Society

Thursday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The Surrey oil judgment undermines our democracy

The Conservatives are in favour of granting licences for new oil and gas extraction; Labour is against it. But what does it matter what either party have put in their manifestos when the Supreme Court has just asserted the right to decide Britain’s energy policy for us? In a judgment this morning the Supreme Court decided that Surrey County Council was wrong to determine a planning application for a small oilfield near Gatwick Airport without considering the carbon emissions which would be released in burning the product.  Environmentalists will cheer today’s judgment but they shouldn’t really, because it is fundamentally undemocratic Council planners had taken into account emissions from the

Andrew Tettenborn

The Supreme Court has put the future of fossil fuel projects in jeopardy

‘Britain is evolving from a democracy towards a kritarchy – the rule of lawyers,’ wrote Ross Clark in today’s Spectator magazine. His gloomy prediction has been proved correct almost immediately. A 3-2 majority in the Supreme Court today put the emergency brakes on long-standing plans to extract oil at Horse Hill in Surrey when it struck down the council’s necessary grant of planning permission. As with most legal decisions, the reasoning was convoluted. But in essence it was this: the court ruled that the environmental impact of emissions from burning fossil fuels must be considered in planning applications for new extraction projects, not just the impacts of the emissions produced in extracting them. Not

James Kirkup James Kirkup

A Danish lesson for Labour in how to revive Britain’s economy

The coincidence of the 2024 general election and the Euro 2024 football tournament is a great lesson in the myopia of Westminster and its creatures. Somewhere, deep in our hearts, we do know that the vast majority of people in Britain (OK, England and Scotland) are far more interested in the football than in the ups and downs of the campaign. But does that stop us fixating on the minutiae of that campaign? Not at all: for political nerds, this is our championship, after all, one of those (quite) rare moments when all the stars, all the heroes and villains, are on the pitch together, generally kicking lumps out of each

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Just Stop Oil’s Stonehenge attack is unforgivable

So now we know: nowhere is safe from the entitled fury of the Just Stop Oil mob. Not even Stonehenge. That prehistoric wonder, one of the oldest monuments of humankind, has been showered with orange powder paint by JSO’s loons. They say they want to ‘raise awareness’ of the climate crisis. All they’ve really raised awareness of is what conceited, heartless narcissists they are. These people really do believe they are saving the planet, don’t they? This was cultural desecration. It was savagery masquerading as protest. To attack a 5,000-year-old monument, this stone echo of the earliest stirrings of human civilisation, is to show horrific disregard for the history and

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Tory voters want to punish their party – and themselves

For progressive onlookers abroad, the Labour landslide now projected next month will seem a cheerful counterweight to the EU parliamentary elections’ lurch rightwards and will represent a huge, refreshing popular shift in Britain to the left. Yet according to at least one recent poll, this perception would be statistically mistaken. Add the Conservative and Reform support together, and on the ground the British left and right are neck and neck. But never mind the numbers. The notion that an historically extraordinary Labour majority would betoken a renewed British enthusiasm for socialism is off the beam. Where is the emotion in this election? What few passions July’s contest stirs fester almost

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Would you want Nigel Farage to marry your daughter?

The opposite of attraction is repulsion. Political commentary gives too little attention to a party’s (or leader’s) capacity to repel. Attractiveness to some may itself inspire disgust in others, simultaneously lifting support yet imposing a ceiling upon how high. Here’s a quiz. Our last five elections have seen Labour and the Conservatives slugging it out for primacy, each election leaving one of them the loser. It is upon the losers that I wish to focus. Here, from those five results, are the raw (rounded) totals of votes cast, nationwide, for the loser in each case. I want you to guess which party leader lost which election, so I’ve ranked the

The Spectator

Letters: the Tories’ fatal flaw

Major error Sir: Even as a former Tory voter, I acknowledge that the predicted scale of the Conservative electoral defeat would be a national tragedy. Starmer’s government needs to be kept in check by a robust opposition. There are many explanations for the Tory decline, but George Osborne’s Diary (15 June) gives some clues: his celebration of a ‘Middle England’ country fête having a tombola for Gaza rather than a worthy local cause, for instance. More tellingly, Osborne also celebrates John Major’s advice that the Conservatives ‘will never win while we remain in thrall to the hard right of our party’. The practical interpretation of this involves moving the Tories to

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Why should Putin be allowed to keep seized Russian assets?

The seizure of enemy treasure, formerly known as plunder and pillage, is an ancient tool of war. Though still practised in the world’s nastiest conflict zones, it’s a tricky business within a rules-based international order. The G7’s agreement to lend $50 billion to Ukraine – using income from $300 billion of frozen Russian assets to cover interest and repayments on the loan – is a vivid case in point. And some would say, a lily-livered half-measure. The key feature of the deal is that it does not actually claim ownership of Russian loot – which however ill-gotten is mostly held in EU banks in the form of western government bonds.

Gus Carter Gus Carter

How to bet like a politician

If you’re going to fleece a bookies, it would be wise to ask a friend to place the bet on your behalf, or do it with cash down the local Coral. Craig Williams didn’t. The Gambling Commission is investigating the Prime Minister’s parliamentary private secretary after he placed a bet on the date of the election – three days before his boss called it. Williams’s online bet was flagged as suspicious, which, in his words, has resulted in ‘some routine inquiries’. What’s worse, he only put £100 on at 5/1. It barely seems worth it. Political betting is not big business. Only £426,000 has been placed on the outcome of

Matt Ridley

Whoever you vote for, the Blob wins

At the age of 66 I feel like a first-time voter. As a member of the House of Lords, I was not allowed to vote in the last three general elections. But I retired from the House in 2021, so democracy here I come. I shall scan the ballot paper with interest: who is standing for head of the Office of Budget Responsibility, or chair of the Climate Change Committee? I would like to read their manifestos, since they seem to be the folk whose ‘models’ tell the country what it must do, brooking no dissent. What’s that you say? It doesn’t work that way? How quaint of me to

Douglas Murray

Cowards vs culture 

For some while I have marvelled at the way in which artworks seem to have become the focus of hatred for people wanting to say something banal. If you wish to make a point about politics, the climate or anything else, there are a range of ways to do it. But the least effective must surely be to glue yourself to a painting, throw soup on it or attack it with a knife. Nonetheless, artworks have become the means to communicate certain rote-like messages – with the violence stepping up a notch each time. It is two years since a couple of morons from Just Stop Oil decided to throw

Mark Mason

Why we love to be baffled

So much of life is a search for answers. How to get ahead, how to earn more money, how to be happy. But deep down, is there a part of us that likes not knowing an answer? Do we sometimes want to be baffled? It’s a question that’s come to fascinate me as I’ve embarked on a new career leading corporate team-building sessions based around magic. I do the tricks (close-up stuff – cards, coins and the like), then the team has to work out how I’m doing them. People who don’t want to know how a magic trick is done are saying: ‘I want to be three again’ Of

Peter Jones

Hunter Biden and the teaching of virtue

Joe Biden, President of the United States, may not have any criminal charges on his record, but his son Hunter does. When ancient Greeks discussed whether aretê (‘virtue, moral excellence, goodness, bravery’) could be taught, or not, such examples came into play. Plato discussed the problem in a dialogue in which Socrates raised the question with the famous sophist Protagoras who claimed to be able to teach anything to make people better. Socrates’s example was Pericles: here was a man of supreme aretê, but his two useless sons simply ‘browsed randomly about like cattle, hoping to bump into it’. Protagoras answered as follows. When men, he said, first learned to

Panda La Terriere

How body cams create a culture of fear

Thanks to an underage relative who’d stolen my driving licence, I recently found myself ID-less at the local Co-op. I know the woman at the checkout reasonably well, so I said hi, enquired about her day and then asked if I could have my usual vape anyway. She had the decency to look shifty and said: ‘Sorry love.’ Did she not remember me and my ID from just a few days earlier? Was she senile? Did she hate me? I suspected that the reason she was unswayable was because she was bugged. She was wearing a body worn camera and the Co-op’s Security Operations Center was spying on us. The

Luke McShane

When accusations fly

‘OK, there is a body with a knife there, and the police come and say nothing happened… You have to find who, why, what, but it happened, don’t pretend that it didn’t happen!’ Vladimir Kramnik deployed that analogy about the world of online chess, which he sees as riddled with cheating. Cheating happens. Once in a while, I get demolished in a casual online game in a manner that leaves no room for doubt that my opponent’s moves were silicon-assisted. Chess.com, the platform that hosts the biggest online events, has a dedicated Fair Play team to monitor cheating, and their checks have led to over a million account closures in

William Cook

England’s hooligan days are over

In downtown Düsseldorf, a district known as ‘the longest bar in the world’, hordes of happy England fans belted out ‘God Save the King’. The Three Lions beat Serbia in nearby Gelsenkirchen and supporters were still celebrating in the days after. Last time Germany hosted the Uefa European Football Championship (aka the Euros) in 1988, hundreds of England fans rioted in Düsseldorf, but I’ve seen no sign of trouble. The English are outnumbered by French and Austrians. Everyone is getting on well. Times have changed. German bartenders used to be wary of England fans. Now, thankful for their first big windfall since Covid, they welcome them. There was admittedly a

Luke McShane

No. 606

White to play. Magnus Carlsen-Ding Liren, Norway Chess 2024. Ding’s last move, 29…Rb6-b2 was a blunder allowing a quick checkmate. What did Carlsen play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 24 June. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution 1 g3! Kh8 2 g4 Kg8 3 g5 Kh8 4 g6 hxg6 5 hxg6 Kg8 6 g7 wins.Last week’s winner Giles Cattermole, Orpington, Kent

Toby Young Toby Young

New Zealand’s culture wars backlash

I’m in New Zealand on a speaking tour organised by the Kiwi Free Speech Union, and in some ways it’s like visiting Britain in a more innocent era. This struck me when I went on a tour of the Hobbiton movie set, where The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit were filmed. The Shire of Tolkien’s imagination, lovingly created by Peter Jackson, is an idealised version of rural England – and New Zealand, with its perfectly manicured lawns and open-faced, friendly people, is a bit like that. Although, to be fair, I may be viewing the country through rose-tinted spectacles because Labour was heavily defeated in the most recent

Victoria Lane

Spectator Competition: Outta Palo Alto

In Competition 3354 you were invited to put yourselves in the shoes (or head) of a tech billionaire. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Elon Musk provided the most inspiration. Paul Freeman had him intent on world domination: That bozo Bezos and schmuck Zuck will serveas jesters to my court. They’ll daily tastemy food in case some traitor has the nerveto poison it. Their loss will be no waste. There were also some nicely random Jeff Bezos pensées courtesy of Basil Ransome-Davies. ‘Maybe I’m the Dylan of corporate technology. Or he is the Bezos of popular music?’ The winners are £25 closer to a billion. From time to time I flick through online news,And