The Spectator was established in 1828, and is the oldest continuously published magazine in the English language. The Spectator’s taste for controversy, however, remains undiminished. There is no party line to which The Spectator’s writers are bound - originality of thought and elegance of expression are the sole editorial constraints.

The trial issue contains a “Thought Crime Special” with articles from Melanie Phillips, “I think, therefore I’m guilty”; Christopher Booker writes about “Scientists in hiding; the demonisation of academics who question the consensus”; Alan Rusbridger explores “How to stifle the press” and how England’s libel laws make it easy.

UK politics come under scrutiny from James Forsyth, Brendan O’Neill ponders if teenagers could ever be “Drunk and orderly”; while Tom Hollander writes his diary and James Delingpole says eat local organic food if you like, but don’t kid yourself that it’s ‘green’. 

The Spectator’s regular arts coverage includes books, theatre, opera, cinema and exhibitions.

Owen Matthews: will Zelensky and Putin be brought to an exhausted peace? As of this week, Owen Matthews laments, the Ukraine war has ‘lasted longer than the first world war’. Yet even as Ukraine ‘continues to stand firm against intense Russian assaults’, this is ‘also the most sordid period’ of Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidency. The country’s anti-corruption agency ‘has revealed evidence of shocking large-scale war-profiteering in Zelensky’s inner circle’, with 59 per cent of Ukrainians believing he is personally responsible. Nonetheless, ‘new-generation drones’ are changing the shape of the conflict: for ‘the first time in four and a half years, the war is coming home to many Russians’. Both countries share ‘a crisis in military recruitment’. Russia is running out of volunteers, while Ukraine is reliant on forced recruitment – ‘a major source of discontent’. For most Ukrainians, ‘frustration with war is growing’; Zelensky is seen ‘by many as an obstacle to peace’. Slowly, as ‘ordinary people are wearying of war’, Matthews believes ‘the makings of an exhausted peace are forming’.

Tim Shipman: Kemi’s great game. When Tim Shipman interviewed Kemi Badenoch at a Spectator event this week, he suggested to her that ‘she was a rare politician [he] had changed [his] mind about’. Fixing him ‘with the full alpha female glare’, she said: ‘You mean you were very negative before?’ A year ago, Shipman thought she was ‘rubbish’. But Badenoch ‘has since shown that she is one of the few politicians who can turn around public perception’. She has taken advice from David Cameron for PMQs and ‘isn’t embarrassed about her views’. Tom Tugendhat, who ran against her twice for the party leadership, told Shipman: ‘If I’d known she was this good, I wouldn’t have stood.’ Her approach is not Badenochism; she calls it ‘Kemistry’. And while she believes there is a ‘high chance’ she will be prime minister, she said she would help put Nigel Farage in No. 10 if Reform falls short of a majority. Badenoch has ‘defied political gravity’, and she is evidently not afraid of a bet: her favourite game is poker, at which she has ‘repeatedly vanquished’ The Spectator’s Editor.

Justin Marozzi: thanks to Trump, the IRGC has strengthened its grip on Iran. Instead of ‘removing a cornered regime’, Justin Marozzi believes Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war with Iran has ‘helped to strengthen it, elevating the influence of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)’ at the expense of the Supreme Leader and his mullahs. According to Marozzi, after ‘two decades of taking control of Iran’s overstaffed, mismanaged and corrupt state-owned enterprises’, the IRGC ‘now has a mafia-like control over the economy’, with a direct stake in upwards of 40 per cent of it. Ordinary Iranians ‘are enriching the people who have been oppressing them’. ‘The great question’ for the world ‘is how will an IRGC-led Iran pursue negotiations with the US?’. It ‘considers the confrontation with the US a key a stage in the final battle before achieving a new world order’. Anything short of a decisive victory will be a setback. Trump says the Iranians ‘are begging for a deal’ but the one the IRGC wants ‘is completely unacceptable to Washington’.

Lara Prendergast: the ‘matrescence’ con. ‘Every so often,’ Lara Prendergast notes, ‘a fashionable new concept is born.’ The latest is ‘matrescence’ – ‘a phrase used to describe the physical, psychological, emotional and social transition a woman undergoes when becoming a mother’. Or, as it was once known, motherhood. While it is ‘indisputable’, Prendergast writes, ‘that having a baby changes your life, it is also indisputable that someone, somewhere will be trying to commercialise’ it. Matrescence experts peddling pseudoscience; support groups where babies and toddlers ‘are welcome, which seems only fair given the sessions take place on Zoom’; a Matrescence Festival currently taking place in Devon; a Matrescence Leadership Power Hour costing £150. If you ‘imagined there might be any pro-bono work done in this new ecosystem of matrescence entrepreneurship, that may simply be your baby brain misfiring’. Motherhood is not easy but be ‘deeply sceptical of anyone charging £89 a month to deliver broadly this same message’.

Lara Brown: Andy Burnham’s reassuringly normal Cambridge years. Lara Brown believes there is ‘a missing chapter in the story of Andy Burnham’. He could soon be Britain’s first prime minister with an English degree, and its first Cambridge-educated one since Stanley Baldwin. But his ‘undergraduate years have barely been scrutinised’. Burnham is ‘tight-lipped about his Cambridge days’. Applying unsuccessfully to St Catharine’s, he was sent to Fitzwilliam. According to Professor John Mullan, who interviewed Burnham, he ‘gave the impression of someone who really enjoyed’ Cambridge. He didn’t dabble in politics; he was ‘a good student’ who ‘loved football’, earning a solid 2:1. Burnham ‘made several contributions to Varsity’ reporting on ‘an eclectic mix of karate, cricket and football’. Brown’s ‘most interesting discovery’ was that Burnham was ‘once a member of the Mornie Onion Society, a male-only drinking club whose initiation ceremony reportedly involved drinking a yard of ale with an onion floating on top while naked or wearing a towel’. That aside, Burnham ‘appears to be a regular bloke’.

Mary Wakefield: save us from the Gospel according to Grok. ‘The Rt Revd Martyn Snow,’ relates Mary Wakefield, ‘has decided that it’s OK, even admirable, for clergy to use AI to write their sermons.’ Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Canterbury ‘led a debate about AI’s impact on humanity’ in the House of Lords: Sarah Mullally ‘was passionate about the importance of doing something’, but Wakefield ‘couldn’t quite work out what’. ‘A priest’s job is to sit there racking his brains for our sake,’ argues Wakefield, and ‘to use AI means he doesn’t care’. There’s ‘an intrinsic absence of humour and of humility’ with AI, and its voice even ‘gets inside your mind’. During a recent argument with her husband, Wakefield ‘fell silent with dread’ when she unthinkingly repeated an AI cliché: ‘This matters.’ The irony for the Church of England is that AI sermons are ‘exactly the opposite of what their latest and youngest members want’. The algorithm has made them lonely: they go to Church to make a clean break from AI.