Tom Goodenough is online editor of The Spectator.
‘For the Greeks, it feels like a gaping wound,’ says Sarah Baxter, a columnist at the Sunday Times, of the Elgin Marbles. For 200 years, the Parthenon sculptures have taken pride of place at the British Museum. The Greeks want them back, but their pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Greece’s prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis
Aukus is a pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. But its primary purpose is combatting another country: China. ‘It’s about China, let’s be quite clear,’ says security minister Tom Tugendhat. ‘You will not see many direct references to China in Aukus literature,’ says Sophia Gaston, director of the British Foreign Policy
‘There’s a huge prize there if we get it right,’ says Tory MP Lee Rowley of the move to net zero. But there’s a big question mark hanging over this mission: how to get there without alienating voters and damaging the economy? Andrew Griffith, Boris Johnson’s ex-chief business advisor and the government’s net zero champion,
Brexit was hailed by its supporters as an opportunity for Britain to go out and into the world. But six years on from the EU referendum, are we making the most of Britain’s departure from the EU? Not so, according to Conor Burns, Minister of State in the Department for International Trade. Burns says that,
Members of the Royal Family have gathered at Balmoral amid concerns for the Queen’s health. Buckingham Palace released a statement this afternoon saying Her Majesty was ‘comfortable’ but that ‘the Queen’s doctors are concerned for Her Majesty’s health and have recommended she remain under medical supervision’. Prince Charles, Camilla and Princess Anne are at Balmoral. Prince
Liz Truss has won the race to become Tory leader and Britain’s new Prime Minister. Truss, who was the runaway favourite to win, defeated her rival Rishi Sunak by 81,326 votes to 60,399 – a margin of 57 per cent to 43 per cent. She will take over from Boris Johnson tomorrow, after flying to Balmoral to see
Love him or loathe him, Donald Trump is a brilliant political opportunist. And the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate last night may have handed the former president a significant boost in any future run for the White House. Speculation is rife that The Donald will have another shot at the presidency – and the dramatic events of the
Penny Mordaunt’s flip-flopping over gender self-ID makes it difficult to know where she stands. But on another issue she has made things abundantly clear: Mordaunt doesn’t understand how the internet works. If she makes it to the final round of the leadership contest this afternoon – and indeed to No. 10 – Mordaunt has vowed
Chris Pincher remains a Tory MP this morning, but how long will that be the case? The Conservative deputy chief whip resigned from the government last night, following allegations that he groped two men at a private members’ club on Wednesday evening. In a letter to Boris Johnson, Pincher said he ‘drank far too much’ and ’embarrassed myself and
Gary Lineker is the BBC’s top earner: he was paid £1.36m last year. The popularity of Match of the Day, the programme he hosts, is often given as the reason for that astronomical pay cheque. Yet the reality is that most fans tune in to watch the goals, not to hear Lineker’s presentation. Lineker, however,
Boris Johnson has won a confidence vote in his leadership – but nearly 150 Tory MPs voted against him in a huge blow to the Prime Minister’s leadership. The PM won the support of 211 Conservative MPs, while 148 voted against him in the ballot of Tory MPs. The PM insisted that this was a ‘very good
Jürgen Klopp is football’s Mr Nice Guy. Despite his Liverpool side missing out on winning the Premier League, Klopp was this week named as the League Managers’ Association manager of the year. The German also won the Premier League manager of the year. It’s not the first time Klopp has won both awards in the
A row about rainbows has broken out in football. Paris St-Germain players wore brightly coloured numbers — a show of support for this week’s ‘International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia’. But one player was missing from the line-up: Idrissa Gueye. PSG’s manager Mauricio Pochettino said that Gueye missed the game against Montpellier – which
Westminster council has fallen to the Labour party for the first time ever, as the Tories suffered a string of defeats in local elections across Britain overnight. The party also picked up Wandsworth council for the first time since 1978, with the defeated Tory council leader Ravi Govindia admitting many voters raised ‘the issue of Boris Johnson’ during
In The Spectator office’s toilets there are framed front covers of the events that didn’t happen: Corbyn beats Boris; ‘Here’s Hillary’; Jeremy Hunt wins the Tory leadership contest. The British Library has something similar at its Breaking the News exhibition. The difference is that these ones actually made it to the newsstand. It’s enough to
Can Boris recover from the storm of partygate? The Prime Minister has pinned his hopes on being exonerated – or at least not entirely condemned – by Sue Gray in her investigation into Downing Street festivities during the pandemic. And yet, whatever she says, the writing might already be on the Red Wall for Boris.
Has Azeem Rafiq been forgiven yet? He’s certainly working on it. After finding himself on both sides of a racism scandal, the former Yorkshire cricketer’s rehabilitation PR operation has been nothing if not swift. As the story broke last week that Rafiq had sent messages mocking Jewish people, he apologised immediately: ‘I am incredibly angry
Tulip Siddiq has campaigned nobly for the return of her constituent, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. The Labour MP is again doing her bit to try and persuade the Iranian government to free the British-Iranian mum, who has been locked up on trumped-up charges in Iran. ‘After over four years in Evin Prison, Nazanin has been under house arrest
Gary Neville was a fine footballer but he is a confused pundit. He keeps trying to get political when talking about football — and it’s boring. During England’s Euro 2020 semi-final game this summer, he obnoxiously suggested Gareth Southgate, the England manager, had shown more leadership than the Prime Minister. It was an irritating and
Are there crimes that are too depraved to be dramatised? And how long should programme makers wait before real life crime becomes the subject of a TV show? If the case of the Night Stalker – a serial burglar and rapist who terrorised south east London for 17 years during the 1990s and 2000s –
