Society

Thursday

Sean Thomas

America’s obsession with British decline

As Sigmund Freud pointed out way back in 1905, everyone feels a bit schizo about Mum. On the one hand, she carried you in the womb, she probably nursed you at the nipple. She made the greatest of sacrifices so that you exist. Heck, maybe you really love her cooking. On the other hand, you have to escape her. The Italians have a brilliantly pejorative word for the man-child who stays in the maternal home far too late in life: mammone. No one wants to be that guy. And to avoid it, sometimes you have to scorn your mother, to break the psychological apron strings. So it is with American

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Reform’s migration crackdown, South Korea’s school phone ban and Meghan Markle misses Magic Radio

Home Nigel Farage, launching Reform’s policies on illegal migrants, said: ‘The only way we’ll stop the boats is by detaining and deporting absolutely anyone who comes via that route.’ A Taliban official in Kabul responded: ‘We are ready and willing to receive and embrace whoever he [Mr Farage] sends us.’ The government sought to appeal against a High Court ruling which temporarily forbade the housing of asylum seekers in the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex. Protests against asylum hotels and counter-protests continued in several places. The government said it would introduce a panel of adjudicators instead of judges to hear migrants’ appeals in the hope of speeding up the asylum

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Angela Rayner and the spite of Labour

As a snapshot of our country, you’ll be pressed to find anything quite so resonant as the one which depicts a leading member of our Skankerati sitting in an inflatable off the southern coast of the UK with tattoo and vape in attendance. There has been much debate of late about the very large numbers of other people bobbing about in the English Channel – and the possible value they might be to our benighted economy. We could ask the same question about Angela Rayner. On paper she is a huge cost to the Exchequer, one which would easily outstrip even a fairly successful Albanian drug dealer. Henceforth, then, it

Jonathan Sumption

Why France hates Macron

One of the pleasures of spending the summer in France is that I can turn aside from our national problems and concentrate on those of our neighbour. They are similar but gratifyingly worse. You have to know someone quite well before they will open up about their own politics to a semi-outsider. I used to feel the same way when our own politics were chaotic in the aftermath of the EU referendum and French friends would approach me with that characteristic note of smug condescension to ask what on earth was going on. Emmanuel Macron is the ablest President of France since Charles de Gaulle. Yet he is hated across

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Britain is having its own gilets jaunes moment

‘I heard you want your country back. Ha, shut the fuck up!’ So yelped rap-punk duo Bob Vylan on stage at Glastonbury in June. That televised set became notorious for other reasons – for Vylan’s chant of ‘Death, death to the IDF’, which cost the group their agent, a string of shows and, presumably, another Glasto appearance. But part of me thinks that Britain wouldn’t have faced such a restive summer, rocked by grassroots patriotic protests, were it not for that cretinous tirade against the nation. That and the triumphant return of Oasis, who aren’t afraid of a flag. Everything that has happened since has felt like a defiant middle

Luke McShane

Botched brilliancy

In one sense, everything went right for Nodirbek Yakubboev at the Rubinstein Memorial, held in Poland earlier this month. The 23-year-old grandmaster, who was part of Uzbekistan’s gold medal winning squad at the Chennai Olympiad in 2022, scored a convincing tournament victory with four wins and five draws and pushed into the world’s top 50. And yet, it could have been even better. In the penultimate round, Yakubboev conducted a sparkling attack, only to blow it at the crucial moment and let his opponent, Matthias Blübaum, escape with a draw. It began with an enviable flash of optimism in the diagram position. Older, wiser heads would surely just castle kingside,

Luke McShane

No. 865

Black to play. O. Bronstein – L. McShane, World Blitz Team Championships, London, 2025. Bronstein sacrificed a knight for a kingside attack, but here I missed a chance to decide the game in my favour. Which move should I have played? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 1 September. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution David Marsh, Gurnard Last week’s winner 1 Qh8! Then 1…Kd4 2 Rf4# or 1…d4 2 Qh1# or 1…g3 2 Qh4#. Any move by Re5 is met by 2 Nc5#

Lucy Vickery

Spectator Competition: Ad it up

For Competition 3414 you were invited to provide an extract from a well-known literary work rewritten to include appropriate product placements. Honourable mentions, in a top-notch entry, go to Max Ross, Ralph Goldswain, Hamish Wilson, John O’Byrne and Paula Cameron – and to Matt Quinn and Nick Syrett for a pair of excellent twists on Betjeman. The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 John Lewis vouchers. The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea In an opulent Ovington boat, They took some money and Rouse Runny Honey Wrapped up in a Burberry coat. The Owl looked up to the stars above And sang to a Gibson guitar, ‘O lovely

Doc

2718: Caged

The unclued lights (one hyphened and one of two words) each bear a common feature. Across 7 Rodent, second seen in store (6) 12    Old Scottish borrowers who show respect about sons (9) 13    Rookie driver owns leading assets capital (5) 16    Bedcovers obtained from Chester’s shopping arcades lacking a touch of elegance (6) 20    Broadcast with singer heard at Brize Norton or Cosford (3,4) 21    An animal doctor admitted company – turned up with bird (6) 22    He has a dog but is driving without a conductor (3-3) 26    Not long until graduates leave one in the woodwind (4) 27    Chess grandmaster reflects his homeland somewhat (3) 28    Fresh

The Spectator

2715: Occidentals – solution

The unclued lights reveal the titles of six Westerns: 1A, 1D/38/26, 18/5/43, 20/11, 23 and 45/24. First prize Basia Jones, London WC1 Runners-up Michael Crapper, Whitchurch, Hants; Geoff Hollas, London W12

Wednesday

Matthew Wilcox

Church of England abuse survivors have been failed – again

The Church of England’s abuse Redress Scheme was set up to help survivors of abuse, but a serious data breach last night led to the email addresses of dozens of survivors being unwittingly revealed. More than 180 people were openly copied into an email update about the project sent by a law firm tasked with administering the scheme. The Church of England has expressed ‘profound concern’ about what happened. These words offer little comfort to those caught up in this latest debacle. The Church of England has expressed ‘profound concern’ about what happened One survivor told The Spectator they had opened the message expecting long-awaited details on how the compensation programme would

Lois McLatchie Miller

Can Taylor Swift make marriage great again?

Taylor Swift is engaged – and women the world over are rejoicing. Not merely because they care about Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce or the Ralph Lauren shorts he wore at the proposal, but because, in a profound way, her story has become theirs. Swift is not just the world’s biggest pop star; she is the diarist of millennial womanhood. Her lyrics have chronicled the teenage daydreams, the disillusioned twenties, the bitterness of wasted years, and now, at last, the rediscovery of commitment. When she said ‘yes’, millions of women projected onto her their own longing for permanence – and their own disillusionment with the cultural script they

Alexander Larman

With Love, Meghan 2 is just as ghastly as season one

Like death and taxes, the second instalment of With Love, Meghan has come around again, sloughing into view to the usual chorus of disapproval and confusion. The news recently broke that Netflix has deigned to allow Harry ‘n’ Meghan another five years of deciding not to make their future projects. In light of that, this second series of the hitherto unloved show – filmed at the same time as the first – has been presented to a previously indifferent global public in the hope that it will distract from many of the unflattering and embarrassing stories about the Duke of Sussex that have proliferated this year. This is brand reinforcement,

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Migrant protests and the twilight of luxury beliefs

There are dark whispers on the internet about Britain’s coming ‘race war’. The protests outside migrant hotels prove the ‘native English’ have had a gutful of these ‘invaders’, say nefarious actors on X. Others foresee a civil war: a showdown between a haughty left and a resurgent right over the very soul of the kingdom. I see something different: a class war. ‘Racists’, some shouted at the little people. Well, they’re uneducated oiks who like to wave the flag of their country – they must be racist, right? Okay, maybe not a ‘war’. It’s not the Russian Revolution, or even a rerun of the Battle of Orgreave. But the class

Tuesday

James Tidmarsh

In defence of Notting Hill Carnival

Every August Bank Holiday my neighbours in Notting Hill Gate pull down the shutters and disappear. Cornwall, Tuscany, anywhere but here. ‘You’re mad to come back for it’, they tell me. It is, of course, the Notting Hill Carnival. Does two million people celebrating together lose its value because a few hundred are arrested? I would argue not. I’ve been going for years. Mobile and bank card in my front jeans pocket. Earplugs, because the sound systems move your ribcage. I’ve never seen any trouble. Yes, it gets busy, yes, it’s crowded, but that’s the point. What I have seen is colour, joy and a city that remembers how to

Mark Solomons

Alexander Isak and the stunning hypocrisy of Liverpool fans

Anyone who has looked at modern football and muttered ‘the game’s gone’ has a point. Nothing confirms this belief more than the obscene amounts of money and the hypocrisy surrounding the drawn out transfer saga of Newcastle United’s Alexander Isak. Liverpool fans think Newcastle are behaving badly by not selling them their best player, yet it was only a few months ago they were booing Trent Alexander-Arnold For those just catching up, the Swedish striker wants to leave Newcastle. Not surprisingly for someone who regularly scores 20 plus goals a season and helped the Geordies to their first trophy win in 70 years last season, they do not want him

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Record jobless benefits are a national scandal

Quietly, without even a press release let alone a fanfare, Britain over the past 12 months has just passed a grim milestone. The number of people on out of work benefits has surpassed the peak reached in the early 1990s. Indeed, it is higher now than it was at the peak of Covid-19 in 2020. There are now 6.5 million people living on out of work benefits Remember when unemployment of three million used to generate headlines every week, in the early 1980s and then again a decade later? Well, there are now 6.5 million people living on out of work benefits. Yet it hardly causes a ripple in the political

Alexander Larman

Does Virginia Giuffre have the power to finish off Prince Andrew?

There’s an old saying that revenge is a dish best served cold. The late Virginia Giuffre has gone a step further by serving up her final helping of vengeance against Prince Andrew by publishing her sure-to-be-revelatory memoir, Nobody’s Girl, from beyond the grave this October. Giuffre collaborated with the American writer Amy Wallace on a 400-page book that is expected to divulge in no doubt excruciatingly painful and embarrassing detail, the various relationships that she had with the notorious likes of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and – of course! – the Duke of York himself. Announcing the book, her publisher Knopf claimed that it would offer “intimate, disturbing, and heartbreaking new details

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Will Donald Trump meet Lucy Connolly?

‘Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government & politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.’ Britain’s free-speech wars are going global Those 51 words earned Lucy Connolly – a babysitter from Northampton, in the East Midlands – the longest sentence ever handed down in the UK for a single social-media post. Last week, Connolly was released from prison, having served nine months of a 31-month term for “inciting racial hatred.” She will serve the

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Where did it all go so wrong for Britain?

If I had to summarise, in a word, the mood of the nation in 2025, I’d probably plump for fraught. There is something in the air that I can’t quite recall having sniffed before, the kind of crackle that might be quite exciting or intriguing if you were standing a little bit further back from it, flicking through the pages of a history book, maybe. But it’s rather different to live through it. How quaint Britain’s big worries of the 1990s now seem People like me, and probably you, were socialised in a more stable and reliable world, where everyone and everything muddled along. So we find it very hard