Society

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Michael Gove is the new editor of The Spectator

It’s a time of new beginnings here at The Spectator after Sir Paul Marshall’s historic £100 million bid for the magazine. As we plan for further growth, I’m delighted to announce two major appointments: Charles Moore is to become our new chairman and Michael Gove is to succeed me as editor. There’s never a good time to leave a job like mine but, after 15 years and a new owner with big ambitions, there is an obvious time. In many ways, Michael is the clear successor. He’s a first-class journalist who took a detour into politics and not (as so often happens) the other way around. He was my news

Victoria Lane

Spectator Competition: Chapter and verse

In Comp 3368 you were invited to update a well-known story from the Bible to make it ‘speak to’ life in 2024. There were a few Good Samaritans, Prodigal Sons and Cana weddings, and a splendid trio of Noahs. A special mention goes to David Silverman’s version of Psalm 23, which didn’t fit the remit but offers alternative comfort in these troubled times: The Lord is my life coach – I shall not stress. He empowereth me with positive affirmations And leadeth me to wellness strategies, Building my emotional resilience. He teacheth me mindfulness techniques, Emotional regulation and cognitive reappraisal. Praise be to the multitudes of runners-up (too many to

Luke McShane

No. 820

White to play. Kulaots-Kadric, Budapest Olympiad, September 2024. The Estonian grandmaster spotted a neat sequence to gain a decisive material advantage. What was his first move here? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 30 September. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 Nef5+ gxf5 2 Rg3+ Kh6 (else Rg3-g8#) 3 Nxf5+ Kh5 4 Bf7# or 1…Kf8 2 Ne6+ Kf7 3 Nh6# Last week’s winner Alex Everingham Newton Mearns, Glasgow

Luke McShane

Double gold for India

The Gaprindashvili Cup, named after the Georgian former women’s world champion Nona Gaprindashvili, is awarded at the biennial Chess Olympiad to the country with the highest total standings between the open and women’s events. In Chennai in 2022, that honour went to India, who won the bronze medals in both sections. The 45th Chess Olympiad, which concluded last weekend in Budapest, saw Indian teams surpass themselves, winning gold in both events. Their victory in the open section was all but secured with one round to spare, and featured stratospheric individual performances from Dommaraju Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi (aged 18 and 21 respectively). Gukesh’s 9/10 score ranks as the second highest

Tuesday

Christopher Snowdon

What is Chris Whitty up to?

There was a period during the pandemic in 2020 when the pubs were open but you could only go to one if you sat on your own and had a meal. You were allowed to buy an alcoholic drink but once you had finished your meal you could not buy another one. There was also a 10 p.m. curfew when the pub had to close and everyone had to go straight home. Whether this did much to stop the spread of Covid is debatable (there were reports of a lot of house parties starting just after 10 p.m.), but it allowed the ‘public health’ establishment to turn pubs into what

Jawad Iqbal

Gary Neville’s tin-eared defence of Keir Starmer

Gary Neville, the Sky Sports pundit and former Manchester United footballer, can’t help himself when it comes to tedious political rants. His latest comes in the form of a one-eyed defence of the Prime Minister’s right to accept freebies, including tickets to Premier League matches. Neville, a prominent Labour supporter, believes Sir Keir Starmer has ‘not done anything wrong’ by accepting thousands of pounds worth of football freebies, and that watching Arsenal with his family was ‘his only release’. 'Given the absolute corruption of the past eight years… it's absolutely incredible people are angry about @Keir_Starmer getting free @Arsenal tickets'@GNev2 responds to the freebies furore while speaking at the @UKLabour party conference

Raquel Rosario Sánchez

Labour must do more to end violence against women

How serious is the Labour party about tackling male violence against women and girls? In June, while campaigning for the general election, then shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper pledged the matter would be treated as a ‘national emergency‘. Last week, the Home Office finally announced the development of a national initiative to use data-driven tools and algorithms that analyse police data to identify and pursue perpetrators of abuse such as domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking. Most abusers never face accountability This would be a positive step, particularly the proposal of using technology to build risk profiles for victims and perpetrators overseen by authorities to enhance victim safety. But it

Patrick West

The quest for diversity could finish off University Challenge

Universities today are well-known as places where progressive, hyper-liberal politics predominate. It’s only logical, therefore, that the cry for equality and diversity should now extend to the television programme University Challenge. Despite the current series witnessing the second-largest proportion of female competitors in the programme’s history – with 34 female contestants representing a 31 per cent of its total – and the gradual disappearance of all-male teams, this is not sufficient progress for some campaigners. But what if television, or the make-up of the workplace, actually does reflect nature, not nurture? Liz Tucker, former chair of Women in Film and Television, said a 31 per cent representation was still not

Hugo Fleming

Are we looking in the wrong place for answers to Britain’s mental health crisis?

The mental health of people in the UK and worldwide is getting worse. Common conditions like depression and anxiety have risen by more than 20 per cent since the 1990s. Although much of the blame in recent years has been directed at social media platforms (perhaps not unreasonably), we may have overlooked another significant factor: our physical health. Dopamine is probably one of the most misunderstood chemicals in the brain Mental health is one of the few areas of medicine that has been bucking an otherwise positive trend of generally reduced illness and mortality. Another? Metabolic disease, in particular obesity and type-2 diabetes, which have risen more or less in

Monday

Julie Bindel

‘I was the devil incarnate’: An interview with John Boyne

John Boyne still doesn’t really know why he fell foul of the transgender mob. The author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was attacked on social media and accused of ‘transphobia’ following the publication of his children’s novel, My Brother’s Name is Jessica, in 2019. The book came in for a kicking from trans activists. ‘No matter what I said or did, I was the devil incarnate,’ Boyne tells me. The social media mob descended on Boyne Five years on, Boyne remains baffled what the fuss was about. ‘There is no hatred in the book,’ he says. ‘It’s a book about acceptance. It’s a book about love. And I

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The plight of Hatun Tash shames Britain

There is a Christian preacher, a woman, who has suffered the most heinous persecutions. She has been chased by mobs, arrested, unlawfully jailed and even stabbed. Where did this hellish hounding of a follower of Christ occur? Afghanistan, perhaps? Somalia maybe? Actually it was right here, in Britain. An angry mob formed around her Her name is Hatun Tash. She is an ex-Muslim originally from Turkey. She’s now a Christian convert and colourful street preacher. She regularly gave impromptu sermons at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, where she’s been known to hold up a desecrated copy of the Koran while spreading the word of Christ. Her style is not to

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is there really a ‘butterfly emergency’?

Anyone else getting fed up with ‘emergencies’? There was a time when that word meant something, but not any longer now that every other quango or town council has declared a ‘climate emergency’, ‘housing emergency’ or ‘nature emergency’ (not that the existence of multiple emergencies seems to stop their staff cutting their hours to four days a week or expecting to work from a beach on the Med).     But the latest declaration really will have the blue lights flashing. Apparently we now have a ‘butterfly emergency’. This one has been declared by a charity called Butterfly Conservation, on the back of its annual Big Butterfly Count which it claims observed

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Why are you proud to be British?

Introducing a tub-thumping op-ed in the Mail yesterday, Robert Jenrick quoted Orwell: ‘England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.’ Mr Jenrick’s thesis is a familiar one. It is that ‘England’s political and media elite’ (he didn’t get ‘metropolitan establishment’ in the text but it was supplied in the headline) ‘seem to actively disapprove’ of their nationality, and that this will not do. ‘I can’t stomach such lofty arrogance,’ he declared, calling instead for a willingness to ‘confront complex issues of identity’ while at the same time being unreservedly ‘proud to be British.’ In support of his call for complexity he reeled off

Sunday

Debbie Hayton

The truth about Led By Donkeys

Love them or loathe them, it’s hard not to have noticed Led By Donkeys. The protest group – made up, naturally, of four former Greenpeace workers – has taunted Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and David Cameron with its high-profile stunts. It is best known for projecting its protests – including one branding Boris a ‘liar’ – on to the Houses of Parliament. The group’s members seem mighty pleased with themselves. But what has Led by Donkeys actually achieved? It’s hard to say that the group has won anyone over to the cause. The group’s members seem mighty pleased with themselves An exhibition ‘Adventures in Art, Activism and Accountability’ has opened

Chas Newkey-Burden

Calm down, most cows aren’t ‘killers’

There must be carnage in the countryside. That’s the only explanation for a stampede of anxious headlines about the danger of cows. ‘Are these the UK’s most dangerous animals,’ asked the front page of the Guardian this week alongside a picture of a bemused bovine. The Daily Star was at it too: the paper called cows ‘mooing killers’ and quoted a campaign group which suggested that the true number of cow attacks was being wildly underestimated. You’d be forgiven for thinking twice about going for a walk in the British countryside. So let’s all take a deep breath before turning to the data: between March 2019 and March 2023, cows

Saturday

Patrick West

Starmer’s freebies and the truth about Labour’s double-standards

The Labour government’s u-turn on freebies, its disclosure last night that it will no longer accept donations for clothes, is an admission that it has got it wrong. But ‘wrong’ in which sense of the word? Wrong in that they admit that they committed an error, or wrong in that they have behaved immorally? Their language would suggest very much the former. Nearly two-thirds of all voters say Starmer’s decision to accept freebies for his wife was unacceptable Keir Starmer’s allies concede that there was a ‘perception’ issue after the Prime Minister accepted clothing worth and spectacles together worth more than £18,000. This has been accompanied by similar gifts accepted

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

No, Rich Lowry didn’t say the N-word

Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review, is being cancelled for calling Haitian immigrants the N-word. One problem: he didn’t. Lowry was on Megyn Kelly’s podcast to talk about the claims, amplified by Donald Trump and JD Vance, that Haitians have been snacking on local cats in Springfield, Ohio. He commented on a combative interview Vance gave to CNN’s Dana Bash and scoffed at Bash’s dismissal of the feline-fressing allegations on the grounds that city records only showed complaints about geese. Lowry observed: ‘I think it was in that interview where Dana Bash says the police have gone through 11 months of recordings of calls and they’ve only found two Springfield

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, Ross Clark, Andrew Lycett, Laura Gascoigne and Henry Jeffreys

33 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: as Lebanon reels from the exploding pagers, Paul Wood wonders what’s next for Israel and Hezbollah (1:24); Ross Clark examines Ireland’s low-tax project, following the news that they’re set to receive €13 billion… that they didn’t want (8:40); Reviewing Ben Macintyre’s new book, Andrew Lycett looks at the 1980 Iranian London embassy siege (15:29); Laura Gascoigne argues that Vincent Van Gogh would approve of the new exhibition of his works at the National Gallery (22:35); and Henry Jeffreys provides his notes on corkscrews (28:01).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

University isn’t sexy anymore

Freshers’ Week. It sounds so appealing, even to an uneducated counter-jumper like me who finds the word ‘uni’ so repellent that it’s right up there with ‘gusset’ and ‘spasm’. At British universities it mostly means drinking a lot of alcohol – our historical reaction to most situations – which may contribute to outbreaks of what is known as ‘Freshers’ flu’ in the first few weeks of the university term. But getting the lurgy is the least of the troubles bothering the student body nowadays as they head back to university this week. Thousands are going straight from their studies to long-term sickness, according to an alarming headline in the Times: ‘Students

Matthew Lynn

Smart meters aren’t so clever

Smart meters were meant to make our lives easier. They were designed to help us reduce energy consumption and cut bills. Over the last five years, the government has been pushing energy firms to install these meters as quickly as possible. Millions of homes have been fitted with one. The flashing screen monitoring how much power is being used has become a ubiquitous feature in households across Britain. We’re constantly nudged to switch off a couple of lights, or skip a load in the washing machine, as we see what this energy use is costing us. But there’s a big problem with smart meters: millions of them don’t work properly.