Lara Brown is The Spectator's Commissioning Editor
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Is it worth going to university? Since 1999, when Tony Blair declared higher education the answer to all society’s problems, it has been a question Britain prefers not to ask. Every September, hundreds of thousands of school leavers pack their bags, wait for their maintenance loan to arrive and head off to their chosen city
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As university admissions have become increasingly obsessed with equal outcomes, many parents fear a kind of reverse discrimination. They worry that a Ucas form bearing the name of an independent school may be bad news for an Oxbridge application. There’s evidence to suggest they’re right. Private-school pupils who transfer to state education after their GCSEs
There is rarely much to commend Keir Starmer for. But on Monday he blocked an amendment to the schools bill which would have required all social media companies to ban under-16s from using their products. In voting against this legislation, MPs have preserved anonymity on the internet, resisted further state powers over what we see online and avoided caving in to a
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Three years ago, Nottingham University students Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, along with caretaker Ian Coates, were murdered by Valdo Calocane in a psychotic rampage. These were preventable deaths. Calocane should have been detained long before he went on his killing spree. The fact that he wasn’t is the consequence of a decade of progressive
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53 min listen
As the official Covid Inquiry comes to an end, the Spectator has convened a panel of our own experts to ask the questions that the Inquiry didn’t – or wouldn’t – answer. The Spectator’s commissioning editor Lara Brown is joined by science writer and Conservative peer Matt Ridley, Oxford professor of theoretical epidemiology Sunetra Gupta, former
From our UK edition
Wilson is said to have claimed that ‘a week is a long time in politics’. Not for the civil servants tasked with producing guidance for schools attempting to support gender-questioning children. On Thursday, seven years after the government first promised statutory advice, we got another draft document for consultation. The delay might not be so egregious
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How do you get into the University of Oxford? It is a question asked by thousands of young people every year. In Martin Amis’s The Rachel Papers (1973), Charles Highway discovers that the key is to feign socialism and memorise a few book reviews. It turns out there is an even better ruse: the Saïd
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43 min listen
Is Britain ready for Artificial Intelligence? Well, bluntly, ‘no’; that’s the verdict if you read several pieces in this week’s Spectator – from Tim Shipman, Ross Clark and Palantir UK boss Louis Mosley – focused on how Britain is uniquely ill-placed to take advantage of the next industrial revolution. Tim Shipman’s cover piece focuses on
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45 min listen
Another week, another foreign policy crisis – this time over Greenland. America’s European allies watched as Trump increased the tension over the Arctic territory, only to announce he ‘won’t use force’ in a set-piece speech in Davos. For the Spectator‘s cover this week, Paul Wood examines the strategic role of the Arctic, both against Russia
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Roedean is now known as ‘Beijing High’. Cheltenham Ladies’ College is ‘Hong Kong College’. In the country’s most elite boarding schools, pupils say that they are one of just a handful of English children. Others note that Chinese has become the dominant language in hallways and dormitories. Many English parents can no longer afford a
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16 min listen
Regular listeners will remember back in May we recorded a podcast debating whether Kemi Badenoch was the right fit for Tory leader. At that point in time the Conservatives were falling in the polls and she was facing allegations of laziness and a lack of a political vision. Spool forward to the end of the
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A woman confronts a biological man in a female changing room. She is later found to have harassed him because he identified as a woman. Many thought this sort of madness was over, but the findings of Sandie Peggie’s tribunal against the NHS confirm that the battle is not won. This year will be remembered
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29 min listen
There has been a renewed focus on tobacco and nicotine products across Europe. Just as countries seek to speed up the process to a smoke-free future, through measures like generational smoking bans and increased regulations on packaging and advertising, there has been a sharp increase in young people using alternative nicotine products like vapes and
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19 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Lara Brown reports on how young women are saying ’no’ to marriage; James Heale takes us through the history of the Budgets via drink; Sam Olsen reviews Ruthless by Edmond Smith and looks at Britain’s history of innovation and exploitation; and, Toby Young questions the burdensome regulation over Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs). Produced and
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The term ‘spinster’ doesn’t seem to scare young women like it once might have. In fact, it is rarely heard nowadays. Instead, women are declaring themselves ‘alpha singles’ and eschewing dating altogether. Influencers are keeping their relationships quiet, for fear that simply posting photos of a new amour can lead to an exodus of followers.
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Refugees could contribute £266,000 each to the UK economy: that’s the claim made by the Together with Refugees coalition and the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union in a report that says ‘fair and humane changes to the asylum system’ could benefit Britain. Unfortunately, something isn’t quite adding up. Spectator Verify has investigated, and we’ve
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36 min listen
Can the BBC be fixed? After revelations of bias from a leaked dossier, subsequent resignations and threats of legal action from the US President, the future of the corporation is the subject of this week’s cover piece. Host William Moore is joined by The Spectator’s commissioning editor, Lara Brown, arts editor, Igor Toronyi-Lalic, and regular
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The most influential person in British media is not Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere – it’s the editor who pushes out the BBC News app alerts. While many people gave up watching BBC News years ago, the corporation still dominates how millions receive their news, thanks to the app. Last year, it overtook Apple News
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After 16 months of this Labour government, it’s easy to catalogue the litany of bad decisions made by ministers. The disastrous budget that caused an uptick in unemployment. The tax imposed on family farms passed down through generations. Or the Education Secretary’s latest attempts to sabotage decades of successful policy. Yet often overlooked, are the
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In May 2015, the newly elected MP for Birmingham Yardley gave her maiden speech in the House of Commons. Jess Phillips vowed to improve Britain’s ‘response to victims of domestic and sexual violence and abuse in all its forms’. In the years since, Phillips has certainly made a lot of noise about discrimination and sexual
