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The Spectator
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Government ministers, including education secretary Bridget Phillipson, have claimed the legislation could have been delayed ‘by another year’ without the U-turn.

✍️ Steerpike

www.spectator.co.uk/article/star...
Starmer faces Labour rebellion over employment U-turn
Another day, another drama. On Thursday afternoon, it emerged that Sir Keir Starmer’s government were rolling back their commitment to change the ‘qualifying period’ for unfair dismissal from 24…
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 12:00 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
The problem from a punting point of view is which of their horses to back.

✍️ Penworthy

www.spectator.co.uk/article/five...
Five bets for Newbury’s superb two-day meeting
Trainers Harry Derham and Emma Lavelle will almost certainly leave their mark at Newbury over the next two days. Whereas Britain’s most successful trainers target the Cheltenham Festival in March…
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 11:30 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
The sea is the shark’s territory, not ours.

✍️ Terry Barnes

www.spectator.co.uk/article/what...
Why Australia's sharks keep on targeting tourists
Bull sharks are real scourges of the sea. They thrive and breed in both salt and fresh water, in both the shallow and deep.
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 11:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
We need complete clarity on this matter urgently.

✍️ Eliot Wilson

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...
The Ajax scandal is worse than embarrassing
Three soldiers are being forced to leave the army because of medical complaints directly attributable to failings in Ajax.
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 9:10 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Robert Jenrick had asked an urgent question of The Sage of Tottenham, but Lammy couldn’t even be bothered to turn up.

✍️ Madeline Grant

www.spectator.co.uk/article/davi...
David Lammy wouldn’t even show up to defend abolishing juries
Wantage may seem an unlikely birthplace for England’s greatest gift to the world. Yet as well as being the site of King Alfred’s birth, it gives its name to the legal code of the 990s, in which…
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 9:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
This won’t just affect low-paid workers. An increase in the minimum wage drives pay expectations up across the board.

✍️ Gareth Lyon

www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-...
How the budget will damage the NHS
This week’s budget will have a substantial impact on the NHS – just not in the way the Chancellor has talked about or may have hoped for. Starting with pay, the Chancellor has announced that from…
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 8:40 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Business has had virtually nothing to cheer since this government came to power 17 months ago.

✍️ Ross Clark
Starmer's workers' rights U-turn is a small victory for business
The Employment Rights Bill had become bogged down as peers and business leaders warned of the bizarre consequences of the legislation.
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 8:30 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
This is the behaviour of a defeated people. This is what it looks like when you lose.

✍️ Tucker Carlson
The strange death of England
Whatever happened to Britain, or the UK, or England, or whatever they’re calling it? We can’t even agree on what it’s called. But what happened to England, the England that, if you’re over 50,...
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 8:20 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
If Farage admits he might have said something offensive as a child, why can’t he just grow up and say sorry?

✍️ Jonathan Sacerdoti
Nigel Farage must come clean about his Dulwich College schooldays
If Nigel Farage admits he might have said something offensive as a child, why can’t he just grow up and say sorry?
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 8:10 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
There are times in politics when a feeling of dread overwhelms. When your boss wants to go down a path you think is wrong.

✍️ Julia Lopez
What my run-in with Michael Gove can teach Labour MPs about digital ID
Before Labour MPs pour vast political capital and taxpayers’ money into Starmer's digital ID dodo, they might pause to learn those lessons
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 8:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
All you can expect is an apologetic, spivvy estate agent from Savills to tell you that the market is ‘sluggish’ before refusing to take your calls.

✍️ Arabella Byrne
The Mansion Tax trap
The Mansion Tax will apply to homes worth more than £2 million from 2028, adding thousands to council tax bills.
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 7:50 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
To condemn Farage now for being a stupid, nasty teen makes about as much sense as boycotting the BBC because they used to give screen time to Jim Davidson.

✍️ Rob Crossan
So what if Nigel Farage was the school bully?
There may well be, somewhere in this nation of ours, a long-established succession of sensitive, emotionally aware 14-year-olds who can appreciate and denounce the impact of bullying. But, honestly, none...
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 7:30 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Macron set a target of 50,000 annual recruits by 2035 with most aged 18 and 19, although it will be open for men and women up to 25 who have specific skills.

✍️ Gavin Mortimer
France's military service rollout is about more than Russia
This view is shared among the silent majority and explains why Le Pen’s party now has the most seats in parliament
www.spectator.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 7:15 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Mental ’elf issues preventing you from working but allowing you to take frequent foreign holidays? Lazy Sod Syndrome.

✍️ Julie Burchill

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...
The art of owning up
Though Rebecca Culley is obviously a wrong ’un – having stolen £90,000 from her dear old gramps while pretending to care for him and only spend a minimum of his cash on ‘bits and bobs’ – I couldn’t…
www.spectator.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 8:30 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
It is the slow but steady growth in people leaving the UK that has pushed the net migration figure down.

✍️ Michael Simmons

www.spectator.co.uk/article/youn...
Young people are fleeing Britain
Some 898,000 people arrived in the UK in the last year, but the net figure dropped because 693,000 people left.
www.spectator.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 8:15 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
The gambling tax reforms announced by Rachel Reeves have sparked concerns about the impact these will have on the overseas territory.

✍️ Steerpike

www.spectator.co.uk/article/reev...
Reeves's tax raid rocks Gibraltar
The Chancellor’s Budget may have gone down well with Labour backbenchers, but its ‘smorgasbord’ approach has managed to rather annoy a rather lot of people – including, it appears, those resident in…
www.spectator.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 8:00 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
I doubt you’ll see a better film starring an adorable pet meerkat called GooGoo this year.

✍️ Deborah Ross
An adorable Taiwanese debut: Left-Handed Girl reviewed
Left-Handed Girl is a Taiwanese drama about a single mother who moves back to Taipei with her two daughters to run a noodle stand in the night market. It’s one of those films where the stakes don’t...
www.spectator.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 7:30 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
It’s not unusual for history programmes to want to prove that the people in the past were Just Like Us. But in this case the parallels drawn/rather desperately imposed were a particularly uncanny fit with those same pesky assumptions and biases.

✍️ James Walton
Gothic lives matter: BBC2's Civilisations reviewed
Anybody growing weary of the debate surrounding the BBC’s unexamined assumptions and biases about modern politics might have expected to find some relief in a scholarly documentary about the sack of...
www.spectator.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 7:15 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
The producers of a daytime soap opera would hesitate to broadcast such banalities.

✍️ Lloyd Evans
A sack of bilge: End, at the Dorfman Theatre, reviewed
End is the title chosen by David Eldridge for his new relationship drama. Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves star as Alfie and Julie, a pair of wildly successful creative types who live in a mansion near Highgate....
www.spectator.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 7:05 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
An exception to the rule is Alexei Ratmansky. Plus: irresistible showmanship from Michael Keegan-Dolan and beauty from Jules Cunningham.

✍️ Rupert Christiansen
Why are today's choreographers so musically illiterate?
Most choreographers today have lost interest in using music as anything more than a background wash of colour and mood. More’s the pity. For an earlier generation the idea that the dance grew through...
www.spectator.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 6:30 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
I know why Radiohead are loved. But I also know that I’ll never be able to love them like some do.

✍️ Michael Hann
Thom Yorke reminds me of David Brent: Radiohead reviewed
There were times watching Radiohead’s first UK show for seven years when Ricky Gervais came to mind. As Thom Yorke dad-danced around the circular stage in the middle of the arena, his bandmates all...
www.spectator.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 6:15 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Gilltburg has the agility and power of an old-school keyboard lion, though he uses it with Bach-like objectivity.

✍️ Richard Bratby
Evgeny Kissin's stand-in brings the house down
It was such an enticing programme, too. The Philharmonia had booked Evgeny Kissin, the last great piano prodigy of the Soviet era and one of the superstars of the late 1980s and early 1990s. And then...
www.spectator.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 6:02 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
There was no relief to follow with the second drink of our challenge. William Gladstone’s choice sounded disgusting: sherry mixed with a beaten egg.

✍️ James Heale and Michael Simmons
Bring back the Budget tipple!
Of all Gordon Brown’s mistakes, perhaps the most sobering was his decision to end the tradition of drinking at the despatch box on Budget day. Commons convention holds that alcohol in the chamber is...
www.spectator.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 5:30 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Portrait of the week: a shambolic Budget, Ukrainian plan and justice overhaul.

✍️ The Spectator
Portrait of the week: a shambolic Budget, Ukrainian plan and justice overhaul  
Home Before Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered the Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility accidentally released its contents. She will increase the tax take to an all-time...
www.spectator.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 5:15 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
The OBR was quick to apologise over the leak and confirmed it had launched a probe into the whole palaver.

✍️ Steerpike

www.spectator.co.uk/article/obr-...
OBR chief offers to quit over Budget chaos
As if the Labour lot hadn’t leaked enough ahead of Rachel Reeves’s big Budget announcement, a slip-up at the OBR meant that the report the Chancellor was set to unveil became readily available, er,…
www.spectator.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 5:00 PM