Michael Simmons is The Spectator's economics editor. Contact him here.
37 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Hugh Schofield asks why there is no campaign to free the novelist Boualem Sansal (1:26); The Spectator’s arts editor, Igor Toronyi-Lalic, reacts to the magazine’s campaign against frivolous funding and, continuing the campaign, Michael Simmons wonders if Britain is funding organisations that wish us harm (8:00); Lisa Haseldine reflects on
Rachel Reeves is having to borrow more money than even the worst estimates expected. Figures on the public finances, published this morning by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), show that in the financial year to January we borrowed over £118 billion. This is £11.6 billion more than at the same point in the last
Frivolous state funding isn’t only going to chancers, the plain lucky and the devious, but also to those who would see Britain – and the West – come to harm. Just over a year ago, the National Secular Society (NSS) compiled a dossier for the Charity Commission which called for 44 charities that had ‘fuelled
Britain’s workers have experienced strong pay increases for the third month in a row. Figures on the jobs market, just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), reveal that pay rose 6 per cent in the final three months of 2024 – the fastest pace of pay growth in over a year. Strip out
40 min listen
This week: The Spectator launches SPAFF The civil service does one thing right, writes The Spectator’s data editor Michael Simmons: spaffing money away. The advent of Elon Musk’s DOGE in the US has inspired The Spectator to launch our own war on wasteful spending – the Spectator Project Against Frivolous Funding, or SPAFF. Examples of waste range from
11 min listen
It’s a double celebration for Rachel Reeves today. Not only is it her birthday, but the UK economy grew by 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics’ latest report. December, when the economy expanded by 0.4 per cent (the market consensus had been 0.1 per
All too often, the Prime Minister recently lamented, Britain’s public servants are happy languishing in the ‘tepid bath of managed decline’. There is, however, one area in which Britain’s public servants are dynamic, innovative and world–leading: at spaffing gazillions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on wasteful projects which are variously inane, insane and indefensible. The
Nigel Farage’s Reform party are now out in front at the top of The Spectator data hub’s poll tracker. The latest update to our poll of polls puts Reform one point above Labour – on average – at 25 per cent of the vote with the Tories in third place at 22 per cent. A flurry of
More migrants have illegally crossed the English Channel since 1 January than in any previous year for this period. So far in 2025, 1,344 migrants were detected crossing the Channel in small boats between 1 January and 4 February, beating the previous record of 1,339 in 2022. The figures published by Border Force – and tracked daily
45 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Loyd Grossman pleads to save Britain’s cathedrals, as he reads his diary for the week (1:31); Unity Mitford is a classic case of aristocratic anti-Semitism says Tanya Gold (7:47); looking ahead to another Strategic Defence Review, Harry Halem warns that Britain is far from prepared for the era of AI
The Pope hates gossip. In his Christmas message to his Vatican advisers last year, Francis warned that it is ‘an evil that destroys social life’. It’s not the first time he’s attacked rumour-spreading. He once compared gossips to terrorists because ‘he or she throws a bomb and leaves’. The Holy Father’s condemnations are of particular
One million people will migrate to the UK every year this decade. The result: the UK population will grow by nearly five million. Population projections, released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this morning, show Britain’s population rising from an estimated 67.6 million now to 72.5 million in the middle of 2032 – driven
For nearly a decade, the Chinese Communist Party has censored Winnie the Pooh, owing to internet memes comparing the slightly rotund President Xi Jinping to the cheerful yellow bear. So, what happens if you ask China’s new budget AI chatbot, DeepSeek, about him? Computer says no. But how rigorous were DeepSeek’s creators? When we asked
The launch of the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek has caused turmoil in the markets. The release of China’s newest AI – which appears to work as effectively as programmes developed in the West – saw tech stocks plummet when the market opened today. It hasn’t helped that DeepSeek was made for $6 million: pennies compared to
Britain is turning sadness into sickness. More than four in five GPs believe that the ups and downs of normal life are being wrongly redefined by society as mental disorders. The news, from the Centre for Social Justice’s (CSJ) report Change the Prescription, follows comments from Tony Blair, who said: ‘You’ve got to be careful of
Rachel Reeve’s £25 billion National Insurance rise is beginning to bite. According to the latest data on our labour market, released this morning by the Office for National Statistics, payrolled employment fell by 47,000 last month — the sharpest fall since the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of vacancies in the economy fell for the 30th consecutive period,
16 min listen
It’s been a tricky week for Rachel Reeves: an onslaught of criticism for the levels of borrowing costs, GDP at 0.1 per cent, and stagflation still gripping the UK economy. Remarkably she has come out of it looking stronger – politically at least. But can she afford to celebrate? The Spectator’s Kate Andrews and data
43 min listen
This week: President Trump’s plan to Make America Greater In the cover piece for the magazine, our deputy editor and host of the Americano podcast, Freddy Gray, delves into Trump’s plans. He speaks to insiders, including Steve Bannon, about the President’s ambitions for empire-building. Could he really take over Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal?
Eyebrows were raised in the House of Lords this week as the Justice and Home Affairs Committee heard evidence that the Ministry of Justice is having to recruit from overseas to staff Britain’s overcrowded jails. Mark Fairhurst, the national chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association, said: We are recruiting from overseas and you are getting
13 min listen
Former Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced she is separating from her husband Peter Murrell, former chief executive of the SNP. The announcement comes as the police probe into the SNP’s funds and finances remains ongoing, with Sturgeon and ex-SNP treasurer Colin Beattie under investigation while Murrell was charged with embezzlement in April 2024.
