The Spectator

Yesterday

The Spectator

Livestream: Post-Budget Briefing

From our UK edition

On Wednesday 28 October at 7pm, The Spectator’s editor, Michael Gove, political editor Tim Shipman, economics editor Michael Simmons and Harry Bell, director of financial planning at Raymond James, will give their unrivalled insights into the autumn Budget, just hours after it is announced. Andy Burnham’s first few months in Downing Street have produced a striking political turnaround. But today, Chancellor John Healey must confront difficult choices on tax, borrowing and public spending. Can he deliver on Burnham’s promise of ‘good growth in every postcode’, or are a stagnant economy and crippling debt here to stay? Will he follow through on the PM’s plans to shift financial and political power away from Westminster and towards the North? Or is this rhetoric over reality?

Wednesday

The Spectator

Sally Rooney and the comfortable violence of the left

From our UK edition

Kate Evans is a dedicated and widely respected sergeant in Avon and Somerset Police. But her ability to do the job she loves has been severely compromised. On 6 August 2025 she was on duty when a 23-year-old man swung a sledgehammer against her back – while she was on her knees. Her spine was fractured and the injuries she sustained affect her to this day and profoundly limit her personal and professional freedom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z44ZraRn35w Her attacker, Samuel Corner, was a member of the proscribed ‘activist’ group Palestine Action, the group to which Irish novelist Sally Rooney would like to devote her royalties.

Peter Bland

Changing Rooms

From our UK edition

Today I felt a need to change rooms. I’ve felt it several times before but, as things are, my study frowns and the TV numbs me with bad news.                       Ah, here’s a lovely room with bare boards. It’s full of dusks and dawns and the sound of the sea. It’s where a cramped heart walks through walls seeking to share a pasture with gazelles.

Robert Saxton

Jason and the Astronauts

From our UK edition

The rave of stars distils as soot down there on Separation Street. We’ve bagged the lucky window-seat. The heavens recede. We do or die more fiercely than the race of clay. Can awe survive another day? We tell ourselves we need not care since what we seek is something pure – beyond all count of catch and cure. We’re stripped of teapot, watch and purse. We’ve shrunk our world to find the fleece. We’ve placed our trust in hopeful peace. Our dream’s mist is the kettle’s steam. Tea-time gossip, our long-lost norm. Loose change in space – like a meteor-storm.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Inflation rises, France burns and the Pope calls Putin

From our UK edition

Home The government approved the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea. Inflation rose from 3.1 to 3.5 per cent. Government borrowing rose to £24.5 billion in September. The national debt passed £3 trillion. GDP grew by 0.1 per cent in August. Banks expected to be taxed more after the Budget. The owners of Paddy Power announced cuts of 1,400 jobs, blaming tax rises. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said Labour would not have the courage to make public spending cuts needed to bring down debt and fund defence. The Northern Ireland Troubles Bill was approved by the Commons. Jeffrey Donaldson, the former leader of the Democratic Unionists, was sentenced to 15 years for sexual abuse against two women when they were children.

The Spectator

Letters: Don’t knock the Salvation Army

From our UK edition

In defence of Trump Sir: Your lead article ‘Like the Roman’ (17 October) praised some of Trump’s early achievements but roundly criticised most of his second term. Without doubt the war in Iran was a gamble, but it was also abundantly clear that negotiating with that country’s terrorist-sponsoring regime was going nowhere. As to his unconventional stand against the ‘establishment’, as here, that is much needed and long overdue. I believe that, for all his unconventional ways, his stance against migration to the US and Europe, his insistence that European Nato countries increase defence expenditure and his position on net zero would not have been adopted by anyone else in American politics and that the conventional wisdom on all three needed to be robustly challenged.

The Spectator

Who made the first flying car?

From our UK edition

Cars might fly Elon Musk demonstrated a flying car. – The concept goes back further than most people imagine. The first flying car, the Curtiss Autoplane, was shown at the Pan American Aeronautical Exposition in 1917: a basic three-seater car which could be converted into a triplane by bolting on wings. However, it only ever achieved a short hop. One of the first serious attempts to market a flying plane came in 1971, when Henry Smolinski and Harold Blake produced a vehicle they called the AVE Mizar, which combined a Ford Pinto and the rear half of a Cessna Skymaster. They planned to start taking orders in 1974 but were both killed when their prototype crashed in California the previous year.

Colin Pink

The Disquieting Fates

From our UK edition

We’re not allowed to believe in the fates anymore they’re out of date, not part of the story we weave, we’re convinced that destiny is only ours to explore. But the fates still watch from a distance, a bit bored by the mistakes we keep making, and often grieve that we’re not allowed to believe in them anymore. They stand in silence, though horrified to the core by all the deceit we swallow daily, unable to believe we’re convinced that destiny is only ours to explore. We can’t conceive of fate with its revolving door, enslaved in our wilful world, free but unable to leave, we’re not allowed to believe in the fates anymore.

Wednesday

John Mole

A Special Occasion

From our UK edition

They are all young in this photograph, looking so happy to be there for a special occasion, the camera held steady and the light falling on cue. It just had to be recorded. Somebody would have said ‘I’ll get prints made if you give me your addresses, but anyway we must keep in touch.’ So young, with all the time in a world that lies in wait for happiness, then seizes the instant opportunity to freeze it in a frame. One by one they have departed now, though memory still holds them in the tight clutch of an album refusing to let go.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Burnham’s Brexit claims, Boots’s £6.7bn sale and the Pope’s cancer diagnosis

From our UK edition

Home Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, said on a podcast: ‘I asked the question coming to Downing Street, “Well, was there interference in the 2016 referendum from Russia?” I’ve had the clear answer that, yes, there was.’ Sir Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, said during questions after an annual speech: ‘I’m a little bit worried that [if] we all stay in this debate for another few days, the Russian trolls who didn’t appear to do all that much at various points over the years, they’ll be delighted they are front-page news once again.’ The Prime Minister told the House of Commons that whatever happened at RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire, on 27 September was ‘almost certainly directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard’.

The Spectator

Donald Trump is no friend to conservatives

From our UK edition

Perhaps P.J. O’Rourke put it best. When explaining, in 2016, why a self-declared ‘Republican Party Reptile’ was voting for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, O’Rourke admitted that the former first lady was ‘wrong about absolutely every-thing’. But at least she was ‘wrong within normal parameters’. A decade later, conservatives are paying the price for ignoring O’Rourke’s advice. Donald Trump has weakened the western alliance and undermined America’s constitution; he has demeaned himself, his office, his country and, perhaps most of all, his supporters. With Republicans facing a congressional reckoning next month, it is time for conservatives to dis-avow the President and face up to the damage that he has done.

The Spectator

Letters: Prisons are for punishment

From our UK edition

Little cheer Sir: I found the headline on Tim Shipman’s excellent article (‘Tories’ reasons to be cheerful’, 10 October) more than a little misleading. There was little to cheer me up. Although Kemi Badenoch is growing in political stature week by week and her approval ratings have increased, the Conservative party has much ground to make up. In the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, the Tories came a poor third and saw the share of their vote drop compared with 2024. The Tories’ main problem is that they have no allies. Reform UK, Restore Britain and the Lib Dems will not work with them. Labour, on the other hand, would sell its soul to the devil and join with the Greens.

Tuesday

The Spectator

Livestream: Masters of War

From our UK edition

From Napoleon’s conquests across Europe to Lord Salisbury’s diplomacy during the height of the British Empire and Churchill’s wartime strategy, our panel will explore how history is shaped disproportionately by great figures making crucial decisions at moments of crisis. On Thursday 15 October, The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove and assistant editor Madeline Grant sat down with Andrew Roberts, just days after the publication of his latest book, Napoleon and His Marshals, to explore the legacy of some of modern history’s greatest and most controversial wartime leaders. Watch the livestream of this event here.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: The US withdraws its bombers, Kemi promises a ‘Britannia shield’ and Christa Pike survives her execution

From our UK edition

Home Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, said there were ‘strong indications’ that Iran played a part in the events at RAF Fairford. The United States withdrew all its bombers from Fairford, which President Donald Trump of America said had been because of ‘some threats’. A dual Iranian-British man aged 27 and a 22-year-old British national were arrested in Westminster on suspicion of the preparation of terrorist acts in connection with Fairford. Two Iranian nationals appeared in court charged with plotting ​acts of terrorism involving the use of a homemade bomb to attack the Jewish community in Manchester at the behest of a figure believed to be based in Iran; the court was told both men had come to Britain from Europe ​in boats.

The Spectator

How right-wing are labradors?

From our UK edition

Lab test Labour MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter described black labradors, pubs and warm ale as a ‘far right fantasy’. Do labradors have right-wing roots? The labrador, as its name suggests, had its origins in Newfoundland. The breed was derived from the St John’s water dog, favoured by Portuguese fishermen for its strong fishing ability. Dogs of this breed were brought to Britain by the 10th Earl of Home to be trained as gun dogs. They were cross-bred with other hunting dogs, and the labrador was recognised as a distinct breed by the Kennel Club in 1903. Some were employed in the fight against fascism through bomb-detection duties in the war (although they would no doubt as happily have worked for the other side).

The Spectator

2770: Effwun – solution

From our UK edition

The unclued lights are F1 (‘eff wun’ in the title) racing drivers. Damon Hill at 15D/39 is the pair and the singletons are Lauda at 12, Alonso at 23 and Button at 7.

The Spectator

Kemi Badenoch knows the right way forward

From our UK edition

Last year’s Conservative party conference was a difficult one. Reform UK was leading the polls; the local election results had been as painful as the general election the year before; and the story at conference was not Kemi Badenoch’s successes, but speculation over Robert Jenrick’s attempts to replace her. Adversity, however, proved her friend. The past year has seen Badenoch’s leadership blossom, with confident public appearances, a by-election victory in Aberdeen and Jenrick’s fortuitous exit to Reform. This week, she stood up in Birmingham as a leader truly in command of her party – and with a plausible route back into government. There are still a great many obstacles to overcome.

The Spectator

Letters: Don’t worry about AI novels

From our UK edition

A right old mess Sir: Although Andy Burnham seems to be turning to Old Labour, what he is really turning against is Thatcherism and the shift towards neoliberalism. Your editorial (‘The return of Old Labour’, 3 October) rightly identifies low growth, ballooning government debt, high energy costs, low investment, inadequate preparation for technological change, uncontrolled migration and invertebrate defence as current concerns. All can be attributed to governments since 1980. It is no good saying that government itself is unequal to the task. Who has been responsible for this? A winter is coming all right. What is less clear is whether the right has renounced its faith in false gods and has the ideas and people to solve the problems it has lumbered us with.