Society

Wednesday

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Jeremy Clarkson’s time has come

It’s a reasonable bet that if Jeremy Clarkson stood for prime minister tomorrow, he’d win by a country mile. Some might even crown him the next sovereign. At the farmers’ protest in Westminster yesterday, Clarkson dominated the coverage, overshadowing even the other luminaries in attendance. Like Trump, Clarkson has name recognition, independence, and a flair for media Several high-profile Conservatives were present, including Kemi Badenoch, Priti Patel, and Robert Jenrick, alongside Nigel Farage in bespoke country-gent attire and Richard Tice from Reform. Yet they were all eclipsed by a shambling, frail figure in a moth-eaten pea coat, faded jeans, and a beanie hat: Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson, looking every inch as

Alexander Larman

What on earth is Jaguar thinking?

Along with Aston Martin and Rolls Royce, Jaguar is, for most people, one of the great British blue chip motoring brands. When Inspector Morse drove around the not-so-mean streets of Oxford in his burgundy Jaguar Mark II, the implicit association between the terribly English detective and the quintessentially stylish car was one that lingered on in viewers’ minds far beyond the show. Jaguar has always been that rare company that has conveyed an innate sense of style and class throughout its century-long existence. So why, exactly, have they decided to torpedo their hard-won reputation in such a perplexingly unforced fashion? Jaguar has decided to change its name to ‘JaGUar’ Jaguar

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Let’s banish Band Aid

There’s no need to be afraid, but 40 years since the advent of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ by Band Aid there is a dispute raging about the commemorations. There is to be an ‘ultimate’ version of this haunting ditty – haunting in the Borley Rectory sense – in which vocals from across each of the four versions of the star-spangled roundelay are combined, including those of the sadly deceased. For me, the release of Band Aid was the day the music died Perhaps inevitably, given the fraught cultural world we now live in, even at the frothiest end, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ has sparked rancour this time around.

Tuesday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Joe Biden has put Ukraine in an impossible position

This week, Joe Biden lifted one of the many restraints placed on Ukraine in its war with Russia. The outgoing US president has allowed Kyiv to use long-range US-made ATACMS missiles in the Russian region of Kursk, a part of which is currently held by Ukraine. Last night, Kyiv used these missiles to strike a large Russian weapons depot in the Bryansk region neighbouring Kursk, suggesting Ukraine will also be able to use ATACMS on other Russian border regions. Biden’s move is mainly intended to ‘send a message’ to North Korea – which has sent 10,000 troops to aid Russia – and to thwart the Kremlin campaign to force Ukraine out of

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The farmers’ revolt makes me proud to be British

My first thought upon seeing today’s revolt of the farmers was just how gloriously normal it looked. For more than a year London has been besieged by wild-eyed plummy leftists and fuming Gen X’ers screaming blue murder about the Jewish State. Now, for sweet relief, we get men and women in waxed jackets and sensible winter headwear taking to the streets, not to rage against a faraway land but to defend their own land from the grubby taxing of the Labour government. Now that’s proper protesting. It made me want a warm beer. A malady has infected the influential classes – we might call it farmerphobia What happened today was

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Why the farmers’ protest probably won’t work

Cold drizzle falling on tweed. That was the abiding image of today’s protest in Westminster which filled Whitehall with tens of thousands of indignant farmers. Just two tractors were admitted. One was parked outside Downing Street and the other stood by the women’s war memorial. Groups of farmers clambered onto the metal flanks and took snaps of themselves. Many held home-made placards denouncing ‘farmer harmer’ Starmer and ‘Rachel Thieves’, the chancellor. Some of the more paranoid demonstrators saw Labour as a historic threat to the working class. Everyone seemed obdurately upbeat despite the freezing rain ‘First the miners, then the farmers, next it’s you.’ The simplest signs appealed to common

Michael Gove

Farmers won’t be quick to forgive Labour

12 min listen

Thousands of farmers descended on Westminster today to protest the inheritance tax changes proposed in Labour’s Budget. Amidst a sea of tweed and wellington boots, speeches and support came from the likes of Kemi Badenoch, Ed Davey, Nigel Farage and Jeremy Clarkson. To what extent is this just a fringe issue that the government will be able to brush off? Or has the issue exposed a rural blind spot for Labour? And how lasting could the damage be? Katy Balls and Spectator editor Michael Gove discuss with James Heale.  But first, William Moore has been out and about getting the views of farmers directly from the protest… Produced by Patrick

Laurie Wastell

Don’t blame the police for our sinister free speech laws

The shocking police doorstepping of Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson last week has rightly sparked grave concern about the parlous state of freedom of speech in Britain. Sir Keir Starmer has now joined the leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch in arguing that police should be concentrating on the physical crime increasingly blighting our towns rather than things that are said online. ‘Police the streets, not the tweets’, has become a popular refrain overnight. But why are the police trawling the internet for wrongthink in the first place? So far any discussion of this has been focused on non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs). Badenoch has called for the laws around NCHIs to be reviewed. Shadow home secretary Chris

Rakib Ehsan

Nigel Farage is right to talk about British Muslims

Nigel Farage claims that British Muslims are just as concerned, if not more, by the threat of Islamist extremism. The Reform leader said that ‘if you’re a Muslim family and the news is all about radical Islamists committing heinous acts, you’re going to think “wow, my neighbours may well be prejudiced against me because I’m Muslim’”.  Farage is determined to face down his critics Farage is right: after all, wicked crimes committed by a sliver of British Muslims – especially Islamist terrorist attacks – have the potential to fan the flames of prejudice towards the entire group. Farage, whose political image is centred on being a straight-talker when compared to the

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

I must stop hating politicians

Hate crimes, hate speech, hate groups… It is quite possible that we have less of these things today than ever before – they originated before our age, as anybody who’s read Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale can vouch – but we have never obsessed about them quite so much. What is hate in its 21st century, British sense? And why are some varieties of hate seemingly justified and good, and some appalling? In the public sphere, hate often seems ludicrously hyperbolic. A certain kind of person on the internet spent much of the last 14 years ranting about, and at, the Tories; appending the hashtag #GTTO (Get The Tories Out) to every passing thought

Chas Newkey-Burden

The cruelty of horse racing is becoming impossible to ignore

After three horses died at Cheltenham on Sunday, the reaction was depressingly predictable. The cameras cut away and the horse racing industry pretended to be shocked and upset that more horses had died on its watch. Abuffalosoldier and Bangers And Cash – two of the horses who died at Cheltenham – appear to have suffered heart attacks. A third, Napper Tandy, took a fatal fall during the Greatwood Hurdle race. Napper Tandy took a fatal fall during the Greatwood Hurdle race The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) described the trio of deaths as ‘a tragedy’ and said the horses’ owners will be ‘heartbroken’. The Daily Mail reported that ‘the shocking nature of

Monday

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Keir Starmer’s desperate cosying up to Beijing

Keir Starmer has met President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, telling the Chinese leader that he wants to build ‘consistent, durable, respectful’ relations. China’s official Xinhua news agency said there was ‘vast space for cooperation’. It was the first meeting between a British prime minister and Xi since 2018, and Starmer proposed further top-level meetings. Starmer clearly believes that Britain can ‘speak frankly’ where it disagrees with China while pursuing closer economic ties The timing was unfortunate, not only because of the shadow of Donald Trump, and the prospect that a cosying of British relations with Beijing will put the UK at odds with a

Fabian Hoffmann

How effective will Ukraine’s ATACMS be?

Last night, US President Joe Biden authorised Ukraine to use American ATACMS – or Army Tactical Missile Systems – against targets in the Russian region of Kursk. This decision came approximately six months after ATACMS were first deployed in Ukraine. Before now, they have been limited to targets in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. The decision from Biden appears to be a direct response to Russia amassing a large number of troops in Kursk, which Ukraine has held since August this year. Reports suggest that up to 50,000 Russian troops are currently preparing for a large-scale counteroffensive to take back the region, using 10,000 to 12,000 North Korean troops sent by Kim Jong-un. The

Graham Watts

What really caused Vladimir Shklyarov to fall to his death?

At approximately 1 a.m. on Saturday, 16 November, Vladimir Shklyarov fell to his death from the fifth floor of his apartment block at Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment on St Petersburg’s Vasilyevsky Island. He was 39. That much is true. How and why he fell will be the subject of ongoing conjecture, perhaps for years to come. Shklyarov posted on social media: ‘I’m against all warfare…I want neither wars nor borders’ Nicknamed ‘the Skylark’ by English-speaking balletomanes, Shklyarov was nearing the end of his career as one of his generation’s greatest dancers, possessing an elegant lyrical, yet athletic, virtuoso performance style and technique, which was second to none. His whole career was

Charlie Walsham

Will the BBC learn from Donald Trump’s victory?

The grandly titled CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, Deborah Turness, described Donald Trump’s re-election as ‘a dramatic night that changed everything’. She made that claim in an internal email to staff, lauding the Corporation’s ‘unmissable’ US election results coverage.  Her email though raises an interesting question: if Trump’s victory has changed everything, will it also lead to change at the BBC? Among the significant factors that undid the Democrats in the US election was the runaway spread of what Elon Musk calls the ‘woke mind virus’. But while the Democrats seem to have now realised the way they allowed identity politics to alienate their voters, there is no

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Elon Musk and the age of the troll

There has been a cheering new development in the struggle against scam phone callers. AI can now be used to automate the satisfying but tricky business of ‘scambaiting’. I give you Daisy, the ‘AI granny’ – whose only purpose in life is to keep phone fraudsters on the line for hours that they would otherwise spend predating on real human victims. Scammers, as we know, play on human psychological weaknesses – the panic we feel when we’re told our accounts have been compromised, our deference to authority, our confusion about how technology works. Now, flip-flop: the AI plays on scammers’ psychological vulnerabilities – primarily, the idea that an old lady

Sunday

Paddy Stephens

Can Kent’s hop industry survive?

There is something quintessentially English about hop fields. Rows of ten foot wooden stakes rise from the grass, perhaps three feet apart, holding up a network of wires. In the summer, hops grow up these wires like vines, forming a fragrant, uneven wall of green shades: darker leaves with soft lime-green cones. The industry has shaped Kent for centuries with terraces of former pickers’ cottages lining the lanes, and dark clay cone-shaped oast houses – remnants of a time before hops were dried industrially – dotting the landscape. Local museums preserve the testimonies of poor Londoners who escaped here from the East End in the early 20th century to spend

Patrick West

Gary Lineker isn’t that bad

It’s a crying shame that we will no longer hear the insightful and original opinions of Gary Lineker. No more comprehensive and judicious appraisals. No more balanced verdicts delivered in an authoritative yet amiable manner. No longer will we witness Lineker draw from his deep well of experience and knowledge to deliver his considered conclusions. Saturday evenings will never be the same again. Yes, I am of course talking about Gary Lineker the popular television football pundit, not Gary Lineker the unpopular political thinker. While the first version can lay claim to be – or once could have claimed to be – a national treasure, the newer, other iteration has

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Are Christian holiday camps a force for good?

In my first few teenage years I attended Christian holiday camps rather like the ‘Bash’ camps where John Smyth and Justin Welby prayed in the same dormitory. They were run by old boys from the school. It was a day-school, but obviously these camps had a boarding school feel. I loved it. It was like being at Hogwarts. I adored the clubby vibe, the belonging, the games, the lingo, the gossip, the praying together in the dorm, the sing-songs with cocoa. I went back for more every summer and Easter holidays for the next few years. It was a huge group of friends, still sweaty from a football game, congregating to

Rebecca Chapman

The parable of Justin Welby

When Channel 4’s Cathy Newman summed up the Church of England’s John Smyth scandal as showing that ‘the church had neither process nor kindness’, Justin Welby agreed. It was hard for the Archbishop of Canterbury not to. Welby’s downfall was in no small part due to his neglect of the right process, one which puts victims and survivors first. As Welby – who resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury this week – said: ‘You can have kindness without process and nothing happens’. Welby’s relaxed approach, but iron will, elevated him to the position of Archbishop The Makin review into the church’s handling of the abuse allegations against Smyth shows what happens