The Spectator

The Spectator   (corporate media,  media)
Type	Magazine
Founded	1828-07-06
Author(s)
Subpage(s)	•The Spectator/Editor
UK magazine supportive of the Conservative Party

The Spectator is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, thus making it the oldest weekly magazine in the world.

The Spectator is owned by British hedge fund tycoon Sir Paul Marshall, who purchased the magazine for £100 million in September 2024. It was acquired through his company, OQS Media group, part of his growing media portfolio that includes the online publication UnHerd and a major stake in GB News. Previously, it was owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owned The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

The Spectator's principal subject areas are politics and culture. Its editorial outlook is generally supportive of the Conservative Party.

Editors

Editorship of The Spectator has often been a step on the ladder to high office in the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom.

On 25 September 2024, former Conservative MP Michael Gove was appointed as editor of The Spectator, replacing Fraser Nelson, who became associate editor, with Charles Moore becoming non-executive chair to replace Andrew Neil.

Past editors include former PM Boris Johnson (1999–2005) and other former cabinet members Ian Gilmour (1954–1959), Iain Macleod (1963–1965), and Nigel Lawson (1966–1970).

Political ideology and policy positions

Spectator front page

The Spectator is politically conservative and supports the Conservative Party. In the past it had liberal leanings: over the course of its first century it supported the Radical wing of the Whigs, the Liberal Party, and the Liberal Unionists, who eventually merged with the Conservatives. As with its sister publication The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator is generally Atlanticist and Eurosceptic in outlook, favouring close ties with the United States rather than with the European Union, and tends to be supportive of Israel. It also strongly opposes Scottish independence.

 

A Document by The Spectator

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)	Description
Document:Jeremy Corbyn’s Chatham House speech	Article	12 May 2017	Chatham House Jeremy Corbyn Nuclear weapon Victory in Europe Day UK/Nuclear weapons	"Weapons supplied to Saudi Arabia, when the evidence of grave breaches of humanitarian law in Yemen is overwhelming, must be halted immediately."

 

Employee on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End	Description
Dominic Lawson	Editor	1990	1995	Exposed as a MI6 spook

 

Documents sourced from The Spectator

Title	Type	Subject(s)	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:It’s Nato that’s empire-building, not Putin	article	NATO Russia US Ukraine EU	7 March 2015	Peter Hitchens	Rare honesty, peppered with obligatory obeisances to western official narratives, about Nato empire-building since 1990 from a western mainsteam media journalist.
Document:JD Vance has some weird influences	Article	The Heritage Foundation Peter Thiel Roman Catholicism Donald Trump Elon Musk New Right René Girard Rod Dreher Patrick Deneen Curtis Yarvin Blake Masters Make America Great Again J. D. Vance	17 July 2024	Gavin Haynes	"I think Trump is going to run again in 2024", JD Vance once said. "I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people."
Document:My 2019	Review	2019	21 December 2019	Roger Scruton	A review of the author's year. Notable for his retrospective on the scurrilous misrepresentations of his views on immigration, Islam, China and other contentious topics, by The New Statesman which cost him his unpaid government advisory job before it was exposed as a thoroughly dishonest hit piece and an apology issued.
Document:The Scruton tapes	article	New Statesman Roger Scruton George Eaton	27 April 2019	Douglas Murray	Deconstruction of a hit piece by The New Statesman which cost Scruton his unpaid goverment adisor position. It was based on egregious manipulation and misrepresentation of an interview with the paper's George Eaton
Document:The politics of Eurovision	Article	Politics Eurovision Song Contest European Broadcasting Union	21 May 2021	Caroline Frost	Does music transcend partisan politics? The politicisation of the Eurovision Song Contest has been going on for many decades.

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