Society

Sunday

The Spectator

Europe should follow Britain’s lead on refugees

When a humanitarian tragedy disappears from our newspapers, there are two possibilities: that the crisis is over and life for survivors is gradually returning to normal — or that the human toll has become so routine as to no longer be considered newsworthy. Sadly, the deaths of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean to seek a new life in Europe fall into the latter category. Eighteen months after the photographs of little Alan Kurdi’s body on a Turkish beach generated a huge swell of public emotion, entire families are still dying on a regular basis. In the first ten weeks of

Saturday

Roland Elliott Brown

How Lenin manipulated the Russian Revolution to his own ends

The centenary of the Russian Revolution has arrived right on time, just as the liberal democratic world is getting a taste of what it’s like to feel political gravity give way. In 2017, Lenin lives. ‘In many ways he was a thoroughly modern phenomenon,’ writes Victor Sebestyen in Lenin the Dictator, the kind of demagogue familiar to us in western democracies, as well as in dictatorships. In his quest for power, he promised people anything and everything. He offered simple solutions to complex problems. He lied unashamedly. He identified a scapegoat he could later label ‘enemies of the people’. He justified himself on the basis that winning meant everything…. Lenin

James Forsyth James Forsyth

3 things we should do to help tackle the Islamist terror threat

Those charged with keeping Britain safe from Islamist-inspired terrorism have always been clear that it was a question of when, not if, there would be another attack as I say in The Sun this morning. The one thing that has surprised the security services about this attack is the age of the terrorist. Up to now, their focus had been on angry young people. No one was planning for a 50 something terrorist. Our way of life should not change in response to this terrorist attack. But there are things we can do to combat this threat more intelligently. The security services don’t have the manpower to follow everyone who

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Jean-Claude Juncker is the worst thing about being a Remainer

The best thing about being a Remainer is obviously the dinner parties, where we all sit around being incredibly well-heeled in leafy Islington. Bloody love a good heel, I do. And a leaf. Honestly, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Eddie Izzard and Nick Clegg crack jokes at each other in French, as Lily Allen and Matthew Parris do impressions of old people from Northumberland, while in the background Bob Geldof and Professor Brian Cox duet on the piano. It’s almost literally how I spend almost all of my time. Whereas Leaver dinner parties, so I’m told, are just IDS and a Scotch egg. The worst thing about being a

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why didn’t more MPs complain about BBC bias?

There’s one thing that bothers me a lot about the letter sent by ‘more than 70’ MPs to the director-general of the BBC complaining about bias in its coverage of the Brexit debate. There are 650 MPs in the House of Commons, of whom 330 are Conservative. So does this mean that more than 570 of our elected representatives, including the vast majority of Tories, think the BBC is doing a bloody good job and is an exemplar of impartial reporting? If so, I suspect they have been secretly lobotomised — perhaps by members of the BBC’s impeccably fair and impartial editorial board. In the dead of night. Silently, without

Toby Young Toby Young

Should conservatives fear new working-class support? Some clearly do

In America, an argument has broken out among journalists, writers and intellectuals in the aftermath of the presidential election about whether Trump’s white working-class voters were decent, upright citizens let down by the supercilious liberal establishment or whether they were, in Hilary Clinton’s words, a racist, sexist, homophobic basket of deplorables. The curious thing about this debate is that the defenders of Trump’s supporters are, for the most part, left–wingers, like the Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who spent five years chronicling a depressed blue-collar community in Louisiana, while those who disparage them as ‘in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles’

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: an A-to-P of poetry

The latest competition — asking for a poem of 16 lines in which the lines begin with the letters of the alphabet from A to P — proved to be a real crowd-pleaser, attracting not only the regulars but many welcome new faces too. You were at your witty and inventive best, and I offer commiserations to a long list of unlucky losers: Sylvia Fairley, Paul Evans, A.K. Colam, Martin Eayrs, Nigel Stuart, Ralph Rochester and Brian Allgar. Class swot Bill Greenwell, who gave himself an additional challenge by ending each line of his poem with the letters K to Z, earns a gold star. The prizewinners, printed below, are

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris Johnson finds himself in a tight spot

Despite David Cameron’s best efforts to keep his party together during the course of the EU referendum campaign, his personal friendships with Brexiteers did suffer. However, while both Michael Gove and Boris Johnson found themselves left out in the cold by the former prime minister, the Foreign Secretary at least is making inroads once more. After Johnson and Cameron buried the hatchet over whisky on a trip to Israel for Shimon Peres’s funeral, the pair have been snapped out on the town in New York. The duo enjoyed a night out at the Red Rooster restaurant. While the Financial Times reports that Johnson used the dinner to urge Cameron to consider Nato

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Why do so many right-wingers hate Britain so much?

One of the curiosities of the past 72 hours has been the manner in which it has become possible to make a clear distinction between those people who like and admire this country and those who only say they love it. There are certain ways in which the latter may be identified. The presence of a Spitfire or a noble lion on their social media profiles is one all but unerring indicator that you’re dealing with someone who deplores the realities of modern Britain. These stout-hearted, willy-waving yeomen cannot help wetting themselves. The Mooslims are coming! (From Kent, it seems.) They are the panicky ones, not the ordinary British people

Helen Nugent

It’s not grim up North: Manchester tops UK cities for house price growth

‘Northern Powerhouse fires up house prices in Manchester’ shouts one headline. ‘Manchester is at the centre of Britain’s property boom’ declaims another. ‘Manchester top for house price growth’, a third declares. As a property-owning Mancunian who has no intention of moving, this is welcome news. According to Hometrack, prices in my home city increased by 8.8 per cent in February, a faster rate than the property market in any other large British city. Also in the top ten are Portsmouth, Bristol, Glasgow and Birmingham. But what of the capital? It is now in tenth place in terms of year-on-year house price growth in Hometrack’s list which tracks the movements of house prices across

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Andrew Neil’s message for the jihadi johnnies out there

After a testing week which saw four fatalities and 40 injured following a terrorist incident in Westminster, ‘PrayForLondon‘ has been doing the rounds on social media. Happily, the BBC offered its own striking tribute to Keith Palmer — the police officer murdered in the attack — last night. "Yes, you have the power to hurt us. Sometimes the hurt is more than we can bear. But you cannot defeat us" says @afneil opening #bbctw pic.twitter.com/VXGWb51kfL — BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) March 24, 2017 Speaking on This Week, Andrew Neil said Palmer’s action had served as a reminder that ‘the most important people in this country are not the rich, the powerful,

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Cynicism is the West’s great weakness

Pankaj Mishra’s book Age of Anger is good in parts, but also shows the weakness of leftist thought. It is a bold history of political ideas that traces the extremism and populism of our day to nineteenth-century sources. Both Isis supporters and Trump supporters are reacting to the insecurity caused by neoliberal globalisation, he argues. ‘Cosmopolitan civilisation based on individual self-interest’ has brought material wealth at the cost of creating huge expectations that lead to dangerous resentment. And now social media intensifies such resentment. More people reject traditional politics, due to ‘the gap between the profligate promises of individual freedom and sovereignty, and the incapacity of their political and economic organisations

James Walton

An original and brilliant show: Loudon Wainwright III at Leicester Square Theatre reviewed

Loudon Wainwright III: Surviving Twin Leicester Square Theatre Even by the standards of his fellow confessional singer-songwriters who emerged alongside him in the 1970s, Loudon Wainwright III has spared us very little over the years about his marriages, divorces, affairs and — not surprisingly in the circumstances — his often troubled relationships with his children. (Two of those children, Rufus and Martha, have also exercised their right to reply, perhaps most memorably in Martha’s song ‘Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole’.) In this original and brilliant new show, he’s still at it — although this time the primary focus is on his relationship with his own father, who wrote for Life magazine

Thursday

Toby Young Toby Young

The liberals and the deplorables

In America, an argument has broken out among journalists, writers and intellectuals in the aftermath of the presidential election about whether Trump’s white working-class voters were decent, upright citizens let down by the supercilious liberal establishment or whether they were, in Hilary Clinton’s words, a racist, sexist, homophobic basket of deplorables. The curious thing about this debate is that the defenders of Trump’s supporters are, for the most part, left–wingers, like the Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who spent five years chronicling a depressed blue-collar community in Louisiana, while those who disparage them as ‘in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles’

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 23 March 2017

Q. We had some people up from London for a very long weekend. We put on an extra-special do, costing a lot of money (even hiring an after-dinner concert pianist), all for the benefit of one particular couple. This was eight weeks ago yet — despite being of the age group who knows how to behave — they didn’t write a thank-you letter. My husband has been grumbling and I worry he might use this discourtesy to curtail any further entertaining on this scale. What should I do? — C.P., Blakeney, Norfolk A. Email the couple saying you found one of those annoying Missed Delivery cards, dated seven weeks ago,

Dot Wordsworth

Girls

Sir Roger Gale sounds like an old-bufferish knight of the shires, but he once worked as a disc-jockey on a pirate radio station. Last week he got into hot water when he said on the radio that his wife was ‘utterly dedicated to her job, as indeed are the other girls in my office’. Before he knew it, Today got some American academic on air to denounce him. ‘We know, looking in the dictionary,’ she said, ‘that girl means a young woman only up to the age of 11 or 12.’ This bossy woman should get a bigger dictionary to look in. There is plenty of evidence that girl has

Taki

High life | 23 March 2017

A cloudless sky, crunchy spring snow, longer, warmer days. I’ve finally got in some good skiing, twisting around moguls like an arthritic champ. It’s all in the mind, as my old wrestling coach used to tell me. If you think the other guy’s better, you’re bound to lose to him. The same goes for the slope. If it scares you, stay in the club and have another drink. Otherwise, attack it with gusto and feel like a champ again. The same applies to the fairer sex. If you’re too nervous to speak to her, keep moving. We have four of the prettiest young women at The Spectator, all taken alas,

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 23 March 2017

My joints were aching suddenly and unaccountably — fingers, wrists, elbows, knees, toes — so I cried off the dinner invitation, volunteering instead to pick up Catriona and her lovely daughter, who was staying for a week, at around 11 p.m. At ten, Catriona rang. Had I forgotten? She sounded a bit squiffy. No, I hadn’t forgotten, I said. We’d said 11, hadn’t we? Well, they were ready to be picked up now, she said. When I arrived, the front door was open and I let myself in. The four of them were still seated at the dining table, chatting and drinking over the remains of the meal. I accepted

Melissa Kite

Real life | 23 March 2017

‘Mesdames et messieurs, allow me to introduce you to your meals,’ said the waiter. Oh lordy, I thought. Here we go. We were in a country pub near my parents’ home that used to be a little local place where you could get a Sunday roast for reasonable money. But it has been taken over by a gastro-preneur, whose party trick is to buy a small venue in a Midlands high street where people were perfectly happy being served normal food for modest prices and gastro-pub-ise it until no one local can afford to go there. Which is not very nice. But given the decline of the pub industry, one