers on either side of the Atlantic. She’s a hugely successful novelist but what marks her out as a
In my Daily Telegraph column yesterday, I asked where Boris Johnson had gone. We never hear from him now, I said, unless there’s been some tragedy overseas or some risqué joke backfiring in Bratislava. Since becoming Foreign Secretary, the most gifted communicator in the Tory party had been mute – a baffling waste of talent.
We at The Spectator don’t ask for CVs when recruiting interns so we had no idea that our last one of the summer, Katherine Forster, would be a 48-year-old mum-of-three from Yorkshire. Our aptitude test is intended to draw the most promising talent from anywhere. But her writing up her story for the magazine has
The numbers are awesome. In a matter of hours, Hurricane Harvey dumped nine trillion gallons of rainfall on Houston and southeast Texas: at one stage, 24 inches of rain fell in 24 hours. Like all American cities, Houston is prepared for hurricanes and floods — but Harvey was of a different magnitude. ‘We have not
Kezia Dugdale was overseeing a revival in her party’s fortunes. She had established herself as a passionate and articulate champion of its values and even the Tories had to admit how impressive she had become in the many debates of Scottish public life. So why quit as party leader now? In her resignation letter, she
For months, Labour has been moving ever closer to the Tory position on Brexit while pretending that it isn’t. First, it backed Brexit. Then in June, John McDonnell told Robert Peston that he couldn’t see continued membership of the single market being ‘on the table’ in Brexit negotiations. He added that people would interpret membership of the single
The statement from the White House makes little attempt to disguise what happened. ‘White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.’ This is pretty much the same form of words used when Anthony Scaramucci
Donald Trump’s latest eruption – saying that his threat of fire and fury didn’t go far enough – will have delighted Kim Jong-un. His demented regime is based on the idea of being on the brink of war with the United States: this conceit has been used to build a nuclear weapons arsenal that has
The UK magazine industry figures have just been published, and The Spectator has an extraordinary set of results to report. Our sales stand at the highest level in our 189-year history. We are not just the oldest weekly magazine in the world, but today’s ABC figures show that we’re growing faster than any comparable magazine
John Bercow’s decision to allow MPs in the House of Commons to dispense with ties has been hailed by some as a great liberation, and by others as an insult to tradition cast by a man who ought to be wearing a wig. But Tina Stowell, who joined the government as a secretary and ended up Leader
What to do about the charities who send boats to bring asylum seekers to the Italian coast? Save the Children and seven others have been doing this for some time now, to the alarm of the Italian government. It suspects that some NGOs are colluding with the people-traffickers, and undermining attempts by the government to
Leaving Philip Hammond in charge of the government was always going to be a risk because of his habit of putting his foot in it. There was the debacle of his first budget, then his saying in Cabinet that driving a train was so easy that even a woman could do it, and his comments that public
A new star is born today into the centre-right blogosphere: UnHerd. The latest brainchild of Tim Montgomerie, founder of ConservativeHome, it has launched with a mission statement to ‘dive deep into the economic, technological and cultural challenges of our time’. Its launch blogs show a wide mix of subjects: a YouGov poll revealing the low regard with
I was on the radio this morning with David Mellor who accused the Cabinet of being appallingly ill-disciplined because of ‘leaks’ in the weekend press. James Forsyth revealed on Saturday that Philip Hammond had told Cabinet that being a train driver is so easy that ‘even’ a woman could do it. Yesterday, Tim Shipman revealed in the
It was The Spectator’s summer party last night, the high point of Westminster’s social calendar. We had the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary – and Lady Nugee (aka Emily Thornberry) apparently walking away in a fury when told her friend could not come in just because he had a peerage. We had a High
The Empire for International Development has a tough job justifying its deeply unpopular budget. In recent years, it has made out that development aid will stem the flow of migration. The following line appears in a piece that Priti Patel, the DFID Secretary, writes for the Sunday Telegraph today. We are taking immediate steps to protect our borders and tackle
We host a lot of events at The Spectator but we’ve just held our favourite: the readers’ tea party. About 200 subscribers come to the back garden for tea and cakes to meet our writers, our editors and each other. T-Sticks supplied the tea, H. Forman & Son the food and Taki brought along a bottle of Lagavulin for those in the
There is much celebration in Brussels today about what’s being described as a EU-Japan trade deal, but for political rather than economic reasons. Donald Trump has arrived in Hamburg for the G20 summit where he finds himself cast as a wicked protectionist, at odds with a pro-free trade global order. To hammer home this point, the EU is
This morning, The Spectator held a series of discussions about the future of Conservative welfare reform, chaired by Andrew Neil and made possible by the sponsorship of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It was a sell-out invent with a stellar panel, and we’ll bring you the full reports later. But I thought it worth mentioning what our keynote
Theresa May has made a far better offer to EU nationals, saying they will be granted permanent residence after staying five years. But the EU has not. Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, has said that her offer is ‘below our expectations and risks worsening the situation for our citizens’. He wants the European
