Society

Saturday

David Shipley

Britain still doesn’t have a blasphemy law

There are still some good judges left in England. Yesterday, one of them, Sir Joel Nathan Bennathan KC, granted Hamit Coskun’s appeal against his conviction for burning a Koran. Justice Bennathan began his decision with a forthright defence of ancient English liberties stating that ‘there is no offence of blasphemy in our law’. The judge is right, no matter how much some in the Crown Prosecution Service might wish otherwise. We should be honest – this was an attempt to create a backdoor blasphemy law under which publicly disrespecting the religious preferences of Muslims would have become a crime For, as the appeal decision says, while the CPS ‘accept that there

Paul Burke

My brief career as an ‘Eye in the Sky’ airborne reporter 

I was watching Slow Horses the other night and as usual, there was some sort of terrorist-related mayhem which had brought London to a standstill. But there was also a little anachronism. Hovering over the gridlocked traffic was a light aircraft, once commonly known as an ‘Eye in the Sky’ that used to fly above London in the morning rush hour to report on the traffic for local radio stations. They haven’t been a thing for about 25 years but when Heart first started in the mid-90s, I was their airborne traffic reporter.  I’d always loved radio and had foolishly imagined that this might be the way to get my broadcasting career off

Arabella Byrne

Padel is a disgrace

Why the hell not? I thought to myself as a friend invited me for a game of padel at her Oxfordshire members’ club, the grotesquely baroque Estelle Manor. As a self-confessed tennis head, I thought this might have the same feel of the restrained geometry and simmering tension of the tennis court that I have spent a lifetime admiring. I imagined a game close to squash but with the lightness of ping pong and the clipped etiquette of tennis. How wrong I was. Padel, I am sorry to say, is a disgrace. Not simply because it apes tennis in unfortunate ways, but because it is deeply uncivilised, like a dinner party with paper plates. Doubles players grunt and lurch around holding carbon fibre bats that look like squashed colanders, and the scoring has none of

Liz Walsh

No wonder the Irish hate Netflix’s House of Guinness

Beer, Brits, and bad language are the few culturally accurate elements of the new Netflix series, House of Guinness. Loved by American and UK critics, hated by Irish critics, the series on the battle for control of the iconic Irish Guinness family brewery in 19th-Century revolutionary Ireland has sharply divided opinion. Are we Irish an over-sensitive lot? A ‘steampunk Mr. Tayto’ or a ‘rollicking retelling’ of an Irish version of Succession sums up the extent of the divide. The eight-part drama debuted with an 89 per cent audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a five-star review from the Guardian. But to Irish critics, House of Guinness is historically inaccurate, stereotypical

Lois McLatchie Miller

Taylor Swift has shattered feminism’s fragile lie

Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, has done more than dominate the charts. It’s reignited one of the oldest – and fiercest – battles in modern womanhood. Once again, the pop icon has found herself cast as both heroine and heretic in the (pop) culture war’s endless inquest into what women should want. In The Tortured Poets Department, the mask began to slip as Swift tore into her non-committal ‘forever-boyfriend’ But this time, the controversy isn’t over her style or sound. It’s over something far more dangerous in 2025: her desire for love, marriage, and children. Swift’s confession in track five, ‘Eldest Daughter’ – ‘When I said I didn’t believe in marriage, that was a lie’ – has startled her audience. In a single

Friday

Laurie Wastell

The Hamit Coskun appeal is a victory for free speech

The conviction of Hamit Coskun of a public order offence for burning a Quran has today been overturned by Southwark Crown Court. It’s a vital victory for free speech in the UK, as well as for Mr Coskun, and the National Secular Society and the Free Speech Union, which defended him. It’s a mark of the embattled state of free expression in Britain that it ever came to this point In February, Hamit Coskun had gone to the Turkish Consulate in Knightsbridge with a copy of the Quran and burnt it, while shouting, ‘Islam is religion of terrorism’. A Muslim man, Moussa Kadri, then emerged from a nearby building and

Eliot Wilson

A judge has finally seen sense over the SAS’s ambush of three IRA men

It didn’t take long for a judge to deliver his withering verdict on a judicial review application into the use of SAS force in an IRA ambush. The legal challenge over the killing of three Provisional IRA (PIRA) men in June 1991 was described as ‘utterly divorced from reality’ by Mr Justice McAlinden. At the High Court in Belfast, McAlinden pulled no punches: Three PIRA terrorists drove a stolen car from Moneymore, County Londonderry, to Coagh in order to murder a soldier ‘This Court is being asked to slow the passage of time down, to analyse events in freeze-frame and to address the issue of absolute necessity in slow-motion… It

Sam Goodman

Britain should be wary of BYD, China’s EV powerhouse

From Thailand to Brazil, a surge of imports from Chinese electric vehicle (EV) producer BYD has the familiar pattern of being followed by the destruction of domestic automotive jobs. The UK is unlikely to be the exception. This week’s news that Britain has become the number one market for BYD should ring alarm bells. Our domestic automotive producers, that have already announced thousands of job losses this year, are unlikely to emerge unharmed. BYD increased its sales in the UK by 880 per cent in September For two years, analysts and policymakers have warned of the economic risk Chinese EVs pose to the legacy automotive industry through a new wave of deindustrialisation and

Druin Burch

Can the NHS’s anti-Semitism problem be fixed?

The NHS has an anti-Semitism problem, and Wes Streeting wants to fix it. This week he announced plans to ‘make it easier to kick racists out of the NHS’. Policing hate is already the job of regulators, and systems that depend on judgement and restraint rarely benefit from political tinkering. Streeting’s move comes partly in response to Dr Rahmeh Aladwan, who has said the UK is ‘totally occupied by Jewish supremacy’ and has repeatedly published social media posts which appear to celebrate October 7th. She has said Israelis are ‘worse than Nazis’ and endorsed comments describing public outrage over the Manchester synagogue killings as ‘racism and Jewish supremacism’ – which was ‘Western civilisation’.

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

What will the Israel haters do now?

Normal people are cheering the prospect of peace in Gaza. Some might even raise a glass to Donald Trump for his valiant efforts to end this horrible war Hamas started. But there are others who will be feeling forlorn. The anti-Israel mob, to be specific. Won’t you spare a thought for this tragic community that built its entire personality around hating Israel – what are they going to do now? There is an eerie silence in anti-Israel circles There is an eerie silence in anti-Israel circles this morning. The people who spent the past two years hollering ‘Ceasefire now!’ seem strangely downbeat about the prospect of a ceasefire. No doubt

Kristina Murkett

State school kids will pay for Labour’s International Baccalaureate crackdown

It appears that Labour is determined to ensure that choice in education is only for those who can afford it. The government has just announced that it is slashing funding for the International Baccalaureate (IB) in state schools, meaning the qualification may now only be offered in the private sector. What choice do parents of these children now really have? Just like the mid-year cancelling of the Latin Excellence Programme, this is yet another example of Labour’s utilitarian fear of excellence and difference. The IB Diploma differs from A-levels in that it is a much broader course: rather than studying three subjects post-16, pupils study six. English, Maths and a modern language are compulsory,

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Jewish fear, ‘the elimination of motherhood’ & remembering Jilly Cooper

25 min listen

The Spectator’s cover story this week looks at ‘the fear’ gripping Jewish people amidst rising antisemitism. Reflecting on last week’s attack in Manchester, Douglas Murray says that ‘no-one in the Jewish community was surprised’ – a damning inditement on Britain today. How do we tackle religious intolerance? And is there room for nuance in the debate about Israel and Palestine?  Host Lara Prendergast is joined by the Spectator’s US editor Freddy Gray, associate editor – and host of our religious affairs podcast Holy Smoke – Damian Thompson and commissioning editor Mary Wakefield. As well as the cover, they discuss: how biological innovations are threatening motherhood; the views of the new – and first

Thursday

Catriona Olding

What’s wrong with ‘over-testing’ for prostate cancer?

According to a recent study at Oxford, celebrity prostate cancer awareness campaigns have contributed to the over-testing of white, wealthy men from the south of Britain for PSA – prostate-specific antigen, a marker used in the diagnosis of the disease. This over-testing, the Oxford academics say, has led to unnecessary treatment, harm to individuals and expense for the NHS. My late husband, Jeremy Clarke, would still be here if he’d been offered a test at 50. He was diagnosed at 56 after he got up one morning unable to pee. His PSA at diagnosis was 38 and his cancer had spread to three lymph nodes. Once the cancer has spread,

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Prize for his Hamas-Israel deal

In confirming the Israel-Hamas peace deal on Truth Social last night, Donald Trump referenced the seventh Beatitude from the Gospel of Matthew: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.’ Trump has been called a lot of things, many of them words you won’t find in the Bible, but could his next monicker be Nobel laureate? Even some of Trump’s critics, among whom I count myself, see a case for awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize The Gaza war did not begin on his watch and it was not the backdrop to his second term that he wished for. Trump II has been much more

Zoe Strimpel

The inevitable downfall of Salt Bae

Nusret Gökçe, the Turkish social media sensation known as Salt Bae, has a restaurant empire built around the fan base for his incredibly expensive planks of steak; £680 for a wagyu strip loin, for instance, skirt steak for £380 and gold-gilded baklava for £50. Based in London at the Knightsbridge restaurant Nusr-Et, Salt Bae tried to expand in the US to big fanfare, opening restaurants in New York, Beverly Hills, Boston and Miami in the late 2010s. But it seems that Salt Bae has fallen out of step with the times and his US expansion is crumbling. The American business reported losses of £5.4 million in the last tax year. Having opened seven

Chas Newkey-Burden

Why you shouldn’t travel with your pets

Transport for London is refusing to take down a social media video which encourages owners to take their cats on the tube network. The unhinged Instagram video shows two owners taking their cats on an escalator, in a lift and on a train, with the slogan: ‘This is your sign to start travelling with your pet around London.’ It’s true that most dogs emerge from flights unscathed but what sort of owner wants to even risk it? The charity Cats Protection asked TfL to take down the video, complaining that it’s ‘apparently normalising’ taking cats on the underground. ‘Busy stations and crowded Underground platforms with loud and sudden noises’ should

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

JK Rowling, Mia Khalifa and the delusion of the pro-Palestine mob

When an Islamist attack on a synagogue in my home city of Manchester left two dead, I responded by writing about the failure of some parts of the pro-Palestine movement to distance themselves from Jew hate. I switched on my phone and found that my X feed had gone haywire It was a leftish argument, I thought. I condemned racist murders – in this case the racist murders of Jews. (And the left – indeed any sane person – is against that, aren’t they?). I pointed out that the anti-Israel demonstrators, who have filled the streets for two years did not cancel their protests as a mark of respect for the dead

Mark Palmer

My personalised number plate is worth more than my car

A poll has confirmed what most people know already – personalised number plates are vulgar, divisive and a complete waste of money. As my friend William Sitwell wrote in the Telegraph: ‘Having a personalised number plate is a self-proclaimed label of rich, smug self-satisfaction and bad taste.’ I could not agree more. The only problem is that I am the proud owner of a personalised number plate and wouldn’t part with it for all the money in the world – or, rather, let’s say it would have to be at least six figures with a two at the start.  That’s because 1CMG has been in my family for 60 years.

The Spectator

Letters: Why shouldn’t we eat swan?

Zero chance Sir: In Tim Shipman’s wide-ranging article on Kemi Badenoch (‘I have a lot of self-belief’, 4 October), she claims that net zero has become just a slogan and that we can’t tackle climate change alone. In that she is right, but she fails to recognise that unless we can be seen to be world leaders in reducing emissions, then we will never be in a place to lecture other countries – many of whom just want what we have already had. By being the ‘goody-two-shoes’ in the fight against climate change, we will have the very best chance of bringing the rest of the world with us, without

Toby Young Toby Young

Greta Thunberg and the ship of hate

I was amused to read about the spat that broke out on Greta Thunberg’s flotilla between conservative Muslims and members of the LGBTQ+ community. According to newspaper reports, the convoy stopped in Tunisia on its way to Gaza and picked up a self-described ‘communist queer militant’, along with other gay activists. This led to the departure of several devout Muslims. ‘Why involve these dubious activists serving other agendas that do not concern us and have nothing to do with Gaza?’ said one of the aggrieved participants. Linking the plight of Palestinians to every other woke cause is relatively new Why indeed? The surprise isn’t that this unlikely coalition fractured somewhere