Society

I have never advised anyone to use the English libel laws. I spent years helping the campaign to reform them, and am proud of the liberalisation I and many, many others helped bring. I have to admit, though, our achievement was modest. Libel in England remains sinister in intent – the defendant has to prove he or she was telling the truth – and oppressive in practice. Parliament and the asinine Leveson inquiry into the press failed to tackle the horrendous costs, and kept libel as the preserve of the rich and the reckless. You can risk spending £1 million before a case comes to court. Despite reform, libel courts

There have been two fascinating developments in the case of Shakeel Begg, the Imam of the Lewisham Islamic Centre. As I described here on Friday, Begg sued the BBC for describing him as an extremist, only for the judge in the case to last week dismiss the claim and confirm for the whole world to see that Begg is indeed an extremist. On Friday I mentioned that industry of clueless klutzes and sinister beards who make up much of the ‘interfaith’ racket in this country. Paragraphs 33 and 34 of the judgement in the case of Begg vs Beeb might serve as the purest distillation of this phenomenon.Under the heading

Nazi-inspired conspiracy theories are gaining popularity among liberal Facebook users who think of themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious’. That’s the claim made by the Rev Ravi Holy, a Church of England vicar from Kent, in the new episode of the Spectator’s Holy Smoke religion podcast. He’s alarmed and depressed by the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that his own middle-class friends are trying to force on him. And it also awakens uncomfortable memories. As a young man, Ravi was a punk, an anarchist, a drug user – and a passionate conspiracy theorist who (unaware of the Nazi roots of some of his ideas) believed that the world was controlled by the Illuminati. You can hear my fascinating interview