Society

Saturday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson, Paola Romero, Stuart Jeffries, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, and Nicholas Farrell

35 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Damian Thompson argues that Papal succession plotting is a case of life mirroring art (1:26); Paola Romero reports on Venezuela’s mix of Evita and Thatcher, Maria Corina Machado, and her chances of bringing down Nicolas Maduro (11:39); reviewing Richard Overy’s book ‘Why war?’, Stuart Jeffries reflects that war has as long a future as it has a past (17:38); Ysenda Maxtone Graham provides her notes on party bags (24:30); and, Nicholas Farrell ponders on the challenges of familial split-loyalties when watching the football in Italy (27:25).  Presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The trouble with Adele

I remember a time when I didn’t object to Adele. Working-class in the increasingly posh world of popular music, always pretty but not a glamour girl in a profession where female singers are expected to be hyper-sexualised, she was prized for her voice more than her looks. That I might have referred to that voice as sounding like ‘a moose with the worst case of PMT ever’ is not important; these things are a matter of taste. Adele’s luxury grief has steadily grown over the years It feels as if Adele has always been with us; her first album was called 19 and she’s still only 36. Her success has

Friday

Andrew Tettenborn

Does Labour care about free speech on campus?

Universities fought tooth and nail against plans to impose fines if they failed to uphold freedom of speech. That proposal – contained in last year’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act – was one of the few things the Tory government could point to as a success. But under Labour the plan has been shelved. It’s a good day for universities; a bad day for anyone who cares about free speech on campus. This bleak episode neatly sums up Labour’s attitude to higher education Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said that the ministerial order, which was required to bring into force the relevant parts of the new law, would be delayed.

Niko Vorobyov

Could Kamala Harris end the war on weed?

Kamala Harris is the Democrats’ new hope for keeping Agent Orange out of the Oval Office. It’s probably for the best. Many younger, more progressive voters saw president Joe Biden as a dinosaur, a relic of a bygone era. Among other things, Biden was an old-school drug warrior who co-wrote the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which made the penalty for handling crack rocks a hundred times more severe than powder cocaine; the 1994 Clinton Crime Bill, which massively expanded the prison-industrial complex; and, in 2002, he proposed the Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act, which would have held party organisers liable for drugs consumed on their premises (this had the

Alexander Larman

Prince Harry will never win his war on the tabloids

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, according to the old adage; and so it stands that someone who you find generally objectionable can also, occasionally, be correct. Many people who would not count themselves fans of Prince Harry would find it hard not to sympathise with his ongoing campaign against more scurrilous elements of the tabloid press. As a new ITV documentary, Tabloids On Trial, suggests, the media’s actions amounted to a horrendous invasion of privacy for Harry and many others in the public eye over a period of years. Yet, as ever, it is considerably harder to sympathise with him than it is the other victims, purely

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Macron’s Olympic delusion

All the world’s a stage and the Olympic Games in Paris is the greatest stage of all for the comedian president. Emmanuel Macron declared a political truce amidst the political nervous breakdown of France, so that his show could go on. The opening ceremony spectacle last night culminated in Macron declaring the Games open and the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. The president ordered Thomas Jolly, his personally selected director, to outdo London 2012. Off stage, France is in crisis. France doesn’t have a real government. There’s no calculus showing how one might even be possible in a fractured new National Assembly of more than a dozen factions who loathe each other. The left and

Thursday

Jawad Iqbal

Don’t rush to judgement on the Manchester Airport police video

A video of an armed police officer kicking and stamping on a man’s head has plunged Greater Manchester Police (GMP), the country’s second largest force, into crisis. The incident at Manchester Airport on Tuesday night has led to widespread condemnation. Protestors have gathered outside Rochdale police station, with some in the crowd chanting: ‘GMP shame on you’. The footage showed a uniformed officer holding a Taser over a man lying on the floor before kicking him twice An officer has been suspended and the force has referred itself to the policing watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct. Feelings are understandably running high locally, but investigators must be allowed time

James Innes-Smith

The descent of Jordan Peterson

What on earth has happened to Jordan Peterson’s interviewing style? His latest video, which features Elon Musk, lasts for two hours. It makes for painful viewing. As during many of his recent podcasts, Peterson interrupts his guest’s train of thought with his own, often long-winded, asides. Peterson’s flashy outfit only added to the feeling that it is as much about him as the guest. I started following the professor a few years ago while researching my book on modern masculinity. Back then, his arguments were fascinating. At the height of his fame, I interviewed him for this magazine and was impressed by his considered responses. Peterson seemed genuinely interested in ideas

Nicholas Farrell

I still support England. What’s wrong with me?

There was not a Spaniard in sight, I was pretty sure of that. But I was surrounded by the enemy, nevertheless. Naturally, the enemy included my Italian wife, Carla. We were at the open-air restaurant for the Euro 2024 final in one of the two village campsites not far from the nudist beach. If England beat Spain, I would have a plausible excuse to break out the booze after being on the wagon for far too many months and get patriotically sloshed. I knew that none of those gathered in front of the giant TV screen beneath the stars could be from Spain, because the Spanish do not come to

Melissa Kite

Me vs the plumber

My one finished bathroom featured a sink so small I could only wash one hand in it at a time, as water spilled over the edge. ‘For heaven’s sake!’ I exclaimed, while I stood in the newly installed en suite to the main bedroom, which had somehow got smaller since it was renovated while I was away on a trip. ‘The shower’s amazing,’ said the builder boyfriend nervously, turning the lever to let out an impressive jet of scalding hot water. The new system, with its swanky DeJong cylinder hooked up to two giant water tanks in an outhouse connected to a high-tech pump to drive water around the big

Robin Oakley

Has there ever been a jockey like Oisin Murphy?

We are blessed these days with a rare stream of jockey talent including the likes of William Buick, Ryan Moore, Tom Marquand and Rossa Ryan. Well clear of the pack though in the chase for the jockeys championship is former champion Oisin Murphy, and five minutes in the winners’ enclosure rather than on the track left me convinced at Newbury last Saturday that if I still had shares in a horse, Oisin would be the one I’d want riding it – and not just because of the two trebles he notched up last week. Successful trainer Hugo Palmer wasn’t in evidence but surrounded by a gaggle of owners after the

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

The joy of party bags

The perfect, unpretentious, well-constructed party bag was given to guests leaving a recent Hatchards party. It contained a wedge of farmhouse cheddar and box of cheese biscuits from Paxton & Whitfield, a bottle of good white wine and an elegant hardback copy of Lucky Jim. The next evening, I tucked into all of these simultaneously, feeling spoilt, and meditating on how much nicer they were than some of the tat my children used to bring home from birthday parties in white polythene bags: a slice of synthetic birthday cake oozing its jam on to tadpole-sized balloons (which wouldn’t inflate, however hard you blew) and a polystyrene aeroplane whose wing broke

Paola Romero

Evita meets Thatcher: the woman fighting Venezuela’s autocracy

Maria Corina Machado is showing the world how opposition politicians can fight an autocrat. When President Nicolas Maduro tried to thwart her campaign by banning her from taking domestic flights, she drove between her rallies on a motorcycle. When he then banned her from running as a candidate in Venezuela’s presidential election, which takes place this Sunday, she found a retired diplomat to run as her proxy. Without even being on the ballot, she may bring down Maduro’s socialist regime. Machado mixes the crowd-pulling allure of Evita Peron with the politics of Margaret Thatcher Venezuela is used to left-wing populists whipping up crowds by railing against America, the rich and

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Olympics on steroids: the millionaire behind the Enhanced Games

Aron D’Souza likes to celebrate the new year with Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist billionaire who is good friends with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. ‘Before Peter had kids, we’d go on these holidays around the world. Small group of us. Gay, tech, venture capital, founder-types,’ says D’Souza, an Australian businessman. ‘It’s quite a close-knit little community.’ Lately, because of the kids, they’ve partied at Thiel’s place, an $18 million compound on a man-made island off Miami’s turquoise coast. In December 2022, days before Thiel’s annual party, D’Souza came up with the idea of an ‘Enhanced Games’. The Olympics – but all the athletes dope. ‘That’s what I do over

The Spectator

Letters: You can grow to hate Wagner

Disappearing England Sir: Rod Liddle’s reference to Labour’s intention to build 1.5 million new houses (‘The great bee-smuggling scandal’, 13 July), even though there is not a shortage, leads one to worry where they will be located. The green belt was introduced for London in 1938 and the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 extended powers with local authorities for self-designation. In 1937, John Betjeman wrote for one of his BBC talks: ‘England is disappearing and there is growing up, where the trees used to be and where the hills commanded blue vistas, another world that does not seem to be anything to do with England at all. This

Hannah Moore

The rise of the ‘divorce influencer’

On Woman’s Hour recently, Anita Rani and her guests set out to celebrate the positive sides of a woman’s midlife. Forget the crisis: your forties and fifties could instead be a time for change, a refresh. You could take up a new hobby, they said, or a new exercise regime. Or you could get a divorce! What’s alarming is that this sort of discussion isn’t unusual. I regularly spot articles in newspapers and on social media that talk about divorce as if it’s just the latest wellness trend. They usually go like this: a middle-aged woman walks out on a long marriage and insists that she’s never been happier, that

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Why Elon Musk is right to leave California

Not long before Joe Biden finally accepted defeat, Gavin Newsom, the 56-year-old governor of California, was on the stump for him in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, shirt undone two daring buttons, sleeves rolled up, silver hair gelled just so. Newsom, who is now being mentioned as Kamala Harris’s running mate, models himself on Bill Clinton. People who’ve worked with him say he practises Clintonian gestures in the mirror, though the look he’s achieved is more Harley Street gynaecologist. How can Gavin Newsom sleep knowing he’s encouraged children to think of their parents as the enemy? ‘If Donald Trump succeeds, God help us, we will roll back the last half-century,’ Newsom told

Peter Jones

What Plato could teach Just Stop Oil

Just Stop Oil is complaining about laws preventing their particular form of antisocial protests. It is all part of a feeling that our world is sinking under the weight of legal rulings. Even Plato had doubts about what laws were for. In his perfect state, Plato made education the key to everything. Its purpose, he claimed, should be to inculcate habits appropriate to age that would last a lifetime, e.g. as small children, being silent in the presence of their elders, giving up their seats to them, keeping themselves looking neat and tidy. But the last thing that was needed was to make laws about them. So too when it

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

My shameful shortcut to perfect pesto

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been… too long since my last confession. Picture the scene. I am in the kitchen, almost literally spinning plates. I should have been focusing, prioritising the bits that needed to get done, keeping an eye on the clock. Instead I’ve been mucking about, making an unnecessary batch of cookies, re-testing some buns that almost certainly didn’t need it, but I fancied baking. And I’ve lost track of time. Emerald, gleaming with oil, slightly textured and bursting – bursting – with flavour I’d volunteered to do lunch earlier in the day when my husband had mentioned that he was in back-to-back meetings

Toby Young Toby Young

The intersectional feminist rewriting the national curriculum

The appointment of Becky Francis CBE to lead the Department for Education’s shake-up of the national curriculum is typical of Labour’s plan to embed their ideology across our institutions – or rather entrench it, since the long march is almost complete. On the face of it, Professor Francis is ‘unburdened by doctrine’, to use Sir Keir Starmer’s phrase about how Labour intends to govern. As former director of the Institute of Education and current CEO of the Education Endowment Foundation, she has the outward appearance of a technocrat. But scratch the surface and, like so many Labour appointees, she emerges as a long-standing adherent of left-wing identity politics. After earning