Society

Sunday

Monica Porter

Patience is running out with Nato in the Baltic states

You can’t miss the vast banner emblazoned on the high-rise building overlooking central Vilnius. It reads: PUTIN, THE HAGUE IS WAITING FOR YOU. Not one to mince their words, the Lithuanians. And neither are the Latvians or Estonians. In the face of an increasingly menacing Kremlin, the Baltic states – on Nato’s front line against Russian aggression – display an in-your-face bravado, which nevertheless overlays a palpable unease about the future. Many thousands disappeared into its bowels, never to be seen by their families again The threat posed to them by Russia was the issue which dominated much of the debate in the Baltic countries during the lead-up to the

Saturday

Alexander Larman

The reassuring appearance of the Princess of Wales

In any other year, the major story of the Trooping the Colour would be how grim and unseasonal the wet, cloudy weather was this June. How the cold and rain potentially rendered the pageantry and pomp of this historic affair somewhat anticlimactic – not that the countless spectators, in person and watching on television, cared. This time round, though, the event itself has been overshadowed by the presence of two of the members of the Royal Family: the King and, in particular, the Princess of Wales, who made her first public appearance since her cancer diagnosis earlier this year.  As the princess revealed in her measured, careful announcement last night,

Natasha Feroze

Natasha Feroze, Robert Ades, Lucasta Miller, Sam McPhail, Toby Young and Catriona Olding

38 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Natasha Feroze reports on the return of ex-Labour MP Keith Vaz (1:10); Robert Ades presents the case against sociology A-level (7:39); Lucasta Miller reviews Katherine Bucknell’s book, Christopher Isherwood Inside Out (15:24); Sam McPhail provides his notes on the lager Madri (23:16); Toby Young explains why he will be voting Reform (26:23); and, Catriona Olding reflects on love and friendship (31:17). Presented by Patrick Gibbons.  

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Will Gary Lineker be able to keep his election thoughts quiet during the Euros?

It is hard to imagine the European football championship, which kicked off last night, was a big factor in Rishi Sunak’s decision to call a snap general election. But whether the footie was a consideration or not, the possibility that events in Germany might have some bearing on the result on 4 July is something he, and we, might now wish to consider. We may have no choice if the BBC’s X-addicted Gary Lineker, who will have a huge platform during the tournament, chooses to spout off about politics. Footballers, unless they’re called Gary (Neville, Lineker), tend to keep tight-lipped about their politics There is limited data to support a

Richard Hobbs

How London’s Docklands became the Eton of the crime world

When Hatton Garden Heist ‘mastermind’ Brian Reader died aged 84 in 2023, it was estimated that he had made £200 million during his long criminal career. Reader shared his origins with other members of British criminal royalty, such as those behind the great train, Brink’s Mat, Security Express and Tonbridge cash depot heists – robbers who were all part of a long standing and highly resilient culture of skulduggery. For many of these men, a childhood in and around London’s pre-gentrified Docklands was like going to Eton. The Docklands and its adjacent surroundings have long been centres of excellence for criminal practice. Self-employment and casual labour typified early industrial London

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

The Euros couldn’t come at a worse time for Germany

Like many Germans, I remember the summer of 2006 with fondness. We hosted the football World Cup, and for a few glorious weeks the country was transformed. The sun literally didn’t stop shining. Every cafe, bar and park seemed to have the football on TV. The country was in an exceedingly good mood.  When it became public that German police would not be allowed to display German flags, opponents pointed out that rainbow colours were still allowed The ‘summer fairytale’ of nearly two decades ago holds such a cherished place in collective memory that it would be difficult to rival even at the best of times. But Euro 2024 isn’t

Robin Ashenden

‘Terrible but magnificent’: the life and times of playwright John Osborne

With the news the Almeida Theatre is to stage John Osborne’s 1956 play Look Back in Anger this Autumn as part of their double-bill ‘Angry and Young’ (its partner play being Arnold Wesker’s Roots), one can only wonder what today’s younger generation will make of it. Osborne’s first produced play, a portrait among other things of the corrosive marriage between a young lower class intellectual and his infinitely better-born wife, perfectly caught the rising mood in 1956 – one of searing frustration with postwar inertia and a moth-eaten establishment of colonels, judges and bishops that seemed set to endure forever. So seismic was the play’s impact, it was credited with changing

Friday

Alex Klaushofer

The trouble with Thames Water

On the day the election was called, I turned on the tap but nothing came out. The sudden stoppage was hardly a surprise: I live in a ‘Thames Water hotspot’ and can’t drive ten minutes in any direction without encountering at least one road closure as the water pipes are dug up. It’s got to the point where I mutter, ‘ah, Thames Water’ every time I hit traffic. More often than not, the plastic barricades and temporary traffic lights duly appear, accompanied by signs bidding me not ‘to overtake cyclists’ in the narrow portion of road left. With Thames Water likely heading for collapse, government takeover looms Such closures punctuate

John Connolly John Connolly

Exclusive: How many XL Bullies live in your area?

In the past few years, you may have noticed a terrifyingly large breed of dog stalking the streets of Britain: the infamous XL Bully.  An offshoot of the American Pit Bull Terrier, it’s hard to miss an XL Bully when you pass one in the street. Often weighing more than nine stone (or 57 kg) and with males at least 20 inches tall at the shoulders, they are defined by the government as ‘heavily-muscled’, with a blocky head, and a physique ‘suggesting great strength and power for its size.’ The breed can probably be summed up best though as a kind of hellhound on steroids. XL Bullies seem to have a

Thursday

Debbie Hayton

Labour’s dangerous pledge to ban conversion therapy

An incoming Labour government will enact legislation that could prevent gender-questioning children getting the help they need to come to terms with their biological sex. That is the only conclusion it is possible to draw from Labour’s manifesto, released this morning, which says:  Labour’s approach is wishful thinking at best, and reckless abandon at worst ‘So-called conversion therapy is abuse – there is no other word for it – so Labour will finally deliver a full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices, while protecting the freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity.’ There is a glaring omission in this word salad. What actually is conversion therapy? If it is

Robert Adès

Why are students steered towards duff A-levels?

‘Women are more religious because they are socialised to be obedient and passive.’ ‘In Latin America, men often spend 20-40 per cent of the household’s income on alcohol, as well as further spending on tobacco, gambling and prostitutes.’ ‘The Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986 is an example of state-initiated corporate crime.’ All examples taken verbatim from the most common sociology A-level course book (by Napier Press) used by students for the AQA syllabus, the most commonly used exam board. They lack any qualifying language or citation but are presented as fact. Social justice warriors in training are taught that science is bad ‘because it has led to pollution’  Sociology

Nigel Biggar

Who dictates how we see the past?

Three weeks ago, I received an SOS from a distressed citizen of Glasgow, urging me to protest against a recently installed display at the Kelvingrove Museum, ‘Glasgow – City of Empire’. Predictably, the exhibition falls over itself to clock every conceivable association between the city and slavery, inviting the visitor to envisage appropriate reparations. Scraping the barrel of shame, it complains of one of Glasgow’s greatest benefactors, William Burrell, that ‘his business partners exploited enslaved Africans’. Enslaved Africans? Burrell was a shipping magnate around 1900, almost 70 years after slavery’s abolition in the British Empire and at least a generation after emancipation in the United States. As for the city’s

Louise Perry

The quiet return of eugenics

Here follows a non-exhaustive list of my genetic flaws. I am short-sighted, more so as I age. I have bunions, dodgy knees and even dodgier shoulders. I have asthma. My skin blisters easily. My hair started going grey when I was in my late teens. I have zero talent for foreign languages, running or music. I am prone to nightmares, as well as to depression and anxiety. Relatively mild flaws, as they go. But still, these aren’t traits I’m eager to pass on. Our three-year-old already shows a tendency for nightmares that sometimes makes me wince with guilt. Not that it’s my fault, of course. We don’t get to choose

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

There’s something very wrong with children’s history books

The first editor I worked for was Charles Moore and, like many of his old and ageing former staff, I still think of him as the boss. We’re like sleeper agents, the remaining skeleton crew of the old Daily Telegraph, ready to rise up at any moment and defend the right to hunt with hounds. I’m programmed to obey, so when Lord Moore recommended, in this magazine a few years ago, a series of out-of-print Ladybird history books for children written by a man called Lawrence du Garde Peach, I instantly bought the lot for my son: L. du Garde Peach on Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Kings Alfred,

The Spectator

Letters: could Nigel Farage ever be a statesman?

Debunking the debanking Sir: Toby Young is wrong to say the Conservatives have ‘failed us on debanking’ (No sacred cows, 8 June). On the contrary, this was a situation where immediately following his incident being brought to my attention, swift and decisive action was taken. The Free Speech Union was indeed ‘patient zero’ of the ‘debanking’ epidemiology and such was my concern about its chilling impact on freedom of expression that I invited Toby and Miriam Cates MP to meet me in my Treasury offices. Following that meeting, company bosses and financial regulators were summoned, a call for evidence to identify other cases launched, government expectations made crystal clear and

Natasha Feroze

The unlikely political resurrection of Keith Vaz

When Keith Vaz announced his ambition to stand as an independent for Leicester East in the general election, no one in my hometown was surprised. Vaz may be a joke nationally, known for a fondness for rent boys. But in Leicester East, he remains something of a local hero. It may seem astonishing to the rest of the country, but it’s quite possible that despite everything, come July, Vaz will make a triumphant return. An elderly woman lights upat the mention of his name: ‘He wanted to take my picture!’ Leicester was one of the first British cities to have a majority non-white population and its British Indians are a highly

Peter Jones

The Greeks were right: Trump shouldn’t live for revenge

Donald Trump’s book on business Think Big and Kick Ass makes taking personal revenge a very high priority. Given recent events in a US court, it will clearly be a priority if he wins the forthcoming election. For ancient Greeks, it was taken for granted that, if you were harmed by someone, it was your duty to get your own back. So Greeks regularly took their grievances into the public arena. The orator Demosthenes told a jury that, because he saw a man who had wronged him injuring the whole city, ‘I proceeded against him in the belief that I had got a suitable opportunity for defending the interests of

Douglas Murray

The trouble with calling everyone ‘far right’

There is a favourite Fleet Street story about the legendary Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie. While editing the paper, he discovered that his horoscope writer was recycling copy. He decided to dispense with her services in a letter that opened: ‘As you will no doubt have foreseen…’ You do not have to hold claims to being a mystic to predict certain things. The results of last week’s EU elections were easily predictable, as was the response from much of the British media. As I uncannily prophesied in last week’s column, the BBC’s Europe editor, Katya Adler, went with: ‘The far right is on the march.’ Elsewhere, she offered the claim that

Sam McPhail

Madrí wouldn’t fool a true Spaniard

Four years ago, Madrí didn’t exist. Today, the faux Spanish lager is sold in a quarter of British pubs, which makes it one of the fastest-growing beers of all time. ‘Madrí’ is the historic name for Madrid, which is peculiar for a beer brewed in Tadcaster – or Tada as the Anglo-Saxon mead-drinkers called it. Madrí has never been brewed in Spain, let alone Madrid. Yet it shares the same sanguine-red label of the real Spanish lagers, such as Estrella Galicia, Mahou (pronounced Mao) and Estrella Damm, which allows it to blend in with them on pub bars and supermarket shelves. ‘People think they are drinking a Spanish beer but

Toby Young Toby Young

Why an ex-Spectator editor told me to back Reform

When I told an ex-editor of this magazine that I was planning to write about why I’m voting for Reform he didn’t react as I expected. ‘For God’s sake, don’t write another of those more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger pieces,’ he said. ‘Make it a furious, tub-thumping endorsement of Nigel and his gang.’ When it comes to the ‘War on Woke’, Farage really means it – Rishi is all talk and no pedal pushers I should say at once that this wasn’t Boris Johnson – although he does want Nigel Farage to win in Clacton, apparently. Why? Because if Nigel becomes an MP it will make his takeover of the Tories a more realistic