The Spectator Australia

The Spectator is Britain’s oldest and most influential magazine, with incisive political and economic analysis, unrivalled books and arts reviews, and unmissable lifestyle writing, plus the funniest cartoons. It’s more cocktail party than political party, and we’d love it if you joined us.

Hot air con

The Spectator Australia

CONTRIBUTORS

Jimbo is toast • He should never have been in the toaster

WA under Labor is rotten to the core • Roger Cook has a lot to answer for

The housing crisis is a hoax • The real scandal is the cure

What went on tour should have been sorted on tour • The Ben Roberts-Smith travesty

France’s riots are a gift to Le Pen • Looming presidential elections look like her fourth time lucky

AUSTRALIAN NOTES

The sewage hits the fan • And the PM wades in deeper

Potholes, political mates and Toto • Labor’s $570-million guide to getting rich quick

Political trends firming against Labor • One Nation plans to free Australians from ‘elected dictatorship’

A damp squib

PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK

DIARY

Stuck in the middle • Increasingly the public is paying extra just to access basic services

Wood Whites

Donald unchained • Expect even more mayhem if Trump loses the midterms

Will we always have Paris?

Israel’s uncertain future • 7 October looms over these knife-edge elections

The uncomfortable truth about Neets

Sugar rush • The dessertification of London

Will Mayor Khan’s Oxford Street become a 1970s theme park?

Books of the Year I • Our regular contributors choose the books they have most enjoyed reading in 2026

Do as the Romans do

Last outposts of time past

The perpetual guest

Dumocracy

The father of abolitionism

Bartered lives

Courage under fire

Walking wounded

The unkindest cut

The Hollywood treatment

Cold comfort

No time to grieve

Dad’s Dementia Test

Fleeting fame

Grape and grain

Brute of British cinema • Max Jeffery talks to the filmmaker Nick Love about the beauty of crime, being a Tory and giving up on the gangster genre

Conduct unbecoming • The film business has always struggled with the figure of the conductor, says Richard Bratby

Wild things

Cutting edge

Phantom thread

Directors cut

The Scouse Sopranos

Loser wins all

An urge to take over the play

Witches

Best life

Real life

Dolce Vita

The Turf

Aussie life

Language

Bodhana breaks a new record

The doubtful ghost

2776: See it! Say it! ... Wrong

The myth of the ‘kill switch’

MICHAEL HEATH

Two top innings and a sacking

Do your duty – or else

Drink Stealing the show

DEAR MARY YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED

A fiscally significant event

Vape