The Spectator’s 2022 midterms election night: live coverage
Commentary as the results come in from Amber Athey, Ben Domenech, Bridget Phetasy, Chadwick Moore, John Pietro, Matt McDonald, Matt Purple, Oliver Wiseman and Roger Kimball
The Spectator
Tuesday
Wednesday
unreliable narrator
From our UK edition
and where yesterday I lay broiling in the vat of my bedroom today a sneaky little breeze tickles my soles — Coo-ee! Only me! shifty at first but soon breeze picks up speed with What — did you think I was gone for good? That me and my three ‘e’s had danced our final conga
Books of the Year I — chosen by our regular reviewers
From our UK edition
Philip Hensher There were some very good novels this year, but they came from surprising directions. It is astonishing that one as original as Kate Barker-Mawjee’s The Coldest Place on Earth (Conrad Press, £9.99) couldn’t find a major publisher. A friend recommended this wonderfully controlled and evocatively written novel about a heart coming to life
Letters: Where past PMs went wrong
From our UK edition
Catalogue of disasters Sir: Matthew Parris, in his article ‘The real cause of all the chaos’ (29 October), asks of our last three prime ministers: ‘What big thing did any of these unfortunate souls do wrong?’ In a spirit of helpfulness: Mrs May: net zero by 2050, derisory defence spending. Mr Johnson: hospital clearances, lockdown, vaccine
Some day I want to be Peter Sellers
From our UK edition
in his Clouseau-era. I want to get home knowing at any minute I might karate chop Burt Kwouk as he comes flying round the corner or trap his trouser-tie in the fridge door or flip up the fold-down bed on his head — basically I want to triumph frequently by freakish misadventure. And I want
Has Elon Musk picked up a turkey in Twitter?
From our UK edition
Talking gobblers Has Elon Musk picked up a turkey in Twitter? – Musk paid $54.2 per share. The share price reached $41.57 on its first day of trading in 2013. It slumped to $14.62 in April 2016 and peaked at $77.06 in February 2021. In the first quarter of 2022, it claimed 229 million active
What Scholz should bear in mind on his trip to Beijing
From our UK edition
Olaf Scholz will be in Beijing this weekend, making the first visit of a western leader to China since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. What might at any other time be regarded as a routine piece of diplomatic outreach is instead a matter of deep concern. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has just cemented his
Portrait of the week: A migrant crisis in Manston, elections for Northern Ireland and Matt Hancock heads for the jungle
From our UK edition
Home Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, spoke in the Commons of an ‘invasion on our southern coast’ by migrants in small boats. ‘Let’s stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress,’ she said. ‘The whole country knows that is not true.’ She was reacting to a crisis at a migrant processing centre in Manston,
The Non-Discovery of San Francisco Bay
From our UK edition
Drake, the clot, missed it by a mile. That hook of rock failed to snag his sails into the only gap for a thousand miles and the Ohlone breathed easy in their skins unaware of the Great Inevitable whilst the dew on the antelope’s nose lay undisturbed. Salmon knew the river would not deepen. The
2577: Light and dark – solution
From our UK edition
The unclued lights are Oxbridge colleges, hence LIGHT AND DARK blue in the title. First prize A.H. Harker, Oxford Runners-up David Morris, Birchington, Kent; D. Bain, Edinburgh
The short-lived bloom of Monica Rose
From our UK edition
In her, oily tongued Hughie found his perfect foil: a cockney sparrow, whose pixie cut and skinny frame won the hearts of millions in the age of monochrome. Her money more than doubling as she made the ratings soar, bringing with it a rags-to-riches change. The sky seemed the limit, yet something in her ached
Wednesday
Who was Britain’s youngest prime minister?
From our UK edition
Prime numbers At 42, Rishi Sunak is Britain’s youngest PM since Lord Liverpool took office the day after his 42nd birthday in June 1812. He replaced Spencer Perceval, the only British prime minister to be assassinated. Much is made of Sunak’s wealth, but he hasn’t enjoyed the privilege Lord Liverpool did (his father was an
Letters: What to do with the Elgin Marbles
From our UK edition
Sculpting a solution Sir: Noel Malcolm’s article ‘Relief fund’ (22 October) rightly suggests that legislators should consider the issue of the Parthenon sculptures seriously. Yet the article does little in the way of advancing a meaningful solution. What makes The Parthenon Project unique and not just ‘the latest in a sequence’ is that it offers
The economic storm ahead is losing some of its power
From our UK edition
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, German protesters lined the streets holding placards saying ‘Better a cold shower than Putin’s gas’. Their resolve was soon to be tested: energy costs surged and Berlin’s longstanding policy of relying on Russian gas started to cost the country dear. Germany set itself the hugely ambitious target of having
Portrait of the week: Sunak in No. 10, pasta gets pricier and Russia hits Ukraine’s energy grid
From our UK edition
Home Rishi Sunak, aged 42, became Prime Minister. At the weekend Boris Johnson had flown back from a holiday in the Dominican Republic in response to the resignation of Liz Truss. She said she could not ‘deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative party’. The 1922 Committee devised a hurdle of
2576: After Eleven – solution
From our UK edition
The unclued lights are names of the men who followed Armstrong and Aldrin (Apollo 11) in walking on the moon First prize Glynn Downton, Maidstone, Kent Runners-up D.V. Jones, Llanfair Caereinion, Powys; John Kitchen, Breachwood Green, Herts
Tuesday
Rishi’s reshuffle: the appointments
From our UK edition
Rishi Sunak is Britain’s third prime minister this year. On Tuesday, Sunak assembled a new top team with the hope of unifying the fractured party. The cabinet departures included Jacob Rees-Mogg among those heading to the back benches. As for the arrivals, Suella Braverman is back in the role of Home Secretary just under a
Wednesday
Divided they fall: can the Tories save themselves?
From our UK edition
Seldom has support for a government fallen so far, so fast. Polls show that 24 per cent of the public would vote for the Conservatives if there was an election now, vs 52 per cent for Labour: figures that make 1997 look like a good result for the Tories. This is not just a one-off
Has the pandemic made us appreciate nature more?
From our UK edition
Out to grass If Liz Truss is forced out of office (and doesn’t also resign her parliamentary seat as Tony Blair did on resigning as prime minister), there will be three ex-PMs sitting on the backbenches of the Commons. When was the last time this happened? — Between Jim Callaghan’s defeat in the 1979 general
Letters: The case for legalising cannabis
From our UK edition
Paying the price Sir: Lionel Shriver’s piece about university standards rang true to me (‘University is supposed to be hard’, 15 October). When I, then working for a distinctly moth-eaten British university, visited a very famous private college in Massachusetts in 1985, I expressed my envy of his luxurious surroundings to a professor of English.