The Spectator

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Digital IDs ditched, unrest in Iran and an app to check you’re not dead

Home The government dropped plans to make digital ID compulsory to work in Britain. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, called it ‘disgraceful’ that Grok, the online tool on Elon Musk’s X, could undress pictures of people. X limited the function to subscribers, but Liz Kendall, the Technology Secretary, said that the government would back Ofcom if it decided to block X in Britain. ‘They just want to suppress free speech,’ Mr Musk wrote on X. Sir Keir, due to visit China this month, was warned by some Labour MPs not to approve a vast new Chinese embassy in London. The government signalled a U-turn on increases to business rates for pubs in England before the ink was dry on the Telegraph’s Save Our Pubs campaign.

The Spectator

How many pubs are left in the UK?

Net freedoms The government was pressed to ban X over charges that Elon Musk’s AI app Grok is being used to ‘undress’ women and children. Kemi Badenoch said the Tories would copy Australia in banning under-16s from social media. What are the most extreme countries for regulating the internet and social media – using a combined score including political sites, pornography and virtual private networks (VPNs), from the most laissez-faire at 1 to the most restrictive at 12?

The Spectator

Letters: The real reason Gen Z aren’t having sex

No EU turn Sir: Before Dr Brian Mathew’s letter on ‘How to restore prosperity’ appeared (10 January), the FT printed an article making it clear that Britain’s powerful financial services industry would not be included in the government’s much-vaunted ‘reset’ with the EU. It quoted figures from the City saying that this was ‘the last thing they wanted’ and explaining they were doing much better outside EU regulation. The article contained a reported comment from the government to the effect that they had taken note of the City’s views and that financial services would not now be included in their cherished initiative.

Friday

Polly Walshe

Predicament

From our US edition

World’s stock of afternoons is running short And summer’s light is turning golden brown – It’s time to summon up our winter thoughts Since poetry will always be our sport And images, once mothered, won’t disown Our afternoons, though old, though running short, For in mind’s shadows metaphors hold court And new dreams swarm. We fully own It’s time to conjure up our winter thoughts, New entities of if and how, the sort That make us glad to live in winter towns Whose broken afternoons are falling short.

David Page

Knowledge Revises

From our US edition

It’s too late now to say you are not old, the years gang up on you, they settle down like locusts falling on a field of grain, the rustling noise you hear, that is their sound. How to be old: I’ll help you on the way. Stand straight. Be calm. Pretend you are a tree Speak like a tree, only speak slow and clear. Speak only once. If words should scatter flashing their tails before they disappear, temporise, change the subject, no great matter – Enough, wrong tone: meaning to make amends should not have used this hieratic patter knew from the start that half I said was wrong pitching it for that By-Our-Lady play And yet, which half was false and which was true? After all, here am I, but where are you?

Wednesday

William Palmer

Last Acts

The house lights dim again: Willy Loman, Vanya, Lear talk to the dark before their eyes – while you glance sideways at your neighbours, who’ve brought their lovers, husbands, wives to sit beside them (or to occupy their minds). What do they want to see? The play goes on, into its last deciding act. A few will leave early: their spirits rise apologetically and drift toward the doors. Some women weep, some men feel anger at their own bald age as Lear is lost in grief. Applause is ferocious at the end. How can they leave? There must be more. What’s next? The pages of the programme have gone blank. ‘Shall we go round to see the people in the show?’ To find the dressing rooms empty, bare.

The Spectator

Donald Trump is confronting a reality that Europe has ignored

Donald Trump’s rendition of Nicolas Maduro was a brilliantly executed coup. It was also an exhibition of America’s hard power, power that has underpinned the rules-based international order that protected America’s allies for decades. Now those allies fear that the rules-based order is as much a smoking ruin as Maduro’s Caracas compound. European hysteria is, however, misplaced. President Trump has not inaugurated a new era of disorder, he has responded to realities about which European elites have been in denial. The post-war international order has been crumbling for more than a decade. And British governments have been enablers of that process. One of the most determined users of hard power in subverting every restraint has been communist China.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: US strikes Venezuela, China taxes contraceptives and happy anniversary to the Birmingham bin-strikers

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said Britain was not involved ‘in any way’ in the US strikes on Venezuela. But he tweeted: ‘We regarded Maduro as an illegitimate president and we shed no tears about the end of his regime.’ Earlier that day, Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, had said: ‘Nobody will shed tears over him no longer being in power.’ RAF Typhoon jets joined French aircraft in a strike on an underground arms cache in Syria thought to have been used by the Islamic State group. Britain should consider ‘even closer alignment’ with the EU single market, Sir Keir said. All young children will be offered chickenpox vaccines at the same time as their MMR vaccination.

The Spectator

2732: Play it tough – solition

Don BRADMAN (26) said, ‘When you play test cricket you don’t give Englishmen an inch’. The other unclued lights are: CUMMINS (12), URN (27), ASHES (13), and STOKES (32). AUS/ENG, in the seventh row, should be highlighted. The title is taken from the same Bradman quotation.

The Spectator

Jack Rankin: No to Reform

No to Reform Sir: Perhaps because I have been candid about the Conservative party’s failures in office, I am mooted as being of interest to Reform by your political editor (‘14 questions for 2026’, 3 January). But acknowledging failures is not a prelude to defection; it is the necessary starting point of renewal. When Reform speaks of a ‘uniparty’, it implies that swapping politicians is enough. It is not. The crisis of the British state runs far deeper. Governments are in office, not power, because of the pernicious shift we have seen over the past 30 years from a political constitutionalism to a legal one.

Monday

The Spectator

2731: Knots – solution

‘THE HORROR! THE HORROR!’ (4D/18A/3D) is a quotation from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, author of THE SECRET AGENT (9D). The protagonists are MARLOW (31D) and KURTZ (21A) and the tale was told in a YAWL (24A) called NELLIE (26D). Title: abbr. KN = heart of DARKNESS.

The Spectator

What went up – and down – in 2025?

Erasmus in England The government is to rejoin the Erasmus scheme, which allows students at British universities to spend time studying in other European countries, with reciprocal opportunities for EU students. How did Desiderius Erasmus’s own studies in England go? — In 1499 he spent two months at St Mary’s College, Oxford, where he attended John Colet’s Bible classes and also learned skills in horsemanship. His trip ended in financial disaster, however, when customs officials confiscated his gold and silver while he was leaving England. — From 1511 to 1515 Erasmus was a Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, where he studied and taught Greek. But he was far from happy with his accommodation at Queens’ College, which he complained was cold and draughty.

Polly Walshe

Predicament

World’s stock of afternoons is running short And summer’s light is turning golden brown – It’s time to summon up our winter thoughts Since poetry will always be our sport And images, once mothered, won’t disown Our afternoons, though old, though running short, For in mind’s shadows metaphors hold court And new dreams swarm. We fully own It’s time to conjure up our winter thoughts, New entities of if and how, the sort That make us glad to live in winter towns Whose broken afternoons are falling short.

The Spectator

Who’s up to the challenge of restoring Britain’s prosperity?

In 1956, Malta held a referendum on joining the United Kingdom. Since the islands were economically reliant on the Royal Navy, it was unsurprising that three-quarters of those voting believed their future lay in integrating with their colonial masters. But after a lukewarm response from the British government, the referendum result was never implemented and Malta instead hastened towards independence. Seven decades on, it seems the Maltese had a lucky escape. The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) has declared that Malta’s living standards will overtake Britain’s by 2035. It cites Malta’s low taxes and pro-enterprise culture, which are especially attractive for the wealthy Britons fleeing a country that lacks both.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Farm tax backdown, trail hunting crackdown and anti-misogyny courses for 11-year-olds

Home The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced plans to criminalise trail hunting ‘amid concerns it is being used as a smokescreen for hunting’; another part of the new animal welfare strategy will make it a crime to boil a live lobster. The government revised the threshold below which, from April, agricultural assets may be handed down without incurring inheritance tax, from a planned £1 million to £2.5 million. Downing Street cancelled regular afternoon lobby briefings and said it would hold more morning press conferences with limited questions from selected journalists.

The Spectator

Letters: Don’t let Labour kill off trail hunting

Man with man to dwell Sir: Your editorial (‘All ye faithful’, 13-27 December) suggests that scepticism about Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s (Tommy Robinson’s) Christian faith tends to coincide with credulity about conversions among refugees from Muslim-majority countries, and vice versa. This does not reflect the experience of many churches. Over the past year in our congregation, several young men have come to faith alongside a larger number of Iranian asylum seekers. One of the former was so affected by the murder of Charlie Kirk that he came to church the following Sunday. Many of the latter are sincerely seeking Christ, having become disillusioned with Islam in their homeland.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the year

From our US edition

January For three weeks wildfires raged around Los Angeles. Perhaps 30 people were killed but 200,000 were evacuated, 18,000 homes and structures destroyed and 57,529 acres burnt. Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th President. On his first day he issued about 1,500 pardons for people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol in 2021; he created the Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE), led by Elon Musk; he signed executive orders on gender and immigration and withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization. The state funeral of Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, was held in Washington, DC. Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and the return of hostages held in Gaza.

Thursday

The Spectator

The radical message of Christianity

A meeting planned in secret. A message deemed subversive. The authorities both antagonised and confused. The gatherings of the early Church in the time of the Roman Empire? Or Tommy Robinson’s proposed carol concert at an as yet undisclosed London location, proclaimed as the event to put ‘Christ back into Christmas’? To draw even the most strained comparison between the two would seem to offend most mainstream sensibilities. Established churches across the country have reacted with horror and disdain at the former football hooligan and recent prison inmate claiming to be Christianity’s champion this Christmas.

The Spectator

Portrait of the year: Trump’s tariffs, the definition of biological sex and the fall of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

January Downing Street said Rachel Reeves would remain in her role as Chancellor of the Exchequer ‘for the whole of this parliament’. She made a speech standing behind a placard saying: ‘Kickstart economic growth.’ Axel Rudakubana, 18, was sentenced to at least 52 years in prison for the murder of three girls in a knife attack at Southport. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, announced a ‘rapid audit’ of grooming gangs by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Wildfires raged around Los Angeles. Luke Littler, 17, became world darts champion. The aftermath of the Palisades and Eaton fires in California (Mario Tama/Getty Images) February President Donald Trump of the United States and the Vice-President, J. D.

The Spectator

Who inspired Winnie-the-Pooh?

Pooh-pooh Christmas Eve marks the 100th birthday of Winnie-the-Pooh, which first appeared in a short story in the Evening News on that day.   The character was inspired by a bear bought by a Canadian vet, Harry Colebourn, at a railway station in Ontario on his way to serve on the Western Front – he named it Winnipeg Bear after his home town. The animal became the unofficial mascot of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade on its voyage across the Atlantic, but on arrival in London he gave it to London Zoo, where it was seen by A.A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin. The real animal, however, was female and underwent gender reassignment as it was transformed into a children’s character.