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1 week ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Nigel Jones
Though local polls and by-elections are notoriously unreliable guides to general elections, and a week is indeed a long time in politics, what happened at last week’s local elections could portend one of the greatest changes in our political system in over a century: the permanent presence of Reform UK, and consequently the demise of our oldest political party, the Tories.
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1 week ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Nigel Jones
By officially classing the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as ‘right-wing extremists’, the German establishment may have scored an own goal – or even shot itself in the foot. The domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), announced its decision today after keeping the insurgent party under close observation – including by state spies – for years. But the AfD is no tiny sect of secretive neo-Nazis.
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1 week ago | 
spectator.com.au | Nigel Jones
The Turquoise typhoon that is Reform UK has swept through the English council and mayoral elections – and winning by just six votes the first by-election of this Parliament in Runcorn and Helsby, hitherto in Labour’s 50 safest seats.
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1 week ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Nigel Jones
The Turquoise typhoon that is Reform UK has swept through the English council and mayoral elections – and winning by just six votes the first by-election of this Parliament in Runcorn and Helsby, hitherto Labour’s 16th safest seat.
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2 weeks ago | 
skynews.com.au | Nigel Jones
The tragic death of sex trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre, came at the worst possible moment for Prince Andrew’s push towards a tentative rehabilitation and a resumption of his royal role.
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3 weeks ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Nigel Jones
Next week, after Francis’s funeral, the College of Cardinals will assemble in Rome to choose the man who will lead their Church through these increasingly troubled times. That gathering has become more familiar to a wider, non-Catholic public thanks to the recent films Conclave and The Two Popes – though these are far from the first time that novels and the silver screen have made a drama out of a conclave.
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3 weeks ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Nigel Jones
I blame The Spectator. The chain of events that has led me to be christened and confirmed in the Anglican Church began with an article I wrote for Spectator Life in January. I had spent New Year’s Eve with a friend, a former vicar, who had lost his faith and honourably resigned his living as a result.
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4 weeks ago | 
spectator.com.au | Nigel Jones
Most writers – like the vast majority of actors, artists and other luminaries of our culture – belong to the political left, but the death aged 89 of the great Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa reminds us that this is not always the case.
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4 weeks ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Nigel Jones
Text size Small Medium Large Line Spacing Compact Normal Spacious Comments Most writers – like the vast majority of actors, artists and other luminaries of our culture – belong to the political left, but the death aged 89 of the great Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa reminds us that this is not always the case. Most unusually for a Latin American author, Vargas Llosa, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, was not only a proud Thatcherite conservative, but himself came within an...
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1 month ago | 
spectator.com.au | Nigel Jones
The much-vaunted German Leopard 2 tank – 18 of which were sent to Ukraine in 2023 after prolonged national debates and foot-dragging by the outgoing Olaf Scholz government – is reportedly proving a flop on the battlefield. According to a confidential assessment by Germany’s own defence ministry, and published by the Daily Telegraph, the Leopards have disappointed their Ukrainian army crews, as they are said to be over-complex to operate and vulnerable to aerial attack by Russian drones.
