The Spectator
LightNews LightNews
banner
thespectator1828.bsky.social
The Spectator
@thespectator1828.bsky.social
2.2K followers 2 following 8.3K posts
Politics, culture, cartoons and more.
Posts Replies Media Videos
thespectator1828.bsky.social
AI has helped make ‘parasocial’ the word of the year.

✍️ Dot Wordsworth

www.spectator.co.uk/article/ai-h...
AI has helped make 'parasocial' the word of the year
‘After having thrown a sheep six times from the top of a tower,’ reported the Gloucester Journal in 1784, ‘Montgolfier prevailed upon a man to try the experiment, which was performed with the utmost…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 13, 2025 at 8:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Keir Starmer had a decent start to the year, while Nigel Farage ‘won’ from May to September. The final quarter saw the emergence of Kemi Badenoch and Zack Polanski

✍️ Tim Shipman

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...
The 12 things that mattered in politics in 2025
We are in the pre-Christmas dog days and politics has, finally, slowed down a bit. Reflecting on 2025, here are my top 12 key moments which tell us the most about where we are in politics and how…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 9:00 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
'There he goes again,’ I hear the BBC’s critics shout. Perhaps some are readers of The Spectator who nodded along to Rod Liddle’s recent denunciation of his former employer.

✍️ Nick Robinson
December 12, 2025 at 5:15 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
On today's Coffee House Shots: On a monthly basis, the economy shrank by 0.1 per cent in both September and October after remaining flat in August. Is growth really Labour’s priority? www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/grow...
‘Growth is not Labour’s priority, it’s hilarious’
The British economy is shrinking. Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that GDP fell by 0.1 per cent in the three months to October. The contraction came after…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 5:00 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Excavations have shown instances in which Iron Age families appear to have continued living in the same place, be it in a farm or a village, through the tumultuous years of the first century AD.

✍️ Mike Pitts
www.spectator.co.uk/article/were...
Were the Romans good for Britain?
Since the Romans themselves wrote about the subject, we have a clear idea of the good things they did for Britain. Roads, towns, stone and brick buildings, plumbing, writing (IOUs), vineyards and…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 4:30 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
While investigating paranormal activity in postwar Britain, Tony Cornell found mischievous, attention-seeking children to be responsible for some of the more sensational ‘disturbances’.

✍️ Suzi Feay
www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...
The little imps who pretended to be poltergeists
It comes as a surprise for anyone assuming that ghosthunters are easily fooled scaredy cats to learn that there was once a Society for Psychical Research based at Cambridge University. Undergraduate…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 11:30 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
"China is on the way towards almost complete capture of the market for EVs. Its car industry started earlier, and it is using superior battery technology.

✍️ Ross Clark
www.spectator.co.uk/article/euro...
Europe's EV market is rolling backwards
Thanks to that, in September, Chinese manufacturers accounted for a record 8 per cent of the entire European car market.
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 11:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
On balance, and on the drying ground, I would rather take a chance on one of the two outsiders in the whole field.

✍️ Penworthy

www.spectator.co.uk/article/thre...
Three bets at Cheltenham and Doncaster tomorrow
Strong course form is always a major plus for horses contesting races at Cheltenham, whether it is at the Festival in March or any other meeting at the track. The trouble when evaluating the merits…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 10:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
These days my taste runs to the pricier stuff. Caroline says it’s a toss-up which outcome my love of wine will bring about first – death or bankruptcy.

✍️ Toby Young
www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-sp...
I spend more on wine than I do on my mortgage
The first time I got drunk was at a wedding. I was 12 or thereabouts and sick in the taxi on the way home. I’d like to say that set the pattern for my behaviour at weddings thereafter, but it goes…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 9:40 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Portrait of the year: Trump’s tariffs, the definition of biological sex and the fall of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

✍️ The Spectator
Portrait of the year: Trump's tariffs, the definition of biological sex and the fall of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor
January Downing Street said Rachel Reeves would remain in her role as Chancellor of the Exchequer ‘for the whole of this parliament’. She made a speech standing behind a placard saying: ‘Kickstart...
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 9:30 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
‘To me,’ says Queen Camilla, ‘reading is a great adventure. I have loved it since I was very small’.

✍️ Gyles Brandreth
www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-...
How the Queen is spreading the joy of reading
Queen Camilla loves a book. Almost any book will do. ‘There’s something so tactile about a book,’ she says. ‘I like the smell of the pages when you open the cover. I like turning the pages and…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 9:20 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Tom called her ‘the 18th century’s answer to Bonnie Blue’. I had to look this person up, but he’s clearly very familiar with her work.

✍️ Dominic Sandbrook
www.spectator.co.uk/article/who-...
Who is Bonnie Blue?
For me, the past 12 months have been about one man, and that man is Alan Partridge. The veteran broadcaster’s return to BBC screens this autumn, with a documentary about mental health, was only part…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 9:10 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
This is not good news for a Chancellor apparently desperate for growth.

✍️ Michael Simmons

www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-...
How Rachel Reeves shrank the economy
The news is confirmation of how stagnant Britain’s economy had become in the run-up to Rachel Reeves’s second Budget last month.
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 9:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Like Borthwick, Tuchel has had the sense to develop a squad where there is fierce competition for every position.

✍️ Roger Alton
Could two great managers bring us two World Cup wins?
Maybe it’s the time of the year, or maybe it’s down to my sad little life, but surely I can’t be alone in feeling my spirits lifted by the example that Steve Borthwick and Thomas Tuchel are setting....
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 8:40 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
The BLM protests demoralised the cops, whose ranks thinned; crime soared again; more and more bored kids were committing more and more crimes.

✍️ Andrew Sullivan
Trump has made D.C. safe again
In August, the President of the United States declared a crime ‘emergency’ in my home town of Washington D.C. Donald Trump rules by declaring ‘emergencies’ where they don’t exist, but this was...
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 8:30 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Tribal cultures are organised not only socially but morally around loyalty to family and clan. The good is defined as whatever benefits your own.

✍️ Lionel Shriver
Discrimination is good, actually
Many years ago, a friend described one of my serious literary novels as ‘clever’. I was offended – but I shouldn’t have been. The friend was from across the pond, where I now understand ‘clever’...
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 8:20 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Painfully and chaotically, the outline of the peace deal that will eventually end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is emerging as the US leans on Kyiv to abandon key red lines.

✍️ Owen Matthews
The war in Ukraine is reaching its endgame
More importantly for Ukraine’s future, a democratic vote could lessen the chances of civil strife in the aftermath of a peace deal.
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 8:10 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
France’s Jordan Bardella has promised to stop the boats. Now where have we heard that before?

✍️ Gavin Mortimer
Stopping the boats will be harder than Jordan Bardella thinks
In 2024, Fabius warned the National Rally in an interview that his institution is ‘the bulwark of the rule of law’.
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 8:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Europe talks like a military power, but behaves like a political debating society.

✍️ Henry Donovan
When will Europe's leaders wake up to the Russian threat?
Europe talks like a military power, but the continent and its political leaders behaves like a political debating society
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 7:50 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
The condescending assumption is that newcomers will either be put off by fusty old-fashioned language, or that they’re too stupid to understand it.

✍️ Rhys Laverty
Christmas carols don’t need modernising
Like Ebenezer Scrooge, we are all visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. At this time of year, people and events that have gone before feel closer at hand – both the personal and the historical. One...
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 7:30 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
I’ve had people ask me for broken dolls, unwashed tights and chewed shoes.

✍️ Sybilla Hart
The weird and wacky world of Vinted
Even with the lure of cheap Christmas gifts and no shopping hordes, I’m not sure I can face Vinted this season.
www.spectator.co.uk
December 12, 2025 at 7:15 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Camp voting is achieved by the rather charming solution of the polling booth coming to you.

✍️ A.S.H. Smyth

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...
The charming side of elections in the Falklands
It’s election time in the Falklands, where every four years we choose eight members of the Islands’ legislative assembly. They say you don’t want to know how laws or sausages are made. But the way…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 11, 2025 at 8:01 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
He made a name for himself in the 1980s when he established the first formal model of a quantum computer.

✍️ Angus Colwell
David Deutsch: The Enlightenment, 'irrational memes' and how Wikipedia turned woke
The Amazon reviews for David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity don’t alert you to the fact that this is a book on theoretical physics. They sound more like a weepy divorcé’s YouTube comments...
www.spectator.co.uk
December 11, 2025 at 7:30 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Novelists, if they are worth their salt, relish a gathering of ill-assorted and borderline hostile individuals.

✍️ Philip Hensher
The joy of a miserable literary Christmas
A Christmas Carol is pretty well unavoidable around now, with Little Women trailing somewhat behind. There’s no shortage of alternative literary Christmases among the classics, however, often less sweetly...
www.spectator.co.uk
December 11, 2025 at 7:15 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
This nightmarish, totalitarian rabble has done more damage to our country than Margaret Thatcher and the Luftwaffe put together.

✍️ Mark Millar
Labour has done more damage to our country than the Luftwaffe
I still hang out with the same two lovable crackheads I sat beside on the first day of primary school. I keep all the stubs from every concert I’ve ever been to. I meet the same school dads in the same...
www.spectator.co.uk
December 11, 2025 at 7:01 PM