Society

Thursday

Tibor Fischer

The Orban acolyte who became his fiercest critic

All sorts of people are grateful to Peter Magyar for bounding into the arena of Hungarian public life. Journalists, chiefly. Many a grizzled, lugubrious Hungarian hack had tears of gratitude welling as Magyar demolished the tedium and predictability of Hungarian party politics: Viktor Orban trampling a feeble collection of bunglers and chisellers, known as the opposition, again and again. Of course, the foreign correspondents were even more elated. Vilifying Orban? Step this way for your eulogy and hosannas, you smooth-talking cosmopolitan. Magyar is certainly deserving of attention; he’s fought a remarkable one-man blitzkrieg. In February, no one outside the halls of government knew who he was, and if they did,

Peter Jones

Our new MPs should read Cicero

It would make a pleasant change if every elected MP was to make it their ambition to be honestus, Latin for ‘honourable, moral, a person of integrity’. This brought a man high acclaim because by definition he would be useful, i.e. of benefit, to his country. So argued the statesman Cicero in his three-volume On Duties, composed over four frantic weeks in 44 bc, during the civil war and collapse of the Roman Republic after Julius Caesar’s assassination. In the first volume, Cicero identified the roots of moral integrity in man’s natural instincts and powers of reasoning. That turned him into a social being, while reason also instilled in him

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

History will judge Rishi Sunak kindly

Memorably sweeping statements tripping easily from the tongue have a habit of worming their way into assumptions we make and ending up as the judgment of history. The word ‘appeasement’ rather than the decisions Neville Chamberlain actually took have consigned the name of a defensible statesman to something approaching a term of abuse. ‘Milk snatcher’ did Margaret Thatcher immense damage. The ‘winter of discontent’ has become too easy a shorthand for the coinciding of deep-seated problems which Thatcher herself approached with great caution. I believe Sunak did a sterling job getting grown-up government back on its feet after Johnson and Truss ‘Dementia tax’ was an expression critically important in the

Dan Hitchens

Does Keir Starmer’s atheism matter?

Good Friday, 2021, at Jesus House For All Nations church in Brent, north-west London. Face masked, head bowed, hands clasped, Sir Keir Starmer stands alongside Pastor Agu Irukwu. The pastor opens his arms to invoke Almighty God. We hear Starmer in voiceover: ‘From rolling out the vaccine to running the local food bank, Jesus House, like many other churches across the UK, has played a crucial role in meeting the needs of the community.’ A nice video tribute for Easter, this. Good to see churches getting some recognition. A sign, perhaps, of the inclusive national unity a Labour government would foster.  By Easter Monday, Starmer has apologised, deleted the video

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Biden is as big a narcissist as Trump

The dullest assertion you can make about Donald Trump is that he’s a narcissist who has no interest in the American people and only cares about himself. Competent pundits don’t waste wordage on such an over-obvious observation. Less obvious, though more so since last week’s dog’s dinner presidential debate – in the aftermath of which dubbing the encounter ‘elder abuse’ went from droll witticism to exhausted cliché in a few hours – is that Joe Biden’s narcissism rivals Trump’s and may even exceed it. The Bidens’ decision to contest this race was arrogant and criminally oblivious to the country’s future Early in his 2020 run, Biden indicated to apparatchiks in

Douglas Murray

The Tories have only themselves to blame

I was amused the other week to read George Osborne’s Diary in this magazine. In it the man now in charge of giving away the British Museum’s collection recalled something John Major said to him in 1997. This was that the Conservative party ‘will never win while we remain in thrall to the hard right of our party’. It is news that the Conservative party ever was. Really this was a warning from Osborne that the centre-left tendencies of the Conservative party must be adhered to. Though it should be noted that there is a flaw at the source: citing John Major on electoral advice is like quoting a bankrupt

Arabella Byrne

Childcare is mothercare

When I was a small child, my mother left me in the charge of an elderly neighbour so that she could write. My grandmother lived far away in Scotland and no formal childcare existed. Still, my mother wanted to write. In bald economic terms, you could say that she was trying to rejoin the workforce to boost GDP and spare the state handouts. Forty years on, she doesn’t see it like that. ‘I needed to work to feel normal again – I didn’t want to go mad,’ she says, unapologetically. Had she been in the same predicament now, she could have looked forward to the welfare reforms that promise working

The Spectator

How much does it cost to hold a general election?

Canada’s Reformation This general election has been likened to the Canadian general election of 1993, when the Conservative party collapsed from 169 seats (a majority) to just 2 as its vote was split by a new party called the Reform party of Canada. Did it prove to be an extinction event? Neither party prospered in the following two elections: in 1997 the Conservatives won 20 seats and Reform 60; in 2000 their respective totals were 12 and 66. In 2003, however, they merged, with Reform leader Stephen Harper becoming leader of the combined party, known as the Conservative party of Canada. It won 99 seats in 2004. In 2006 it

Luke McShane

Hidden links

There is a sublime satisfaction in a good detective thriller. We will, of course, have accessed the same facts as our sharp-witted sleuth. The fleck of yellow paint on the raincoat meant little to us, as did the creaking door and the page missing from the notebook. But at last the alibi is dismantled, and from the tangle of contradictions emerges an elegant, coherent thread. Genius, they say, is seeing what everyone else sees and thinking what no one else has thought. On the chessboard, we also agree on many of the facts: this rook enjoys an open file, that bishop is pinning the knight. And much tactical reasoning is straightforward: ‘The

Luke McShane

No. 808

White to play. This is a variation from Gelbmann–Gyimesi, Hungary 1996. Black threatens mate with …Qh4 or …Qh3. How does White turn the tables? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 6 July. 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 Re1! (idea Ne5-c4+) Re8 2 Bxd6+ (not 2 Nc4+? Kd7 3 Rxe8 Rd1+) Kxd6 3 Nc4+ Kd7 4 Nxb6+ Kd8 5 Rxe8+ Kxe8 6 a5 and Black resigned Last week’s winner John Roaf, Enfield

Toby Young Toby Young

The funny side of being cancelled

Douglas Is Cancelled, the new drama series on ITV, should come with a trigger warning – for me, anyway. Watching it brought back memories of my own cancellation six years ago, which I found so traumatic that I lost half a stone. Admittedly, the middle-aged white man at the centre of this drama (Hugh Bonneville) only has one position to lose – he’s a television presenter – whereas I lost five. But apart from that the similarities are uncanny. Did the writer, Steven Moffat, read the 5,000-word piece I wrote about my experience? Or do all cancellations follow the same pattern? Douglas’s trial begins when someone on Twitter says they

Victoria Lane

Spectator Competition: Hearing things

In Competition 3356 you were invited to imagine a conversation between some objects that don’t normally talk. This was inspired by the funny/spooky ‘Green Candles’ by Humbert Wolfe (a popular poet in the 1920s and 30s), which ends with these sinister lines: ‘I know her little foot,’ grey carpet said: ‘Who but I should know her light tread?’ ‘She shall come in,’ answered the open door, ‘And not,’ said the room, ‘go out any more.’ The cutlery was quite chatty, as were the pots and kettles. It was a shame not to have room for, among others, D.A. Prince’s doormat/car key exchange, Alan Millard’s quarrelsome fish and chips, Jane Smillie’s

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

How Elon Musk could solve the housing crisis

People sometimes ask me why I don’t go into politics. Why on earth would I do that? No, if you want to exercise power and imagination, the only remaining role which appeals is to be some kind of Bond villain. To anyone familiar with modern bureaucracy, there’s something hugely attractive about an organisation where the HR department is replaced by a pool full of sharks. I think this fantasy largely explains why electorates are now drawn to candidates who seem a tiny bit sinister or weird. ‘Who knows?’ they think. ‘They might actually do something different.’ Never mind Trump: my guess is that if Elon Musk were eligible to run

Doc

2661: Spectrum

The unclued lights, four of two words, two individually or six pairs bear a common feature. One of the words does double duty, and another appears in two forms. Ignore three accents in the completed grid.         Across    1    Criminal having cheese biscuit that’s not bad (4-7)    7    Found in cage in tribunal (3) 13    You and I will get lost first with it becoming brighter than 39! (4-3) 16    G and S operas at hotel that’s amongst the greens (5) 17    Scottish challenge at the poultry farm, unendingly (6) 18    Scowl at cow? (5) 20    Rumour of waterway cut by road (6) 22    Small insect begins to

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: can you leave a party without saying goodbye?

Q. Often at parties strangers bear down on me looking excited and are then offended when I don’t recognise them. This is because I have never actually met them – they have just seen me on television and made the mistake of thinking we know each other. To say ‘I think you’re confused because you’ve seen me on television’ sounds patronising so I don’t. I then see their faces fall as I don’t ask the right questions and we go up conversational cul de sacs. Advice? – Name and address withheld A. Put them right gently by looking excited yourself and saying: ‘We’ve seen each other on television haven’t we?’ As

Bruce Anderson

The key to dealing with this election? Wine

An old friend phoned. Normally cheerful, he was fed up. One of his business partners was being more than usually incompetent. ‘I told him that I’d describe him as a halfwit, if I could find the half.’ We went on to discuss another couple of friends, both good men and true, who seem doomed to imminent parliamentary defenestration. By the end of lunch, we were thoroughly benign. I was persuaded I could endure a Labour government Then there was hunting: a passion. It survived for several years under the Blair government and it seemed clear Tony had no stomach for the ban, which was half-hearted. That witty and cynical fellow

Dot Wordsworth

Can a home really be forever?

Graham Norton’s latest novel ‘blends dark humour and emotional weight with ease’, says the Radio Times. That may well be, but it was the title that struck me: Forever Home. It seems to me a childish phrase, heard in the imagination in a high-pitched American accent, as perhaps in Boys Town (1938), which was Ronnie Kray’s favourite film. Forever home is all over the place. Ant Anstead, a television presenter, has, according to the Sun, ‘bought a 500-year-old farmhouse in Bedford for his parents and will transform it into their forever home’. Nothing lasts forever, and if my husband pegs out (which could happen any time, the way he goes

Flora Watkins

Gins in tins – the Yummy Mummy’s ruin

I’m writing this in my car, laptop on knees and a delicious can of Tanqueray Flor de Sevilla gin and tonic in the drinks holder, while my sons are at cricket practice. It’s an inclement evening, but were it a sunny summer’s day, the Yummy Mummies would be sprawled around the boundary in their Veja trainers and prairie dresses, pastel-coloured tins in hand, cackling and catching up like some Gen X version of Hogarth’s ‘Gin Lane’. Gins in tins are the acceptable form of ‘mother’s ruin’. First came Gordon’s G&T in a tin, followed by its pink gin, and now the chiller aisle contains more temptation than the Haribo shelves