Bien-pensants

I feel a bit sorry for Piers Morgan. On Tuesday, Ewan McGregor was due to appear on the sofa with Piers on ITV’s Good Morning to talk about the Trainspotting sequel, but he failed to turn up. Later, the actor explained on Twitter that it was due to the journalist’s remarks about the women’s marches that took place last weekend, in which he described some of the participants as ‘rabid feminists’ and suggested he should organise a men’s march in response. I had a similar experience about five years ago when the actor Matthew Macfadyen pulled out of an interview he was due to do with me. Like McGregor, he

Enough! Enough! For months, the so-called liberal elite has been writing articles, having radio and TV discussions, giving sermons (literally) and making speeches in which it has struggled to understand those strange creatures: ordinary people. The elite is bemused by what drives these people to make perverse decisions about Brexit and Trump. Are they racist, narrow-minded or just stupid? Whatever the reason, ordinary people have frankly been a disappointment. Time, ladies and gentlemen, please! Instead, let’s do the opposite. Let’s try to explain to ordinary people what drives the liberal elite. The elite persists with some very strange and disturbing views. Are its members brainwashed, snobbish or just so remote

Axa will no longer invest in the tobacco industry: the French insurance giant will sell €184 million of shares and gradually reduce its €1.6 billion bond holdings in the sector. No surprise, given Axa’s role as a health insurer and the oft-repeated statistic that smoking kills six million people a year; indeed, you might think any health-related investor would have taken the decision years ago. Except that cigarette-makers have been stellar stock market performers since the beginning of the century: British American Tobacco’s shares have multiplied in value a dozen times while paying rich dividends, and Imperial Tobacco (now Imperial Brands) has been almost as good. MSCI’s global index of

I was unable to join the violent protests held by Class War at the Cereal Killer Café in London last week because I had to stay at home to supervise our gardener. Yes — I know what you’re about to say. It is indeed ridiculous that one should have to stand over workmen to ensure that they are doing a decent job. But there is a patch of lawn towards the rear of our grounds which the blighters always skimp on, believing that it is too far from the house for us to notice. So I stand down there, with a cheerfully expectant expression, as the surly little man goes

London is a bad thing. Everybody knows this now. Britain has had enough of London. Ed Miliband failed in part because he was ‘too north London’ (euphemism) and Chuka Umunna would fail just the same because he is too south London (euphemism). According to one commentator, Britain’s capital is now a ‘Guardianista colony’; filled with the ‘petty moralism’ of the ‘cultural’ elite. According to another — in the Guardian no less; no fan of his own colony, this guy — this is a city of glass and steel, so different from northern cities of ‘brick and hard stone’, and it produces in his northern soul a sense of ‘cultural alienation’.

To the dentist. And for an extraction. I hadn’t had a tooth out in decades. But the twinges when I bit on a nut warned me that my problem molar — much abused by a badly fitted bridge in the 1970s — had finally given way. My usual dentist confirmed as much with a poke and an X-ray. Then came the surprise. ‘I’m going to hand you over now,’ he said. Having a tooth out has ceased to be a hazard of life to be borne and grinned at. Instead it’s become dental surgery. And it requires a specialist. Mine was a man with a mission. ‘My job is to

This week I would like you to share the deep pain of a liberal who has been called ‘right-wing’. This is a terrible thing to happen. It is hard to think of anything worse. There you are, being dutifully liberal all over the place and suddenly, perhaps inadvertently, you divest yourself of the opinion that — for example — Islam may, in some way, have some sort of weird, unfathomable connection to the jihadists of the Islamic State and kaboom, your credibility is blown to shreds. All of a sudden people are calling you horrible names online, like ‘right wing’. People who are quite like you calling you this. Nice,

As you’ll know by now, I’m big on thinking the right things. Should a thought strike me that m’colleague Rod Liddle would not describe as ‘bien-pensant’, then I will of course shy away from it, in a blind panic, for fear that my pensée should be considered insufficiently bien. Right now, however, I’m having doubts about the catechism. The liberal elite may take away my badge. Presumptuous as it may be, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that Spectator readers are not immediately familiar with the work of a comedian called Daniel O’Reilly, otherwise known as Dapper Laughs. He’s an internet phenomenon and — let’s not

An apology. A few weeks back, in my blog, I promised a regular series called ‘Fatuous Phrase of the Week’. Like so many publicly uttered promises, this one has failed to materialise. There has been no update to the Fatuous Phrase of the Week. This is because for the past two weeks I have been battling my demons — and horrible, vindictive little bastards they are too. While I would have been happy to fulfil that promise, and had plenty of phrases at the ready, the demons crowded around. Nah, they said, take the dog for a walk instead. Jabbering in my ear, poking me with their little pitchforks. Forget the

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Lord Pearson and Damian Green discuss Ukip and the Tories” startat=81] Listen [/audioplayer]Like many, I’ve always been a bit baffled by the story of the rise of Nazism. The Germans I’ve met have appeared to be human beings like any other: in no signal way a different breed from my own countrymen. Yet these are the great-grandchildren, grandchildren and children of a generation that was taken in by Adolf Hitler; or, worse, carried him forward; who supported (many of them) the Nazis; who knew or guessed what was happening to Jews, homosexuals and other minorities; who must either have turned a blind eye or positively encouraged what was

‘Outspoken comic Frankie Boyle has called on the BBC to sack “cultural tumour” Jeremy Clarkson.’ Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with this opening sentence from a recent news report? Clue: it’s that first word. In order to qualify as ‘outspoken’, surely, you need to be the kind of person who fearlessly, frequently and vociferously sets himself in opposition to the clamour of the times. Does demanding that a public figure lose his job for some mildly sexist/racist/homophobic/ableist remark fit into that category? Hardly. In the current climate it’s about as heroically contentious as, say, a private school prospectus that promises ‘We believe in educating the whole person’; or a