The Spectator

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.

Wes Streeting: ‘It’s time for the biggest devolution of power in the history of the NHS.’ A Spectator leading article is stuck to Wes Streeting’s office wall, Katy Balls and Michael Gove discovered when interviewing him. ‘We were so riled by it we stuck it there to hold ourselves to account,’ the Health Secretary explains. On the need for reform: ‘Lots of my Conservative predecessors and special advisers said, “We really should have done this”... At the heart of Labour’s reform agenda  [there] has got to be the biggest devolution of power in the history of the NHS. We have got to get away from the idea that a system this large, this complex, this diverse, can be commanded and controlled by one person sat in this office in Whitehall.’ On Keir Starmer: ‘I was definitely one of those people when he won the leadership who breathed a huge sigh of relief that the Labour party had chosen the path of sanity and electability, but I didn’t think Keir was going to lead us to victory in one term. Poor sod, I thought, he’s going to be the Neil Kinnock isn’t he? Keir always says, “I need to be Kinnock, Smith and Blair all in one”. And he’s done that.’ On faith: ‘I started to struggle with what I felt was a conflict between my faith and my sexuality. I spent years trying not to be gay as a result. It’s only in recent years that I have really reconciled those two things and felt comfortable in my own skin.’ On Game of Thrones: ‘I love Daenerys Targaryen and I don’t feel the same about Kemi. I’d love to be in House Targaryen. I’m not posh enough to be a Lannister.’

 

The assisted suicide bill should not survive. ‘Until about six months ago,’ writes Dan Hitchens, ‘it would have been hard to find a more inoffensive politician than the Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater.’ Then Leadbeater topped the private members’ ballot and took up the cause of assisted suicide. Six months after she launched the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, a group of Labour MPs have pronounced it ‘irredeemably flawed and not fit to become law’. The bill’s most basic aspects do not hold up to scrutiny. At the bill’s second reading, Leadbeater ‘offered a deal: vote for it now and it will be scrutinised to the nth degree in committee’. But she then packed the bill committee and its witness list with her supporters. ‘It’s hard to summarise the committee’s proceedings,’ Dan writes, ‘except with a kind of Homeric catalogue of rejected amendments’, accompanied by a ‘series of disconcerting public statements’. ‘The third reading vote… is likely to be decisive,’ he warns. No vote in our lifetimes will tell us so much about what kind of country we live in.

 

Rowan Williams: ‘Jordan Peterson is a sad and angry man.’ Mary Wakefield speaks to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, about Christianity, childhood and Jordan Peterson. Williams wants to disentangle what he calls ‘reasoned anxieties’ – about radical Islam, for example – from a ‘determination to run to the corner of the room’ and refuse to listen. ‘Jordan Peterson,’ he suggests ‘is a sad and angry man’ who misunderstands the ‘impotence and alienation’ many feel. Peterson calls himself a ‘cultural Christian’ – a label which Williams feels ‘misses out on the excitement of Christianity – the life’.

 

Will next month be Reform’s big breakthrough? In her final column as The Spectator’s political editor, Katy Balls says the direction of British politics for the next ten years depends on whether Reform can finally buck the trend of an insurgent party fizzling out at the general election. Farage is optimistic. ‘Ukip was a forerunner for what is actually happening which is, despite the first-past-the-post system, the old two-party system is breaking down,’ he tells Katy. Both Labour and the Tories are braced for a miserable night at next month’s local elections. Shadow ministers joke that the Tories can’t campaign between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. as that’s when their activists have to take a nap. Tory MPs are running out of patience with Kemi Badenoch. ‘Her best interview has been her saying she hasn’t watched a Netflix show,’ complains one. For Labour, there are rumours of a reshuffle. ‘Starmer will eventually kill anyone if they are seen as a blocker,’ says a former colleague. Whatever Labour and the Tories do next, both parties will agree there is one party defining British politics right now and it's not them.

 

Nicky Haslam: Cartier used to be a Timpson for the rich. The arbiter of taste, Nicky Haslam, reviews the V&A’s Cartier exhibition. He recalls an incident in 1962 when he bumped into the glamorous Venezuelan playboy-grandee Reinaldo Herrera in New York. ‘I’m just nipping into Cartier. They’re fixing my skis,’ said Reinaldo. ‘I doubt anyone today uses the world’s most famous jewellers as their local Timpson,’ writes Nicky. ‘Though I suspect Cartier’s unrivalled in-house craftsmen could still run up a supple sapphire USB cable if requested.’