Society

Wednesday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The world isn’t listening to Keir Starmer’s climate preaching

Keir Starmer said he was travelling to Cop 29 in Baku intending to “lead the world on climate change”. But it must surely be obvious that he is, instead, barking at a world that is heading in the opposite direction. Last year’s grand talk about “phasing down” fossil fuels at Cop 28 notwithstanding, today’s Global Carbon Budget Report forecasts that global carbon emissions will hit another record high in 2024, reaching 41.6 billion tonnes, up from 40.6 billion tonnes in 2023. The report calls this “marginal”, but it’s actually a 2.5 per cent increase, including all carbon emissions from industry and land use, as well as fossil fuel burning. How

Owen Matthews

The appalling truth about London’s ambulance service

‘An old lady’s fallen down – quick! She’s bleeding. Come help.’ An elderly woman lay on the entrance steps of the block of mansion flats, food from a Tesco bag spilled around her, blood spreading on the stone. It was clear she’d tripped and banged her forehead, opening a large gash over her right eye. The courier had already tried to call an ambulance, but been put on hold. He had to continue his delivery run, so he’d begun ringing doorbells to summon assistance. The lady was groggy but awake. I asked her name – Daphne. I helped her sit up, slowly, and propped her against the doorway’s cold brickwork.

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

‘Kids were tougher in the 1990s’: what happens in Dan Pena’s £27,000 ‘tough love’ seminars?

Dan Pena has a picture of Adolf Hitler on his wall, but not any old picture. You know, not a simple portrait with Bavarian hills in the background, or a snap of the Führer doting on Helga Goebbels, Joseph’s daughter. No, Pena has a Hitler collage – Nazis marching through Nuremberg, a swastika blotting out the sky, hellfire on the horizon and, the final layer, a red and murderous photograph of the man himself superimposed on to the right-hand side. ‘Allegedly I used to hit my students in the 1990s. I will neither confirm nor deny that’ The collage hangs almost dead centre on Pena’s ‘wall of influencers’, a gallery

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Why Trump changed his tune on crypto

This column comes to you from Atlanta, Georgia, where but for one giant ‘Trump Stands Up For Families’ billboard and some Harris-Walz placards in the leafier suburbs, you would hardly know there had just been an election. I was hoping to report a whiff of teargas after a contested result, but no. Urban Atlanta voted for Harris but rural Georgia was so solid for Trump that nothing was left to argument. The chattering classes on the east and west coasts may be traumatised, but for plainer folks – with a sense of relief that no violent disruption kicked off – it’s back to daily life and business as usual. Or

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

How to process your Trump trauma (with orange soup)

It’s amazing how many people have responded to what they think of as the shattering catastrophe of Donald Trump’s victory by crafting: making rag rugs, ceramic pots, knitting scarves. A woman I know from long ago is so traumatised that she has started quilting. I’m not sure what sort of quilt she’s making – a patchwork of Harris/Walz ballot papers, maybe – but I know better than to make a light-hearted enquiry because this is not an ordinary quilt. It is a recovery quilt and part of the healing process. The most popular flavour of post-Trump soup seems to be spiced pumpkin Many unhappy Democrat women have announced that they

Tom Slater Tom Slater

The dystopian police investigation into Allison Pearson

Here’s a tip. If you’re having trouble getting the police to promptly attend after a burglary, tell them the scumbag tweeted something mean about you as he made his escape. If the outrageous experience of Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson is anything to go by, this is sure to shoot you right to the top of plod’s priority list. The British experiment in policing ‘hate’ has become as farcical as it is authoritarian Yesterday, Pearson revealed that she was visited by Essex police on Remembrance Sunday – not because she had been burgled, but because of a tweet she had posted a year ago. In a farcical exchange, she alleges that two officers refused

The Spectator

Letters: How to argue with Trump voters

Unhealthy debate Sir: Matthew Parris is absolutely right to say that the time has come for facing populists with honest argument (‘In defence of the liberal elite’, 9 November). This call would be all the more persuasive if it were not embedded within the rotten foundations of current lamentable public discourse. Honest argument presupposes the ability to engage with one’s opponents in terms that they would own and recognise: ‘steel-manning’ rather than erecting a flimsy straw man. What Mr Parris, and many others, fail to own is that the concerns of Trump voters, though unpalatably incarnated in Donald Trump himself, are in their essence not only legitimate but good. A

Matthew Lynn

If anyone can fix America’s bloated state, it’s Elon Musk

Perhaps he will walk through the lobby of the Pentagon with a kitchen sink. Or fire the entire IT department at the Fed, shift the IRS to Mars, while replacing traffic police with fully autonomous Tesla robo-cops. No one has any real idea yet what Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, might come up with now he has been appointed by Donald Trump to head up a new Department of Government Efficiency (or ‘Doge’). One point is certain, however. There will be some spectacular fireworks. And it will throw down a challenge to bloated governments everywhere.  Nobody gets to amass a $300 billion fortune, working in manufacturing and

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland’s suicidal Trump Derangement Syndrome

Ireland has a problem with America. Irish politicians and the country’s establishment would, of course, deny this. They would point to the fact that 35 million Americans claim Irish descent, and that the Irish and American governments enjoy their own version of a ‘special relationship’, involving an annual presentation of a shamrock at the White House every St Patrick’s day. They would highlight the close cultural and economic ties between the two countries, particularly in the tech sector, which has seen 18 of the largest American tech giants, from Apple to Microsoft, make Ireland their European home, which has been a lifeline to the Irish economy. Ireland is under the new

Eugene Finkel

How Ukraine can survive Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s triumph in the US presidential election is seen as a tragedy for Ukraine. Trump and Ukraine certainly have a troubled history. During Trump’s first term, when he pressured president Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, this effort led to Trump’s first impeachment. Trump’s sympathy for, indeed admiration of, Vladimir Putin is well-known. Trump and vice president-elect JD Vance claim to have a plan to swiftly end the Russian–Ukrainian war, presumably by strong arming Kyiv to cede territory to Russia and abandon its bid for Nato membership. Is Ukraine doomed and headed toward defeat and subjugation by Russia? Putin prefers fighting to a ceasefire and will likely reject any Trump

Tuesday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Welby resigns: crisis at the Church of England

18 min listen

After mounting pressure, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has resigned. His resignation comes days after a damning report into the child abuser John Smyth who was associated with the Church of England. Welby was apparently made aware of the allegations in 2013, yet Smyth died in 2018 before facing any justice. Since the report was published, Welby and the Church have faced questions about the failure to act and the lack of urgency. The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove joins Damian Thompson to discuss what Damian calls ‘not just a shocking moment in the history of the Church of England, but in the history of English Christianity’.   Produced by

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

How will progressives explain Amsterdam’s latest anti-semitic violence?

Since the scenes of Jews being hunted, beaten and kicked as they lay on the ground pleading for mercy in Amsterdam, antisemites have sought excuse, or that weaselly insinuator ‘context’, in the reported behaviour of a number of Maccabi Tel Aviv football hooligans, who are said to have attacked a taxi, tore down a Palestinian flag and sang anti-Arab chants. Video footage reportedly shows rioters chanting ‘kankerjoden’, Dutch for ‘Jewish cancer’ I wrote in the wake of those events that any Israeli fan who engaged in such yobbery is to be condemned but that their actions did not justify a modern-day pogrom that plunged Israelis and other Jews into a

Marcus Walker

Why Justin Welby had to resign

‘The scale and severity of the practice was horrific. Five of the 13 I have seen were in it only for a short time. Between them they had 12 beatings and about 650 strokes. The other eight received about 14,000 strokes: two of them having some 8,000 strokes over the three years. The others were involved for one year or 18 months. Eight spoke of bleeding on most occasions (“I could feel the blood splattering on my legs”, “I was bleeding for three-and-a-half weeks”, “I fainted sometimes after a severe beating”)… Beatings of 100 strokes for masturbation, 400 for pride, and one of 800 strokes for some undisclosed “fall” are

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Justin Welby quits as Archbishop of Canterbury

In the past few minutes, Justin Welby has announced he is resigning as Archbishop of Canterbury over his handling of serial child abuser John Smyth. In a statement, he said ‘it is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024’. He says he believes stepping aside ‘is in the best interests of the Church of England’. At the end of last week, Welby had said he had considered resigning, and had decided that it would not be in the best interests of the church to do so. So what changed? Like so many resignations, it came after those

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

What’s gone wrong at Winchester Cathedral?

The Dean of Winchester, the Very Revd Catherine Ogle, has announced that she will be retiring on 1 May 2025. The timing is interesting, as news of Ogle’s retirement emerged just hours before the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigned over the John Smyth abuse scandal. They walked out during the sermon The congregation of Winchester Cathedral started making their feelings about Ogle clear earlier this year, by going on a kind of Holy Communion hunger strike during services. Deeply unhappy about the damage being done to the musical life of their beloved cathedral under the reign of the controversial Precentor Andrew Trenier and the weak (but steely beneath her

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The great flaw in Labour’s assisted dying bill

Believe it or not, the most compelling argument against assisted dying today came from Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, usually reliably on message with every socially progressive cause. But in a BBC radio interview, he almost diffidently put forward his reservations about the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill, arguing that it would make vulnerable people feel like a burden. The mere existence of the choice changes everything Davey, who cared for his elderly mother through her final days and has a disabled son, said, in paraphrase, that if the bill became law, it could have a subtly negative effect on the elderly and disabled. He argued

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Can Justin Welby cling on?

MPs are getting involved in the row over Justin Welby’s position as Archbishop of Canterbury, with Conservative MP Nick Timothy requesting an urgent question in the Commons today. Pressure for Welby to resign has been building from various quarters within the Church of England’s General Synod and the wider church. As in politics, some are focused on specific issues, while others have broader grievances with Welby. How will the Church and other institutions commit to meaningful change? The current pressure stems from the Makin Review’s report on the Church’s handling of ‘serial child abuser’ John Smyth, a barrister and Christian leader who is said to have abused boys in a

Alexander Horne

How strong are the safeguards in the assisted dying bill?

After a long wait, Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying legislation – the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill  – was published overnight, ahead of its second reading in the Commons on 29 November. The bill has already been subject to much debate in advance of its publication. Now its proponents and critics have the chance to engage with the detail – most critically the safeguards in the bill which are designed to stop abuses. Opponents of euthanasia and assisted dying frequently point to the ‘slippery slope’ which they suggest is inevitable once it is legalised, highlighting misuse in other jurisdictions such as Canada. They claim that older people will feel that they are a burden,

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Farewell Gary Lineker, you won’t be missed

Gary Lineker is to leave Match of the Day at the end of the current football season, and to exit the BBC entirely after the 2026 World Cup. It was 1999 when he took over Match from Des Lynam, though in a strange discord with the usual swift passage of time, it feels much longer.  Because despite his close association with it as a player and a pundit Lineker is really nothing much to do with football. His punditry, as we all know, is far wider in its scope than such enjoyable trifles. Younger readers may find it hard to believe but there was a time when we didn’t know or care what these

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Gary Lineker’s opinions were never welcome at the BBC

Having thought it was all over, several times, it is now – for Gary Linker as presenter of Match of the Day. Lineker who has occupied the hot seat since 1999, has announced he will be quitting the show at the end of the season, though he will remain at the corporation until the end of an 18 month contract extension taking him up to the 2026 World Cup.  It is tempting to think that Lineker may have thrown in the towel as a result of certain political events across the pond, that the crushing defeat of all things woke stateside had caused a tsunami that has engulfed our progressive public