Society

Monday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Shame on the pro-Palestinian mob for hijacking 7 October

It is one year since the Jews suffered the worst act of anti-Semitic violence since the Nazi era, and what is the British left doing? Raging against the Jewish state. Hitting the streets in their thousands to fume against the nation that was the victim of that carnival of racist killing. They’re protesting not against the pogromists of Hamas who unleashed such horrors on 7 October 2023, but against the country and the people they did it to. It’s a new low It’s a new low. As Jews in Britain and around the world ready themselves for the painful commemoration of the slaughter of more than a thousand of their

Sunday

David McAlpine Cunningham

Paul McCartney never got over his filmmaking flop

Witnessing the recent imperial progress of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, it occurred to me how impossible it is to imagine her ever shedding her current incarnation as world-bestriding, bronze-thighed musical potentate. But of course, she will. The time will come when the hits will dry up and new sorts of eras will beckon: the ‘disappointing sales’ era, the ‘desperate collaboration with younger artists’ era and, ultimately, the ‘Las Vegas residency’ era. It won’t be her fault. It happens to everyone eventually. Forty years ago this month, Paul McCartney, who had been a global superstar for more than two decades, effectively torpedoed his career with an ill-advised movie project called Give

Sean Thomas

Has AI just killed the podcast bro?

It’s a well-known psychological phenomenon: that time seems to slow down if you experience lots of new and unusual events. For example, if you are travelling across Asia, a week can seem like a month, and a month like a year, as you encounter so many different landscapes, peoples, climates, languages, cities, and that deep-fried algae you ate in Laos. All the events packed together somehow dilate the sense of time’s passing. The more you think about this technology, the more mind-spinning it becomes The same goes for technology, especially rapidly advancing tech, like AI. Sometimes it feels, paradoxically, like AI has stopped advancing – maybe you feel that right now –

Robin Ashenden

The 1990s were Britain’s sunset years

A myth seems to be developing about the 1990s. In a recent programme on Disney Plus called In Vogue: The 90s, a series of talking heads rhapsodise about the decade. ‘God, the 90s just changed everything,’ oozes Hamish Bowles, a fashion journalist. ‘It was a great time to be alive, it really felt like a revolution was underway,’ says model and actor Tyler Beckford. ‘Wow – what does the 90s mean to me?’ asks Naomi Campbell, suggesting it’s almost too vast a question to answer. Outside the programme, others seem to agree. ‘The 90s were the best decade ever – a time of real fun, freedom and abandon,’ says a

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson, Cindy Yu, Mary Wakefield, Anthony Sattin, and Toby Young

31 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Fraser Nelson signs off for the last time (1:30); Cindy Yu explores growing hostility in China to the Japanese (7:44); Mary Wakefield examines the dark truth behind the Pelicot case in France (13:32); Anthony Sattin reviews Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Cultures (19:54); and Toby Young reveals the truth behind a coincidental dinner with Fraser Nelson and new Spectator editor Michael Gove (25:40).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Daniel Thorpe

Turkey’s döner kebab spat with Germany is turning nasty

Germany and Turkey have had a fair share of differences and tensions over the years. But their latest row – over kebabs – is in danger of turning nasty. Last April, German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier decided to bring along a 60-kilogram döner kebab on his state visit to Turkey. It did not go down well. Turks found the stunt condescending; Germans were mortified. Ankara lodged an official request with the European Commission to make the dish a ‘traditional speciality’, thereby regulating what can be sold under the name ‘döner’ in Europe. Turkey aims to dictate what can be sold as döner kebab This spat isn’t, of course, the first time

Patrick West

A remake of Cheers won’t work

One of the most popular sitcoms of the 1980s, Cheers, is set to return to our television screens. The show is set for a revamp, except now it will be uprooted from Boston and transposed to a pub in Britain. This is obviously a terrible idea, for a few logistical reasons – and for one large cultural reason. Comedy wasn’t a slave to politics back then The main scriptwriter for the UK remake is reported by the Daily Telegraph to be our own Simon Nye, the brains behind Men Behaving Badly, while it’s being developed by Big Talk Studios. Its chief executive Kenton Allen explains that it will be no

Alex South

When prison seems completely pointless

I met Daniel in a high-security prison, where I worked as a prison officer. He was just 21. We’d talked about him a lot before he arrived on the wing – we passed the security briefing on him back and forth, scrutinising his vacant mug shot and the endless red bullet points beneath it: Climber wouldn’t ordinarily be a problem, but in prison it is. Daniel had scaled fences, walls and roofs in previous prisons. He’d staged one-man demonstrations in the scalding sun, shouting abuse to the news crews that congregated outside the jail, his pale white skin reddening as the hours wore on. And now he was here. His initial

Friday

Julie Bindel

Is this wife killer jumping on the Post Office scandal bandwagon?

Robin Garbutt is serving life in prison for murdering his wife, but is he innocent? His supporters say so. They insist that evidence from the Horizon IT system and the Post Office which helped convict him of the killing of Diana in 2010 was flawed. Garbutt, they claim, is another victim of the Post Office scandal which saw hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly prosecuted. Diana’s mother is sceptical and has said she believes her son-in-law is guilty. Garbutt, she said, was ‘jumping on the Horizon bandwagon’. The jury saw through Garbutt’s story It’s right to treat Garbutt’s appeal with scepticism. Every year, many men are convicted of murdering their partners. The

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Could religious voters in the swing states decide the US election?

30 min listen

The US presidential election looks as if it’s coming down to the wire in a handful of battleground states. Neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump has established a clear lead, and that raises the question of whether, even in today’s increasingly secular America, evangelical Christians could give former president Trump a crucial advantage in the rust belt. On the other hand, could his role in the demise of Roe v Wade tilt the race towards Harris?  In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian Thompson talks to Dr Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, a specialist in the influence of religion on US politics, and Justin Webb, presenter

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland’s puritanical attack on smokers

While the UK braces itself for a budget so tight we can already hear the pips squeaking from across the Irish sea, this week saw an Irish budget which was marked more by largesse than any attempt to balance the books. With an election due either in November or sometime early next year, and a cool, surprise £11 billion burning a hole in the government’s pocket, following the infamous EU judgment forcing Apple to pay more taxes, the government here has predictably decided to spend far and wide. As it stands, the government plans to spend a tasty £87 billion in 2025, a massive increase on 2024’s £80 billion. But

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Doctors and the trouble with the BBC

The BBC’s daytime soap Doctors will soon vanish from our screens after 24 years. But while the final episodes make for excruciatingly bad television, they are worth watching for a simple reason: they encapsulate everything that is wrong with modern television. The BBC’s obsession with ramming progressive storylines down viewers’ throats is plain to see in each episode of Doctors. Take the character of Dr Graham Elton (Alex Avery); he’s a rotten bigot and, in case you didn’t realise it, viewers are reminded of just how awful and unsound his views are in almost every scene. From BBC medical soap opera Doctors. A new doctor, Graham, has joined the surgery.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Israel’s revenge, farewell Fraser & the demise of invitations

37 min listen

This week: Israel’s revenge and Iran’s humiliation. As the anniversary of the October 7th attacks by Hamas approaches, the crisis in the Middle East has only widened. Israel has sent troops into southern Lebanon and there have been attempted missile strikes from the Houthi rebels in Yemen and from Iran. Is there any way the situation can de-escalate? And how could Israel respond to Iran? Former BBC foreign correspondent Paul Wood and defence and security research Dr Limor Simhony join the podcast (1:03). Next: it’s the end of an era for The Spectator. This issue is Fraser Nelson’s last as he hands over the reins to Michael Gove. Having spent 15

John Armstrong

The baffling decision to defund a national academy for mathematics

The government has shocked the mathematics community by announcing that it is withdrawing £6 million in grant funding from a new Academy for Mathematical Sciences.  The impetus for creating this Academy came from a 2018 review chaired by professor Philip Bond. His review recommended how to maximize the benefits of mathematical sciences to the UK economy and to wider society. It drew on responses from a host of universities and all the learned societies in mathematics and was advised by a board of mathematical luminaries. Its number one recommendation was the creation of this new academy – which would improve links between academia, government and industry.  Investing in mathematics is one of the

Charlie Gammell

War in Lebanon could end up creating Isis 3.0

As Israeli troops make incursions into southern Lebanon, in the wake of recent successful aerial and covert campaigns against Hezbollah, Tel Aviv appears ascendant. Iran, by contrast, seems on the back foot, at odds with its proxies and divided internally as to the way forward.  Israel’s response to Iran’s missile strikes, and the West’s ability to check Israel’s actions to prevent all-out war, will determine how the next 48 hours pan out. Iran has strongly signalled that it is relying on the US to curb Israel’s response to its missile strikes last night, a statement that carried with it a whiff of desperation.  Israel still can’t answer the crucial question that has hovered over this entire conflict: how does it

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Could Iran target Jews outside Israel?

After the massive direct Iranian attack on Israel, many breathed a sigh of relief that Israel’s defences were mostly well prepared and highly effective. The one death reported was that of a Gazan Palestinian man killed by shrapnel near Jericho. So much for Iranian solidarity with the Palestinians. Yet tensions remain high as further Iranian aggression may follow. This time, it could the Jews of Europe, the UK or America who are the targets.  Iran has a history of responding to setbacks with global terrorism Israel’s impressive strategic operational activities in Lebanon and Syria have not only severely limited Hezbollah’s abilities, but also restored Israel’s intelligence and military deterrence in

David Shipley

What our prisons get wrong

‘Purposeful activity’ is a phrase often heard in discussions about our prisons. It describes work, training, therapeutic courses and other meaningful activities which improve prisoners’ mental health and make them less likely to behave antisocially in prison or offend after release. In theory our prisons should make sure that most prisoners are spending a significant amount of time out of their cells participating in this purposeful activity. Unfortunately, a report published last Friday by His Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons reveals that the reality falls far short of that. Of 32 closed prisons inspected in 2023-24, 30 of them were rated ‘poor or not sufficiently good’. In practice this means that

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

In defence of Rosie Duffield

Rosie Duffield’s magnificently rancorous resignation of the Labour whip has reduced the number of MPs on the government side who are able accurately to identify what a ‘woman’ is by about 30 per cent. This is, then, a grave loss to Sir Keir Starmer, who could have wheeled Rosie out every time he was asked the tricky question and told his interlocutors: ‘Ask her, she seems to know. I haven’t a clue. I have been shown diagrams, of course, many of them in full colour. But a proper definition still eludes me because, for me and the vast majority of my colleagues on the left, such things as diagrams and

Toby Young Toby Young

Did Michael Gove mean what he said?

I thought the Spectator dinner for Michael Gove hosted by Fraser Nelson would be cancelled. To be clear, this wasn’t a dinner where the Ming vase would be passed from one custodian to another, witnessed by the magazine’s general staff. Rather, this was a dinner to celebrate Michael’s legacy as education secretary organised weeks earlier by Rachel Wolf, founder of the New Schools Network, and which Fraser had kindly agreed to host. But – talk about bad timing! – at 1.30 p.m. on the day it was due to take place it was announced that Michael would be succeeding Fraser as editor. That was a bit like Theresa May having agreed

Philip Womack

Bring back the stiffy!

The other day, clearing out boxes, I stumbled on a sheaf of invitations from childhood. Decorated with trains and fairies, they are very similar to those my children still (just about) receive today, except there’s usually a Thelwell pony instead of Elsa from Frozen. The handwritten addresses, the names of the houses and streets (Bluebell Cottage, Leeward Road) plunged me back to 1980s Sussex, sunlit gardens and pass the parcel (where only the winner got a prize, unlike now, when a Haribo lurks in every layer). It was a ritual. There was the pleasure of choosing the invitations (‘Darling, we had spaceships last year’), the thrill of doling them out