Lara Brown is The Spectator's Commissioning Editor
It took the stabbing of two Jews in Golders Green to bring Arts Council England’s decade of funding hate to a close. On Tuesday, Keir Starmer criticised the Arts Council (ACE) for funding organisations that promote the work of ‘anti-Semitic artists’. The Prime Minister also promised to force the body to ‘suspend, withdraw and claw
Maybe sex realists really are winning the gender wars. But for every two steps we take forward we are relentlessly pushed at least one back. The most recent victory in the war against common sense has seen the University of Sussex dodge a £585,000 fine over their free speech policies. The fine was awarded after
On 7 May there will be no competition. Reform is predicted to pull off sweeping victories in councils across the country, while the Tories are preparing to shoulder heavy losses. But at the Emmanuel Centre on Wednesday evening, Spectator readers were treated to a fight for the intellectual ground on the right. Representing the teal team,
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The Pope is ‘WEAK on crime and terrible on foreign policy’ – this was the verdict of the President of the United States this week, as he appeared to deepen his row with the leader of the Catholic Church. In the magazine this week, Damian Thompson reports on why the President appears to have engaged in
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
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
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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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
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
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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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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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
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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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
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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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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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
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.
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
