The Spectator

Wednesday

The Spectator

How does this week’s heatwave compare with 1976?

From our UK edition

Prime numbers It looks as if Britain will just miss out on having seven prime ministers in the space of a decade as nominations for the Labour leadership election will not open until 9 July (David Cameron left office on 13 July 2016). Have we ever had seven PMs in the space of ten years? – After Lord Liverpool left office on 9 April 1827 Britain saw a further eight premierships within the following decade. Two, however, saw the same person returning to office, so we had seven different prime ministers within the space of ten years.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Burnham wins, Starmer resigns and a heatwave hits

From our UK edition

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, stood outside 10 Downing Street and said that he would resign as leader of the Labour party. Nominations for a successor would open on 9 July (though he still meant to unveil his defence investment plan in time for the Nato summit on 7 July). His decision to depart followed the convincing victory in the Makerfield by-election of Andy Burnham, bringing him back into parliament. An election for mayor of Greater Manchester in his place would take place on 30 July, with Bev Craig, the leader of Manchester City Council, as Labour’s candidate. Mr Burnham packed a suit and tie into which he changed on the train from Manchester Piccadilly to London. He was sworn in as an MP that afternoon. Mr Burnham had received 24,927 votes (54.

The Spectator

How Burnham can avoid Starmer’s fate

From our UK edition

Welcome to the cabaret, Andy Burnham. Last year, the editor of this magazine wrote about ‘Weimar Britain’: the fear that political instability, economic turmoil and rising anti-Semitism was making our country as decadent and dangerous as inter-war Germany. As our sixth prime minister of the post-Brexit decade departs, and our seventh looms into view, we have developed a national addiction to perma-crisis, seemingly trapped in a game of ‘Topple the PM’. We are far from a January 1933 moment. But the joke isn’t funny any more. This turbulence is not inescapable, though. What is needed is a premier able to stay the course, to set out how they want to change Britain and to discover the drive and charisma to bring their party and the country with them.

Christopher James

Painting Days

From our UK edition

In memory of Bruce Chilton  Those unhurried afternoons we stood at our easels, muddying canvas with paint from a dinner plate. Schubert’s Trout Sonata on Radio 3. Tea stone cold, we were more Pete and Dud than Monet and Renoir, barely exchanging a word while the sun washed the room with light.  Occasionally, taken with the music, he’d give voice to a note or phrase, forgetting perhaps I was there.  There’d be a stop for a pipe; a pause for lunch – always sandwiches and soup. ‘Could I trouble you for some mustard?’ A little cricket talk, perhaps, or something about his motorcycle, some nuisance with the carburettor, or a tie he had his eye on in Jarrolds (‘But not at that price’).

The Spectator

Letters: Why the left loves Larkin

From our UK edition

An irresponsible drama Sir: Britain is faced with a fabricated panic which has prioritised personality over policy. Keir Starmer has been forced out of office largely to provide the media with a piece of theatre, a drama of great irresponsibility in which Act One has been written but nothing sketched out beyond it. Michael Gove’s brilliant account (‘Butterfly effect’, 20 June) has shown that Britain’s economy has benefited greatly from our detachment from the EU, but points to an area where the misnomer of ‘Exit’ has magnified problems of national identity, which remain and require what amounts to therapy on a grand scale.

Wednesday

The Spectator

How does this World Cup compare with the first?

From our UK edition

Football fiasco With 48 teams, this is the largest World Cup ever. How does it compare with the first? – The inaugural World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930. It should have had 16 teams, in a format which endured until 1970. However, only 13 turned up. Siam (now Thailand) and Japan accepted invitations but then withdrew. – Egypt were supposed to travel by ship with the French team, via Marseille. However, a storm in the Mediterranean prevented them making the connection. – England didn’t compete until 1950, when they were eliminated in the group stage after defeats to the US and Spain. Health and safety How have defence and welfare spending changed as a proportion of GDP?

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Belfast riots, Starmer bans TikTok and Trump turns 80

From our UK edition

Home The electors of Makerfield decided who might be prime minister. After John Healey resigned as defence secretary, Al Carns resigned as armed forces minister. Mr Healey had declared that Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, had ‘been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country’. Dan Jarvis was appointed Defence Secretary. Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said the armed forces would have to ‘dial back’ operations without more funding. Belfast had multiple nights of anti-immigrant rioting in response to the terrible knife attack on Stephen Ogilvie. Two Ukrainian men were found guilty of plotting firebomb attacks on properties linked to Sir Keir Starmer.

The Spectator

Trump has been outplayed by Iran

From our UK edition

The Founding Fathers may have modelled America on Ancient Rome, but they would have found the ersatz gladiatorial spectacle Donald Trump mounted at the White House to mark his birthday a grotesque perversion of their dreams. An ‘ultimate fighting contest’, staged to pay homage to Trump’s rule (though dressed up as part of the United States’ 250th anniversary celebrations) was exactly the cult of one man the Founding Fathers most dreaded. The President is not an emperor unconstrained, however. A shellacking in November’s midterm elections will show how hemmed in he is. And nowhere is his weakness more apparent than in his so-called ‘peace agreement’ with Iran. It is the latest in a series of humiliations visited on the Great Republic by this tawdry tinsel Caesar.

The Spectator

Letters: Keep AI out of the Church

From our UK edition

I Spy Sir: Overt political allegiance and class snobbery may indeed have thwarted Toby Young’s undergraduate ambition to be ‘tapped on the shoulder’ by the security services (No sacred cows, 13 June), but I wonder if he underestimates the importance of persistence. We were almost exact Oxford contemporaries and ‘out’ right-wingers to boot. During my first term I recall vividly a long conversation into the early hours with a fellow St Edmund Hall freshman, who confided that he had set his heart on joining MI6. He also insisted that one of the fabled dons responsible for recruiting spies was none other than the senior English fellow at our college, who after distinguished service in the second world war was now close to retirement.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Belfast burns, Sullivan resigns and the Iran ceasefire cracks 

From our UK edition

Home A horrible video circulated on social media of a man on the ground in a Belfast street being stabbed in the head. His life was saved by bystanders, one with a hurling stick; a Sudanese man, aged 30, who had arrived from Dublin and been granted leave to remain, was charged with attempted murder. In reaction, houses were set on fire and a bus and cars were burnt; in east Belfast, 100 masked men kicked in doors and broke windows, saying they were ‘getting the foreigners out’. J.D. Vance, the American Vice-President, blamed the death in Southampton of Henry Nowak on ‘the mass invasion of migrants’. David Lammy, the Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, said he had phoned Mr Vance and told him he was wrong.

The Spectator

Securing Britain’s defence should be Starmer’s legacy

From our UK edition

Few critiques of British mythmaking have been more astute than that of Correlli Barnett. He argued that 18th-century statesmen were hardheaded industrialists and merchants who understood the basis of military power. Then a new culture emerged, created by Victorian educationalists, one that had a ‘high-minded emphasis on religion and the classics’. By the end of the 19th century, Britain’s elites no longer understood the nation’s military-industrial base. They had become little more than a complacent establishment, rather than men of action. Hampered by inefficiencies and ill-prepared for conflict, Britain emerged from the second world war shrunken, uncompetitive and condemned to further decline.

The Spectator

2753: Rapid sea – solution

From our UK edition

The puzzle’s title, Rapid Sea, is an anagram of Paradise, i.e. Paradise Lost. The preamble is based on PL 1.34-36: The INFERNAL SERPENT, whose guile stirred up with ENVY and REVENGE, DECEIVED the mother of MANKIND. SATAN is the protagonist and MILTON the poet.

The Spectator

Letters: many are waiting for the Tory comeback

From our UK edition

Con’s the word Sir: In his article ‘Neo con’ (6 June) Michael Simmons claims that neoliberalism powered this country into the 21st century as the fastest-growing large economy in Europe. It didn’t; it was the North Sea that fuelled the UK’s growth, the UK being the only large European economy gifted by geology with major oil and gas fields. Comparing the UK and Norway over this period is enlightening. The UK, believing in neoliberalism, sold off its national oil company BNOC and trusted in ‘the market’, while Norway, wanting a direct stake in its substantial oil and gas resource, created the state-owned company Statoil to manage it.

Tuesday

The Spectator

Livestream: The Brexit Debate

From our UK edition

Watch the livestream of The Brexit Debate here. Ten years on from the Brexit referendum – the vote meant to set us free from a fractious relationship – Britain is far from taking flight. Was Brexit a mistake – or are its promised freedoms simply yet to be realised? With the government unwilling to act boldly, smoothing Brexit’s edges rather than seizing its opportunities, are we quietly edging back into Europe’s embrace? Join us for a special event marking ten years since the referendum.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Henry Nowak and the dangers of ‘anti-racist’ dogma

From our UK edition

‘I can’t breathe.’ When those chilling words were uttered by George Floyd in 2020, they provoked global outrage. The combination of the horrific manner of Floyd’s choking by the police officer Derek Chauvin, the pressure cooker of lockdown and the historical tensions around American race relations led to worldwide protests; despite Floyd’s death being 4,000 miles away in Minnesota, Keir Starmer felt compelled to take the knee in solidarity. ‘I can’t breathe.’ These were also the dying words of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old student in Southampton murdered by the 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa. Nowak was coming back from a night out when he was stabbed by Digwa five times with a ceremonial knife. When the police were called, Digwa accused Nowak of having been racist.

Peter Devonald

There is Within Us Eternal Spring

From our UK edition

Who are we to wish the clocks reverse and we are back to spring? Who would deny the falling leaves, the receding hairline of autumn? Who would wish away the change in air, hope to transformation? The elegance of gusty days, leaves flying in eddies of reminiscences, a quiet comfort to becalm the storm, to listen to the fury, out there, elsewhere. We embrace autumn and even winter has its charms, embraced in wonder. Time is a ghost, but we aren’t yet, we welcome new horizons, waiting.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Sturgeon speaks, Henry Nowak’s killer is jailed and Mandelson messages are released

From our UK edition

Home Vickrum Digwa, 23, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years for the murder of Henry Nowak, 18, who was stabbed several times; the victim was handcuffed and arrested while he was telling police he had been stabbed and saying ‘I can’t breathe’. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said that he ‘felt sick’ watching bodycam footage of the incident. Nicola Sturgeon, in a remarkable interview with the BBC about the embezzlement of £400,310.65 by her now-estranged husband, Peter Murrell, said she expected ‘a legal process to recover the money from Peter’, but she emphasised that: ‘I am not guilty of that embezzlement, so nothing that belongs to me should be part of that.