Society

Tuesday

Lee Cohen

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor should ignore Congress

As an American who respects the constitutional role and historical continuity of the British Crown, I view the recent congressional request to interview Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor with disgust. In early November, several of the most progressive Democratic members of the US Congress sent a letter asking him to participate in a ‘transcribed interview’ regarding his past association with Jeffrey Epstein, with a response deadline of 20 November. No congressional body has the power to compel testimony from a British citizen living on British soil While Congress is free to seek information, the request carries no compulsory authority over a foreign national residing in the United Kingdom. In this context, the decision

Lawrence Goldman

David Olusoga's Empire exposes the BBC's history problem

While the BBC’s mis-editing of Donald Trump’s words has dominated the headlines, less attention has been paid to another example of the corporation’s bias: its coverage of history. The BBC’s latest blockbuster history series, Empire, fronted by David Olusoga, shows the extent of the problem. This slanted and biased version of history is nothing new No one watching these three programmes, which were broadcast this month, could be in any doubt that a negative view of British history pervades everything. The series is not a balanced history of the empire, but rather a collection of some of its most controversial and violent episodes. When Olusoga himself isn’t telling us what

Monday

William Atkinson

William Atkinson, Andreas Roth, Philip Womack, Mary Wakefield & Muriel Zagha

35 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: William Atkinson reveals his teenage brush with a micropenis; Andreas Roth bemoans the dumbing down of German education; Philip Womack wonders how the hyphen turned political; Mary Wakefield questions the latest AI horror story – digitising dead relatives; and, Muriel Zagha celebrates Powell & Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going! Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Danny Shaw

How Shabana Mahmood can fix the police

By the standards Shabana Mahmood has set for herself, the speech she made to police leaders at their annual conference in Westminster last week was not the most gripping. The Home Secretary’s delivery was stilted, awkward even, as she stuck closely to the script on the lectern in front of her. She left the stage as soon as she had finished without taking any questions. But there were two sections in Mahmood’s 20-minute address that stood out, sparking speculation that a once-in-a-generation overhaul of policing is on the way. She told the chief constables and police and crime commissioners (PCCs) assembled at the QE II Centre that she would be

Liz Walsh

Britain's asylum crackdown is making Ireland panic

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s asylum shake-up has sent the Irish government into something approaching panic mode. The profound new measures, including penalties for those exploiting the system, a 20-year wait for settlement, and returning refugees if their native country is deemed safe, are deeply problematic for Ireland. The government correctly predicts a sharp surge in the number of asylum seekers opting to claim asylum in Ireland, rather than the UK, if these measures become law. It does not take a genius to guess where failed UK asylum applicants will go. Not to mention those who reckon they stand a far greater chance of success in pushover Ireland and decide to

Debbie Hayton

Why are we testing puberty blockers on children again?

Puberty blockers are powerful drugs with unproven benefits and significant risks. Those were not my words, they came from a statement by Dr Hilary Cass when this off-label use of injectable gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists was banned indefinitely last December. Streeting needs to change tack. For the children, if not his own reputation However, there was a loophole. Cass went on to recommend that puberty blockers, ‘should only be prescribed following a multi-disciplinary assessment and within a research protocol’. Over the weekend, it was reported that scientists at King’s College London have been granted ethical approval to administer these drugs to dozens more children. Why? What more is there to be

Alexander Larman

Philip Pullman is right: Oxford is a ‘frustrating and irritating’ place

The vast acclaim that Sir Philip Pullman’s latest novel, The Rose Field, has received has cemented his status as one of Britain’s most successful writers. Such authors are listened to, whatever their concerns, and so it has been both unsurprising and depressing that Sir Philip has been bothered not about literary matters, but about his hometown of Oxford: in particular, the apparently never-ending roadworks that have been blighting the western approach to the city for years, and which show no signs of being resolved. ‘Those of us who live to the west of Oxford are more or less cut off from our own city,’ said Pullman In a recent interview

Patrick West

Should this academic have been banned from campus for using the 'n-word'?

Is it ever acceptable to say the ‘n-word’? As you will have immediately inferred by that sentence, it’s rare to see it even spelt out in full today. It’s perhaps the only word in the English language you will never see written without asterisks in a newspaper or magazine. It is, to use that phrase once beloved of the Guardian, ‘the last taboo’. ‘Words have context, and the word “bitch” can have a positive meaning if you look at the Oxford English Dictionary,’ it was reported that Pormann told the meeting Peter Pormann, a professor at Manchester University, was this week reminded the hard way of its undiminished power, when

Sunday

Bartek Staniszewski

Red tape has broken Britain

The overwhelming smell of weed wafting down the street; heaps of decomposing litter floating in local canals and rivers; the noise of a dozen video calls and TikTok videos blasted through loudspeakers on the train. Many Britons are exhausted with the tide of anti-social behaviour that all too many of us have become accustomed to. The obvious remedy, it might seem, would be to crack down on this behaviour – for the authorities and the public to enforce Britain’s rules with renewed vigour. To do so, however, would only reinforce the problem. It is in fact the plethora of patronising dictats issued from the top down that is behind the collapse

William Cash

We must cut Send to help our kids

It is ‘insane’, Reform’s Doge chief Richard Tice said this week, that children are wearing ear-defenders in classrooms, supposedly as a ‘calming activity’ to reduce anxiety and stress. Such practices, he said, show UK’s ‘special educational needs and disabilities’ system – known as Send – is not fit for purpose. The number of children receiving support for Send has increased from 1.3 million in 2019 to 1.7 million today, and by 2029, Send-related debts in UK councils are expected to reach £17.8 billion. These costs may bankrupt some local authorities.  Tice is of the view that the Send system is being hijacked by some parents and exploited by a well-paid

Neil Clark

Who is looking out for Britain’s salmon and frogs?

Whatever happened to British ecology? I was thinking that when I read two reports in the Times this week, both pretty depressing. The first concerned a new study, based on maps, which suggests that England and Wales have lost almost a third of their grasslands, including wildflower-rich meadows, over the past 90 years. The second was about the ‘catastrophic’ collapse in the number of juvenile salmon in Dorset’s River Frome, described as ‘one of the country’s most important rivers for the species.’ Rivers that had ‘tens of thousands of salmon in the 1980s’ today reportedly have only a few hundred. The head of fisheries at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust was

Saturday

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

'Monster parents' are terrorising Japan

If you want to make a Japanese high school teacher break out in a cold sweat and suffer heart palpitations, just whisper the word ‘monpa’ in their ear. For ‘monpa’ or ‘monster parents’, the bane of a Japanese educator’s life, are serial complainers notorious for their persistence, aggression, unreasonableness and irrationality. They have become such a problem that the city government has decided to take cation. There is nothing uniquely Japanese about overprotective, unrealistically ambitious or just plain pushy parents (‘helicopter parents’ are the US version) but Japanese monpa are in a league of their own. Monpa are characterised by a tendency to demand repeated lengthy meetings with teachers over

Angela Epstein

It's miserable being an Epstein

It was shortly after my fifteenth birthday that I discovered the music of The Beatles. A school friend and I stumbled upon the Fab Four while browsing in a record shop. We were hooked: we’d listen to their songs with almost religious devotion. One thrilling touchpoint for me was their manager, Brian Epstein. As a teenager, discovering we shared a surname – and that he too was a northerner – felt magical. With unreconstructed youthful aplomb I’d boast of the connection. Later, in the world of work, as people forever misspelled my name, I’d summon Brian – note the casual intimacy of first name allegiance – to clarify while enjoying

Robin Ashenden

There's no writer quite like Mariusz Szczygiel

I’ve been a fan of Mariusz Szczygiel, the Polish author, investigative journalist and TV presenter, since reading his book Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia some ten years ago. Gottland – a series of 20th century Czech histories without the boring bits – was a knockout, winning the 2009 European Book Prize and giving an unexpected jolt to those who expected the usual stodgy travelogue on Central Europe. Victor Sebestyen described it in these pages as ‘one of the funniest books I have read – and one of the shrewdest.’ If all this sounds sombre, it’s anything but. Not There, translated once again by Lloyd-Jones, is full of

Friday

Bijan Omrani

Make education classical again

The National Curriculum Review, published earlier this month, was a rare opportunity to ask some fundamental questions about the purpose and outcomes of British education. It is an opportunity that has been missed. In some ways, the review has a laudable conservative tenor. It is, for the most part, grounded in practical evidence rather than blind ideology. It acknowledges the improvements in literacy and numeracy brought by the previous government’s reforms, and calls for incremental rather than radical changes. However, it fails to grapple with the connections between education and society’s most fundamental problems. No one can deny that the country is in the grip of a mental health crisis,

Michael Henderson

England’s remarkable Ashes fightback

It was a madhouse in Perth, in the latest instalment of sport’s oldest international skirmish. England, who opted to bat after Ben Stokes won the toss, were skittled before tea for 172: no score at all. Stokes then galvanised his men to take nine wickets before stumps, the captain leading the way with five strikes in six overs as a tumultuous day ended with the tourists holding a lead of 49 runs. And this was merely the opening day. The Australians, players and spectators alike, think little of the phenomenon known as Bazball, which is the term applied to England’s Test cricket since the New Zealander Brendon McCullum became coach

Kristina Murkett

In praise of learning German

The University of Nottingham, one of the most prestigious Russell Group universities, is preparing to close its languages department, as well as 48 undergraduate courses across music, nursing, agriculture, theology, microbiology and education. It seems strange that at an institution which claims to be a ‘global university without borders’, students will no longer be able to study French, German, Spanish, Chinese or Russian. My reaction to this news is one of head vs heart. My head tells me that in order to survive and provide high-quality education, universities need to be solvent, and so perhaps this is a pragmatic decision – a hard one, but one that reflects our hard times. 

Patrick West

We don't need white saviours to rescue us from St George's flags

Trends in society always come and go, but one that shows no signs of abating is the propensity among many to take offence at words or symbols. Just because that derisive word of the last decade, ‘snowflake’, has fallen out of fashion, it doesn’t mean that these hypersensitive souls have disappeared. Being compassionate in a patronising fashion from afar is mandatory behaviour for white liberals and our aloof, elite classes Emily Spurrell, chairwoman of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, is a case in point. Spurrell hit out at the surge in St George’s and Union Jack flags being hung on lamp posts, motorway bridges and street signs across

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Labour's toxic budget, Zelensky in trouble & Hitler's genitalia

39 min listen

It’s time to scrap the budget, argues political editor Tim Shipman this week. An annual fiscal event only allows the Chancellor to tinker round the edges, faced with a backdrop of global uncertainty. Endless potential tax rises have been trailed, from taxes on mansions, pensions, savings, gambling, and business partnerships, and nothing appears designed to fix Britain’s structural problems. Does our economics editor Michael Simmons agree? Host Lara Prendergast is joined by co-host – and the Spectator’s features editor – William Moore, alongside associate editor Owen Matthews and economics editor Michael Simmons.   As well as the cover, they discuss: the corruption scandal that has weakened Ukraine’s President Zelensky –

Thursday

Madeline Grant

Creasy’s opposition is the best advert for Mahmood’s migrant crackdown

One must say this for the Home Secretary, she is a Parliamentary Pugilist. While the general demeanour of the government in which she serves has a Sir Robin the Chickenhearted attitude to parliamentary spats (one can imagine the adenoidal cry of ‘Run Away’ ricocheting around No. 10 every Wednesday), Shabana Mahmood seems to enjoy a fight with all and sundry. Nobody epitomises the arrogance and intellectual expiration of the Labour party better than Stella Creasy She had fun at the despatch box earlier this week, trolling Green MPs into lengthy tantrums. There was unfinished business for the Home Secretary from one particular bout. Step forward Max Wilkinson, the smarmy Lib