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How much love is there for Michael Gove on the opposition benches? In this week’s Spectator cover feature, Toby Young argues, quite a lot. The Education Secretary has the policies Labour wish they’d thought of, and is greatly admired for his ‘Trotskyite’ zeal and tireless efforts to create the ‘permanent revolution’. On the latest View
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Since our archive went live yesterday, we’ve had a striking response through email, comments and Twitter. The Spectator Archive has been in the making for a long time, and given the obvious problems with recognising scanned pages (the system is pretty good at recognising 1840s typefaces, but not brilliant) we weren’t sure how popular it
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In the basement of The Spectator’s offices in Old Queen Street, there are piles of tomes detailing our rich publishing history right back to 1828. Our archive is our most prized possession and today, we’re delighted to share that. For the first time, both scanned and digitised copies of the magazine from July 1828 to
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Everyone enjoys a good conspiracy theory, particularly Alex Jones. His Infowars.com site can explain every single problem in the world through his theories on the rise of the ‘New World Order’. I only discovered Jones a few weeks ago and wrote him off as a wacko on the fringe American media. Today, he’s arrived on
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For the first time, David Cameron is trailing behind his party, according to the latest polling from Lord Ashcroft. Labour has long struggled with this problem, but as the charts below show, voters now also feel more favourable towards the Conservatives than they do to Cameron himself: The PM’s allies within the party have long
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Shakespeare once wrote ‘kill all the lawyers’, and as Harry Mount describes in this week’s Spectator cover feature, you could be forgiven for thinking Chris Grayling has made a similar suggestion. As a former barrister himself, Mount argues the Justice Secretary is right to reform legal aid, and his changes don’t even go far enough.
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Fifty years ago, John Profumo resigned as Secretary of State for War following revelations of an affair with Christine Keeler — who was allegedly also involved with a Soviet spy. At the time, the affair was seen to represent the pinnacle of sleaze and contempt for the British establishment, and turned out to be hugely damaging to
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You just can’t keep Michael Gove down. After beating a very public retreat by u-turning on plans to replace GCSEs earlier this year, he’s announced today the all-new I-level qualifications. I-Levels will be graded 1-8 — with a current A* roughly equal to a 7 — and will take on much of his English Baccalaureate
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Ukip has been unusually quiet in its response to the Woolwich killing last week. The only thing we’ve heard is a tactful statement on the day from Nigel Farage, slamming the incident and calling for calm. Not a peep more, and certainly no outlandish statements about tackling the ‘cancer’ of Islam. The muted response is
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How will Theresa May deal with the calls to tackle Islamism in the wake of the Woolwich murder? In this week’s Spectator cover feature, Douglas Murray argues the steps the Home Secretary needs to take are ‘not hard’ but her hands are tied by the problematic mixture of European law and her colleagues. On the
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Earlier this week the Major Projects Authority gave High Speed 2 an amber-red flag, informing the government that the project (along with the MoD’s two new aircraft carriers) is looking ‘unachievable’. To its detractors, the warning confirms HS2 remains little more than a pipe dream. In last week’s Spectator, Rory Sutherland bemoaned the 20-year time
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The Ministry of Defence has named the solider killed in Woolwich yesterday as Lee Rigby of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. Rigby, 25 and father of a two-year-old son, was originally from Greater Manchester and served his country in Cyprus and Afghanistan. Here is the MoD’s official statement on the tragedy:
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Will George Osborne’s manipulation of the property market cause catastrophe? In this week’s Spectator cover feature, Merryn Somerset Webb argues the Chancellor’s recycling of cheap debt through his Help To Buy and Funding for Lending schemes will jack up house prices and increase demand to a dangerous point. Norman Lamont agrees in his diary this week, suggesting
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Oxfordshire The Westminster pundits have all been obsessing over Andrew Feldman’s alleged ‘swivel-eyed loons’ comment about the Tory party’s grass roots. But what about the ‘loons’ themselves? Few in SW1 bothered to ask, so I spent a day in David Cameron’s back yard, hunting them down to find out what they really think of the
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The National Audit Office has slammed High Speed 2 today, citing a £3.3 billion ‘black hole’ in the funding plans while suggesting the construction timetable is ‘over-ambitious.’ Not exactly an overwhelming vote of confidence, but does this mean the project is dead in the water? Far from it — it’s more likely to happen than
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Does David Cameron have a plan for dealing with the EU? In this week’s Spectator magazine, James Forsyth reveals that No.10 has little idea of how they will actually renegotiate Britain’s relationship with Europe. Cameron’s position risks dividing the Conservative party and pushing us automatically down the road to withdrawal. On the latest View form
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Westminster is on fire with speculation about Tory/Ukip joint candidates after The Spectator’s exclusive this afternoon. But would it really work? CCHQ has already rejected the idea, with a spokesman telling Coffee House: ‘It’s not party policy and it’s not going to happen.’ Currently, joint candidates can’t officially stand without the sign-off from Labour or Conservative
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Following Isabel’s revelation that the newly-reinstated Nadine Dorries will be pursuing an electoral pact with Ukip, Nigel Farage reveals he is open not just to Dorries’ advances but also those of other Conservative and Labour MPs. Speaking on this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Ukip leader says: ‘If Nadine Dorries’ association come to me and
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Eric Pickles is a driven man on a mission to slash spending and waste in local government. As the latest round of budget cuts just enacted highlights, Pickles has managed to keep the local government spending bill under control, but how successful has he been in curbing the often-controversial top executive pay in the public
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Will Britain’s lack of enthusiasm for shale gas result in a collapse of the government’s whole energy policy? In this week’s Spectator cover feature, Peter Lilley writes we will soon cross this shale rubicon. The former shadow chancellor and advisor to David Cameron vigorously argues that fracking can no longer be ignored in order to
