Tom Goodenough is online editor of The Spectator.
When Keir Starmer needed advice about clinging to power in Downing Street, there was only one person to call. Gordon Brown knows all about hiding behind the net curtains of No. 10 as electoral reality sets in. As Labour fell to a historic defeat at the local elections, the Prime Minister decided that what voters
Axel Rudakubana’s mother and father failed as parents – and they failed the three innocent girls who were murdered in the Southport attack. They could – and should – have prevented their son from going to the dance class where he killed those children. That is the verdict of the Southport Inquiry, which released its
The persecution of Nigeria’s Christians is medieval in its horror. Villages are surrounded in the dead of night by bandits who rape and kill the inhabitants. No one is spared: women and children are among those butchered. The Makurdi Diocese, in Nigeria’s Middle Belt Benue state, has been hit badly by this savage violence. In
Dominic Cummings has warned Nigel Farage that Whitehall will break the law to prevent Reform winning power. Speaking on The Spectator‘s Quite Right! podcast, Cummings said: ‘They’ll leak medical records, they’ll leak tax records. They’ll bug his phone and leak that. They’ll do anything that they need to’. The former Vote Leave campaign boss and
Something mysterious is happening in churches across Britain: a growing number of young Christians are showing up. Millennial men, in particular, appear to be turning back to Christianity: there has been a four to five-fold increase since 2018 in 18-to-24-year-old males attending church. What’s going on? Three hundred Spectator subscribers gathered in the beautiful surroundings of St
Sarah Vine’s How Not to Be a Political Wife is the talk of Westminster – and beyond. This week, four hundred Spectator subscribers and readers heard from Vine and Spectator editor Michael Gove at an exclusive event. Rachel Johnson – brother of Boris and son of Stanley – and Hugo Swire – whose wife Sasha wrote the bestselling Diary of an
The May elections were a disaster for the Tories – but a triumph for Reform. As the dust settled on the results, Spectator subscribers and readers heard from Reform UK’s chairman Zia Yusuf and former Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg at a live edition of Coffee House Shots: The local elections shake-up. Joining them at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster
What is Donald Trump up to now? From trade wars and stock market yo-yos to shouting matches in the White House, it can be hard to keep track. The US president’s first 100 days have been predictably riotous. To make sense of it all, The Spectator‘s deputy editor Freddy Gray and Spectator columnist and bestselling
By any measure, Sadiq Khan deserves to lose the London mayoral election. Khan has been terrible for the capital, yet Londoners are stuck with him. Barring a near miraculous upset by the Tory candidate Susan Hall, Khan will almost certainly win re-election today. Surely one of the world’s great cities deserves better? Instead of going to
What does the Chancellor Rachel Reeves have in common with American singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter? And how should world leaders deal with Donald Trump? Tory peer David Frost, Labour peer Maurice Glasman and pollster James Kanagasooriam joined Spectator editor Michael Gove and Spectator political editor Katy Balls to answer these questions, and plenty of others, at the
Five hundred Spectator readers packed out Westminster’s Emmanuel Centre this week for Coffee House Shots Live: A Look To The Year Ahead. The event on Wednesday night, hosted by Spectator political editor Katy Balls, featured a panel made up of special guests the Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick MP and Labour Together’s Jonathan Ashworth. The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove and economics editor Kate
There’s blood spattered on the pavement but locals in New Addington, an estate in Croydon, southeast London, seem curiously unbothered. ‘I’ve had no problems,’ Eli, who lives around the corner from the latest stabbing, tells me. Eli’s house is close to Rowdown Field, where last March a human head and other dismembered body parts were
US president Joe Biden has confirmed that a terrorist who killed 15 people during the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans was ‘inspired by Isis’. Biden said that Shamsud-Din Jabbar – who also injured at least 35 people after driving his pick-up truck through crowds of revellers – had expressed a ‘desire to kill’ in
Is the Football Association’s Rainbow Laces campaign about inclusivity or not? The FA doesn’t seem to be able to make up its mind. When Crystal Palace captain Marc Guehi wrote ‘I love Jesus’ on his rainbow-coloured armband during his side’s draw against Newcastle United on Saturday, he was ‘reminded’ by the FA that religious messaging on
When Hatun Tash went missing before Christmas her friends and family had good reason to be worried. In recent years, Tash has moved house dozens of times and been repeatedly warned by police about threats to her safety. She has been stabbed and wrongly arrested. Tash has been harassed on the street and followed by
An asylum seeker has died on the Bibby Stockholm boat. The identity of the migrant who lost his life on board the barge in Dorset, which has been used to house those awaiting the outcome of their asylum application, has not been confirmed. A spokesman for the Home Office said: ‘We are aware of reporting
Boris Johnson got plenty of things wrong as prime minister but he at least knew how to come up with a punchy slogan. ‘Get Brexit done’, was the tagline of his October 2019 Tory conference. It was a work of genius: both sides of the referendum, exhausted by infighting and frankly bored with Brexit, could
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This week: J. Meirion Thomas tells us about the story of the politician, the street trader and the foiled kidney transplant plot (00:57), Tom Goodenough discusses the blurred lines between sport and entertainment (08:30) and Adam Sweeting reads his interview with documentary-maker Nick Broomfield about the forgotten Rolling Stone (13:42).
Wrexham had never seen anything like it: thousands of fans cheering their team as an open-top bus made its way through the city’s streets. On board, Wrexham’s footballers celebrated their side’s promotion back to the English football league. The club’s star owners, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, were there too – and with them, as
Wrexham’s Hollywood dream seems almost too good to be true. The club spent years in the doldrums of the football league, its lack of success on the pitch matched by financial troubles off it. In 2004, the club plunged into the relegation zone after it was placed into administration. A few years later, in 2008, the
