Society

Tuesday

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

What the Church of England should say to its conservative rebels

The evangelicals really are revolting. After a lot of talk of the need to break away from a tainted, liberal, heretical Church, something significant has happened. Last month, two of London’s biggest conservative parishes – All Souls Langham Place and St Helen’s Bishopsgate – held services ‘commissioning’ new leaders. It’s an obvious repudiation of the Church’s authority, and a step towards creating a new structure – a ‘de facto province’, as one of the vicars involved put it. When this new structure is authorised, they will be officially ordained into it, he said. This move doesn’t quite break canon law, as long as these leaders don’t preside at the eucharist.

Kristina Murkett

Can we really teach children to spot fake news?

As part of the ongoing review into the primary and secondary school curriculum, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has announced that children in England will be taught how to spot misinformation and extremist content online, so that students can arm themselves against ‘putrid conspiracy theories’. In the wake of weeks of rioting, with children as young as 12 and 13 now in court for their involvement, this announcement seems like a sensible idea, but it is not necessarily a straightforward one. You simply cannot embed critical thinking without establishing a firm foundation of factual understanding first Children and teenagers are excellent targets for fake news, but they are notoriously bad at spotting it. Research by

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s Olympic truce is well and truly over

Emmanuel Macron believes that the Paris Olympics have shown the world the ‘true face of France’. The Games were indeed a success, recovering from the disastrous first day, when saboteurs disabled the rail network and torrential rain turned the opening ceremony into a very damp squib. Macron must have feared the worst but the weather improved and crowds flocked to the iconic Parisian venues to watch two weeks of glorious sport. The tragedy for France is that Macron has empowered this rancorous left ‘We don’t want life to get back to normal,’ remarked Macron on Monday as he hosted an Olympic reception at the Elysée. He and millions of French

Charles Lipson

What caused the glitchy interview between Trump and Musk?

The lengthy interview between Donald Trump and Elon Musk on X last night began 40 minutes late, a technical glitch much of the media celebrated with unrestrained joy. They hate, hate, hate Elon Musk (despite his electric vehicles) – and they hate a media rival. They hate his transformation of Twitter, now X, into an open forum with very little censorship.  And, of course, they hate Musk’s foray into politics since he has taken the wrong side. Until now, Musk has largely avoided politics. He still describes himself as centrist who supported Obama; he said so in the talk with Trump. But Musk has committed what many pundits consider a mortal sin.

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Is justice turning into vengeance against some of the rioters?

Am I getting soft in my middle age, or are some of the sentences being handed down to the rioters a tad stiff? Justice must be served, of course. Everyone who took part in the riotous violence of recent weeks should feel a copper’s hand on their shoulder. But I’m worried that justice is turning into something like vengeance. That this isn’t just law and order but also a kind of centrist revenge against the lower orders. Am I wrong? Stacey Vint has been jailed for 20 months for pushing a wheelie bin at a line of riot police before falling flat on her face. She’s an idiot, clearly. As

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The tyranny of twee

The horrific murders in Southport earlier this month were followed by horrific riots and horrific counter-riots. But fear not. Because then the official account of Paddington Bear tweeted, ‘Perhaps it’s time for a little more kindness’. At times of wickedness, disorder and the worst of humanity, what do we 21st century moderns look for to save us, to bring comfort and hope? The redeeming power of Christ’s eternal love? Maybe the enduring core of human dignity in the face of human evil? Nope. We have a whimsical, passive-aggressive CGI teddy tweeting with furry opposable digits. What next, posters reading ‘Less arson, more yummy scones’ or ‘Don’t turtle a cop car

Monday

Andrew Tettenborn

Will a social media crackdown really stop future riots?

The riots of 2024 will be remembered for many things. One of them is the way the establishment spectacularly closed ranks on online speech.  Metropolitan Police commissioner Mark Rowley said on Saturday that he intended to throw the book not only at rioters themselves, but at ‘keyboard warriors’ who might support them. The CPS, through the Director of Public Prosecutions, solemnly warned that anyone repeating inflammatory material online faced prosecution. Meanwhile, senior police were said to be trawling social media to hunt down those fomenting hatred and division.  Action followed words. A number of ‘keyboard warriors’ who had said inflammatory things during the riots were indeed arrested, pleaded guilty and received some fairly stiff

Ed West Ed West

Elon Musk has a point about free speech in Britain

If there is one thing that can be said about Elon Musk, whether you like him or not, he is certainly an argument for the great man theory of history. Rather than the human story just being just a series of social forces pushing us like waves, a single individual can steer events in a totally different direction.  Before Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the social media site was driving the English-speaking world towards more progressive social norms, and it’s unlikely that the Great Awokening would have happened without it, especially both the Black Lives Matter and the transgender movement. The former culminated with the summer protests of 2020 when 19 people were

Jawad Iqbal

The good, the bad and the ugly of the Paris Olympics

After more than two weeks showcasing a series of extraordinary sporting feats, Paris brought the curtain down on the 2024 Olympics with a star-studded closing ceremony at the Stade de France last night. Billie Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Snoop Dog were just some of those to feature across the evening. Tom Cruise, star of the Mission Impossible series, abseiled down from the roof of the stadium to mark the close of the Games and signify the hand-over from France to the state of California, home to Hollywood. It was both dramatic and silly, a fitting end to one of the most memorable Games ever. Paris 2024 had

Alexander Larman

Banksy’s art is overrated – and overpriced

Should you be woken in the middle of the night by the sound of a hydraulic lift rising from a van, and look out of the window to see a stern-looking bearded man spray-painting something on your wall, your usual instinct might be to ring the police. These days, however, you’d be better off calling an estate agent, an art dealer or both. Should an original Banksy artwork be found on your property, it’s likely to make your home considerably more valuable; assuming, that is, someone doesn’t make off with it before you’ve had a chance to sell it. In Peckham in south London last Thursday, a Banksy picture of

Sunday

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

France’s view on the British riots is stunningly hypocritical

As the Olympics draw to a close tonight, two things have delighted the French. The first is that the Games turned out to be fairly successful, overlooking the weird opening ceremony. The other is the general amusement here that Britain managed to beat France at its own national summer sport: rioting. If Froggie-bashing has for years been a favourite pastime of the British, the scenes on the streets of Britain have given the French a chance to retaliate with relish. News channels gleefully interrupted their coverage of French Olympic triumphs for live feeds of the clashes on British streets. Pundits were ripped from enjoying the beach volleyball to launch a flotilla of op-eds and

Andrew Tettenborn

Why Britain must say no – again – to China’s ‘super embassy’ in London

The previous Tory government may not have been very successful in containing the global ambitions of China, but at least it tried. Whether David Lammy’s Foreign Office has the same ambition to stand up to Beijing’s bullying is unfortunately becoming more doubtful. A straw in the wind is the announcement by China this week that it has revived plans to build a spanking new ‘super embassy’ – ten times the size of Beijing’s current outpost – on land it owns in the heart of the capital, a stone’s throw from the Tower of London.  This isn’t any old exercise in replacement of one piece of real estate with another. What

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is the Great Barrier Reef really dying?

The Great Barrier Reef is, of course, dying – a victim of humans’ hubris and callousness towards the natural world. We know this because we keep being told this is the case. This week, the New York Times carried the headline: ‘Heat Raises Fears of Demise for Great Barrier Reef Within a Generation’. This story, echoed elsewhere, was based on a paper in Nature claiming that the seas around the reef, off the eastern coast of Queensland, are at their warmest in at least 400 years. ‘Highest ocean heat in four centuries places Great Barrier Reef in danger,’ asserted the authors of the study, led by the University of Wollongong

Robin Ashenden

The enduring wisdom of Bill Brand

If Labour is taking us back to the 1970s – and the recent strike-secured pay rises and mass rage about immigration suggest more than a nodding similarity between our own time and that one – anyone wanting a deeper insight could do no better than watch Bill Brand. This 11-part series, written by playwright Trevor Griffiths (who died earlier this year) and broadcast by ITV in 1976, explores the working and personal life of a newly elected Labour MP, and was once called by the Sunday Times ‘the most remarkable series ever seen on the box’. Bill Brand, played by Jack Shepherd, is on the hard left of Labour, the

Saturday

Terry Barnes

Does Australia have a crocodile problem?

During the cold months of July and August, many southern Australians head north to warmer climes. A favourite destination is north Queensland, with its jungles, rainforests, mangrove swamps and rivers. And saltwater crocodiles. David Hogbin, a 40-year-old father-of-three and GP from New South Wales, was one such sun-seeking tourists. He travelled north with his family on holiday, but will never return home. After falling into a river when a path he was walking on gave way, he was eaten by a crocodile. Crocodile attacks in Australia are big news because they’re so rare Hogbin’s death is tragic, not least because he leaves behind a young family, but because this incident

Friday

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Nagasaki shouldn’t have snubbed Israel from its A-bomb ceremony

Nagasaki’s Peace Park held a ceremony today to mark the 79th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city (which killed 74,000 people). It was a sombre and moving occasion, as it always is, and one usually attended by high level representatives of all nations. This year was different though: the ambassadors of the UK, US and Israel were elsewhere, holding their own memorial at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo, 750 miles away. Nothing spooks the Japanese as much as disorder The reason is an unseemly row over the withdrawal of an invitation to Israel, by the mayor of Nagasaki Shiro Suzuki, apparently over fears of potential

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The oldest hatred is thriving in Britain

Britain’s antisemitism problem continues to grow. A report from the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors racist attacks and abuse against British Jews, documents 1,978 incidents in the first six months of 2024. That is the highest figure ever recorded for the first half of any year and a 105 per cent increase on the same period in 2023. It is no coincidence that this comes after the October 7 attack, in which Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel, killed 1,200 people, raped women and took 250 hostages. As the CST noted in a previous report, October 7 occasioned an outbreak of antisemitic activity in the UK long before any

Alex Klaushofer

The truth about two-tier policing in Britain

Does Britain have a two-tier policing system? Accusations that some protesters are treated differently to others have emerged in the wake of this week’s riots and the various counter-protests that have taken place. But while the blame is being directed at Sir Keir Starmer – with Elon Musk tweeting about ‘two-tier Keir’ – questions over the police’s handling of protests must not solely be directed at Britain’s current Prime Minister. Since 2020, I’ve harboured an uncomfortable feeling about the way protests are dealt with – and a sense that something is wrong. The policing of protests holds up a mirror to society That year, as lockdown elided into rafts of

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

‘Anti-fascist’ demonstrators have a troubling blind spot

A flyer calling for the expulsion of an ethnic group from parts of London was widely shared online yesterday. There were also reports of menacing chants being made outside a place of worship. Were the far-right thugs of riotous Britain up to no good again? Actually, this time the bigotry was coming from the other side, from the self-styled anti-fascists of the radical left. I thought these protests were about riotous bigotry here at home, not conflicts in the Middle East? Yes, it seems yesterday’s anti-racist gatherings may not have been entirely anti-racist. A group called Finchley Against Fascism shared a virtual leaflet inviting people to gather in Finchley in

Alexander Larman

King Charles must break his silence on the riots

After the far-right rioting of last night failed to materialise, there is hope that we have now seen the worst of the public disorder that flared up following the Southport stabbings. This is certainly what the Prime Minister will be thinking today, but his new good friend the King could well have exactly the same perspective on the situation, too. The King initially commented on the stabbings, expressing his horror at the ‘utterly horrific’ atrocity: ‘We send our most heartfelt condolences, prayers and deepest sympathies to the families and loved ones of those who have so tragically lost their lives, and to all those affected by this truly appalling attack’.