Why David Harding’s £100 million Cambridge donation might save capitalism
The British are said to be among the most generous people on earth. When it comes to ordinary people scraping…
Portrait of the week: Theresa May goes to Brussels and Donald Trump to hold North Korea summit
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, went off to Brussels again to talk about ‘alternative arrangements’, for which parliament had…
Letters: Why the hatred towards independent schools?
Fawning over China Sir: In reading your recent leading article on Huawei (‘Red-handed’, 2 February), I feel I should point out…
2391: Stout and bubbly
The LITTLE GENTLEMAN IN BLACK VELVET (4/8/16D) was a Jacobite toast to the MOLE (34) who made the molehill on…
After Huawei, can we trust Chinese tech?
The world is a better place for China’s emergence from behind the bamboo curtain where it hid for half a…
Portrait of the Week: Brexit rumbles on, a panda escapes and Denmark builds a fence
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, set off to seek a change to the Irish backstop of the EU withdrawal…
On political tribalism
From The Spectator, No. 152, 24 July 1711: There cannot a greater judgment befall a country than such a dreadful…
Letters: why are we paying so much attention to vegans?
Vegan excess Sir: As a lifelong vegetarian I am heartily sick of vegans and of the amount of attention that…
2390: Tea Shop
The theme word is GRASS (for which the title is a cryptic clue). 1A, 1D, 6 and 37 are informers;…
Dyson’s move shows he thinks the Brexit opportunity will be squandered
If knighthoods could be removed by vote of parliament, Sir James Dyson would be first in line. Knighted for being…
Portrait of the week: May’s Brexit Plan B, IRA bombs and no one goes to Davos
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, having survived a parliamentary vote of no confidence, came to the Commons with an…
Letters: my autism is a challenge, not an affliction
Autistic freedom Sir: Jonathan Mitchell, an autistic writer, argues that autism is an affliction and that a cure should be…
to 2389: All change
The paired unclued lights are anagrams of one another, most being symmetrically arranged; 2/21, 5/23, 12/41, 15/25, 19D/20. First prize Alan Peevers,…
Brexiteers’ faith in parliament is now being put to the test
An unexpected outcome of the tortuous process of Brexit negotiations has been the enhancement of Britain’s reputation as a parliamentary…
Portrait of the week: May’s historic loss, Brexit chaos and the US shutdown
Home Brexit threw politics into unpredictable chaos. The government was defeated by an unparalleled majority of 230 — 432 to…
Where does the expression ‘deep state’ come from?
Turkey and the deep state Boris Johnson said that if Brexit was blocked, the public would blame it on the…
Political discourse in the UK is broken – here’s how we fix it
For several weeks now, a group of anti-Brexit protesters have found a way of regularly appearing on television news. They…
Portrait of the week: a government defeat, the harassment of Anna Soubry and Trump’s wall crisis
Home The government drifted towards a vote by the Commons, which it had cancelled in December, on its withdrawal agreement…
Letters: Europe is changing – so do we really need to leave?
The changing EU Sir: If, as Frederik Erixon writes, ‘there is a strange pre-revolutionary atmosphere in Brussels’ and ‘power will be…
to 2388: Sea rocket
The quotation was ‘IN MY BEGINNING IS MY END’ (12/15) from East Coker (an anagram of the title), second poem…
A dozen migrants in Kent is not a crisis. But government panic could turn it into one
It has been a messy start to the new year for Sajid Javid. For months now, migrants using small boats…
Portrait of the week: A migrant ‘crisis’, Gatwick drone awards and Donald Trump to withdraw troops from Syria
Home The number of would-be migrants known to have reached England in small boats from France in the last two…
A model president
From The Spectator, 4 January 1919: President Wilson arrived in London on Thursday week, and was greeted with full expression…
How Spanish was the Spanish flu?
Paths of infection 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the height of the Spanish flu pandemic which is believed to…
Letters: Is this a solution to the post-Brexit world?
Lords reform Sir: How astonishing that the historian Robert Tombs (‘Beyond Brexit’, 15 December) should think that the Lords might…
