Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Welfare rebellions, Glastonbury chants and Lucy Letby arrests

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, in the face of a rebellion by 120 backbenchers over the welfare bill, undertook to limit to new claimants restrictions on personal independence payments (Pip). Modelling by the Department for Work and Pensions predicted that 150,000 people might be pushed into ‘relative poverty’ by the revised welfare cuts, compared with 250,000 before. Still fearing defeat, the government made more last-minute concessions, postponing changes to Pip rules until after a review by Sir Stephen Timms, the disability minister. The government then won the second reading by 335 to 260, with 49 Labour MPs voting against. It was not clear that the eviscerated bill would

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

And now let’s bomb Glastonbury

A small yield nuclear weapon, such as the American W89, dropped on Glastonbury in late June would immediately remove from our country almost everybody who is hugely annoying. You would see a marked reduction in the keffiyeh klan, for a start, and all those middle-class Extinction Rebellion protestors would find, in a nanosecond, that their rebellion was pointless, because extinction had arrived even more summarily than they expected. Go on, glue yourselves to that, Poppy and Oliver. Street drummers, liberal politicians, provo vegans, radical rappers, spiritual healers, Billy Bragg, that bloke who owns Forest Green Rovers, druggies, tattooed blue-haired hags, almost the entirety of middle-class London – all evaporated. I

Wednesday

Debbie Hayton

No, British trans people aren’t at risk of ‘genocide’

The Supreme Court judgment on the definition of a woman on 16 April restored a degree of sanity to a world that was in danger of going mad. Even Keir Starmer now knows that a woman is a matter of biology rather than ideology. Can somebody please tell the Americans? Or, more precisely, those progressive types over the pond who like to concern themselves with other people’s business. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security is an American non-profit organisation that started out to address concerns about the situation in Iraq in the wake of Isis. The institute claims to connect ‘the global grassroots with the tools of

Toby Young Toby Young

Kneecap and Bob Vylan shouldn’t be prosecuted

So here’s the question I’ve been wrestling with since Bob Vylan chanted ‘Death, death to the IDF’ at Glastonbury at the weekend. Is Bob Vylan a ‘he’ or a ‘they’? I don’t mean a they/them, although that might be the case. I mean is Bob Vylan a person or a band? I keep seeing Bob Vylan referred to as ‘him’, including by the BBC, but a cursory Google search reveals that they are in fact a punk rap duo, with neither performer actually named Bob. Is the band’s name supposed to be a play on Bob Dylan? And if they’re embracing the word ‘vylan’, presumably a synonym for ‘villain’, they

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Nissan’s future looks bleak

Nissan has announced that hundreds of jobs will be cut at its Sunderland plant. The Japanese auto-maker said the lay-offs would be in the form of ‘voluntary redundancies’. The move is part of the beleaguered corporate behemoth’s plan to reduce its global workforce by 15 per cent following several disastrous years, not least because of slow demand for its fleet of electric cars. Some sympathy is due perhaps, at least for Nissan in the UK While the cuts only affect four per cent of the plant’s 6,000 workers, the question now is whether this is just the start. So serious is the state of Nissan’s finances – it announced losses

Tuesday

Christian Wolmar

The demise of the Royal Train was inevitable

The news that the Royal Train is heading for that great siding in the sky appears to be at odds with the monarch’s longstanding and keenly felt support for environmental causes. King Charles took up issues of sustainability long before they became fashionable and he even runs one of his Bentleys on biofuel. The timing does seem particularly bad – as this year celebrations are being held to mark the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. The train is only used very infrequently, not least because it is so expensive to move out of its shed at Wolverton near Milton Keynes. Is the King then

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Why is the BBC so obsessed with Munroe Bergdorf?

Can the BBC do anything right? Just days before it messed up spectacularly by failing to cut away from Bob Vylan’s offensive performance at Glastonbury, it released a podcast in which activist Munroe Bergdorf told listeners ‘how transitioning allowed her to discover love’. The BBC, the former broadcaster that’s now a HR department with some channels attached, is increasingly ladling up such tatty ‘content’. But this podcast episode – part of the ‘How To Be In Love’ series – marks a new, desperate low. ‘We are constantly told that trans people are an abomination,’ says Bergdorf. Really? Hosted by the amiable and intelligent Rylan Clark, whose wit and charm are,

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

It’s time for Pope Leo XIV to make some tough decisions

13 min listen

Nearly everyone loves Robert Prevost, the unassuming baseball fan from Chicago who unexpectedly became Pope Leo XIV this year. But as he prepares to spend his summer in Castel Gandolfo he has some difficult decisions to make. Is he prepared to clear up all the doctrinal confusion created by his predecessor Pope Francis? And will he allow liberal bishop to continue to persecute Catholics who prefer the ancient Latin form of Mass?  Damian Thompson gives us his thoughts in advance of Recovering the Sacred, a Spectator event at St Bartholomew-the-Great in the City of London on July 8 featuring debate and sacred music illustrating the recovery of tradition by a

Robert Taylor

Can Wimbledon learn to love Novak Djokovic?

It’s only when they get older and start losing that we start loving them. That’s how it was with John McEnroe. ‘Superbrat’ we used to call him in the early 80s, when he was pretty much unbeatable. But come the last years of that decade, and by then the underdog, fans were willing him on. Even if some in the Wimbledon crowd still haven’t forgiven him for posing as some kind of threat to public health they should surely now start appreciating his wonderful sporting talents while they have the chance It’s starting to be the same with an even greater player. The greatest of all time, in fact: Novak

James Graham

Why corporations won’t let Pride die

Pride month has finally come to an end. Did you notice? There has definitely been a reduction in the number of parades, banners, and flags this year. As Gareth Roberts wrote here, Pride has been damaged by its internal contradictions and the Supreme Court’s common-sense ruling on what a woman is. Why are brands still throwing money at charities promoting an ideology that the public rejects?r Still, hopeful as all this is, it seems that for some corporations, Pride still refuses to die. Whilst shopping I recently saw a jar of Marmite. Its label urged me to ‘Stand with Pride.’ The flag accompanying the statement included the transgender stripes, naturally.

Alexander Larman

The Royal Train’s retirement is a loss to Britain

King Charles is a man acutely aware that the monarchy has to be seen to provide value for money in these straitened times. Therefore, to coincide with the announcement that the royal household is to be given over £130 million of public money for the next two years to complete works on Buckingham Palace, it has been revealed that the cash-guzzling royal train is to be scrapped. It is true that, from any economic perspective, the regal locomotive does not represent a worthwhile investment; it only made two trips last year, each lasting two days, and the total cost was nearly £78,000. But the news that it will be decommissioned

Adam James Pollock

Northern Ireland is still paying a heavy price for Brexit

This week heralds the arrival in Northern Ireland of yet more overregulation, bureaucratic overreach, and political incompetence. No, Keir Starmer isn’t making an unannounced visit to Belfast. From this month, many thousands of food products imported from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will have to display warnings on their packaging highlighting that these goods are not to be brought into the European Union. The reason why is essentially a bungled Brexit deal for which thousands of businesses – and millions of customers – will pay the price. It is yet another reason for British firms to stop doing business in Northern Ireland The Windsor Framework – the result of the UK’s

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Adam Curtis: ‘modern power makes me cry’

Adam Curtis used to make TikToks but he doesn’t want to talk about them. ‘I did quite a lot of TikTok, privately,’ he says, ‘just under another name. They’re probably out there somewhere…’ His head rests in his hand and his elbow on the chair next to him, the two of us among pink flowers at the kitchen table in the Soho townhouse where he works. He looks at me and repeats: ‘They’re private.’ For 30 years Curtis has been making documentaries for the BBC about how Britain became a sad place, or, in his own words: ‘What happened after the Cold War, mixed in with a deeper sense of…

Monday

The Spectator

The Spectator presents: Living with a Politician

Exclusive to subscribers, watch our latest event Living with a Politician live.  Join Sarah Vine, (author of How Not to Be a Political Wife), with Michael Gove, Rachel Johnson (author of Rake’s Progress, her own odyssey as a political candidate) and Hugo Swire (whose wife Sasha wrote the bestselling Diary of an MP’s Wife) as they discuss the losses and laughter involved in being married to politics.

Danny Shaw

How did the BBC end up broadcasting Bob Vylan?

Until last weekend, Bob Vylan were not a household name. I admit that I had never heard of the rap group before. If you’d have asked me, I’d have said he’s a very famous folk-rock star whose name has been misspelt on the publicity material for Glastonbury.  But that really doesn’t matter – because I’m not producing the BBC television coverage of the festival. And whoever was in charge on Saturday should have made it their mission to know everything about all the acts that were going to be featured. Too many managers shy away from hard decisions, such as calling out poor behaviour and challenging sub-par performance BBC editors and

Robert Taylor

The state needs to chill out about the hot weather

Since the year dot, it’s got rather warm in southern England at some stage most summers. Not scorching. In recent years, it’s usually reached around 30-ish. Sometimes higher. A bit cooler than the sort of weather millions tolerate when they go to the Med on their hols. So, do we really need to be subjected to yet more panicky government heat alerts? The UK Health Security Agency, set up by Matt Hancock in 2021, has warned that ‘significant impacts are likely’, including death, among people aged 65 and over. As if entering a teaching your granny to suck eggs contest, the agency then informs us that ‘using fans, wearing loose

Alexander Larman

Take me back to Glastonbury

Judging by the coverage of this year’s Glastonbury festival, and the reaction in certain quarters, you would be forgiven for thinking that it was little less than a hard-left, Jew-hating Nuremberg rally. It is an impressive achievement to unite the government, led by the Prime Minister, and the opposition in blanket condemnation of two of the acts performing. But the groanworthily named ‘Bob Vylan’ – and the more up-and-at-‘em Kneecap – managed to raise their profiles far beyond what their mediocre music warrants by making various anti-Israel, pro-Palestine comments during their sets. Living up to the old adage that all publicity is good publicity, their streaming numbers promptly went through

Stephen Pollard

Why I hate Wimbledon

Here we go: two weeks of wall-to-wall coverage of the sport for people who hate sport. The most boring game ever invented, played by the most boring athletes, watched by the most boring audience, interpreted by the most boring commentators. In case the penny hasn’t dropped, I am of course describing Wimbledon, the only sporting occasion at which the most controversial issue is the cost of strawberries, and the only major competition in which key analysis focuses on the decibel count of female players hitting the ball. Nothing exemplifies better how Wimbledon is the sporting contest for people with no interest in sport than ‘Henman Hill’, a patch of grass

Sunday

Rory Hanrahan

Red tape is ruining Britain’s pubs

Takings were falling. Regulars were drifting away. Our pub was in a bad way. It was clear that things needed to change. But, paralysed by fear of an employment tribunal in a legal system tilted against employers, we felt trapped. If we sacked the managers and replaced them, we could find ourselves embroiled in a messy legal case that could cost us everything. So, drowning in paperwork, warnings, hearings, improvement plans, and risk assessments, we endured. Running a pub felt less like hospitality than surviving a siege of bureaucracy. That was when I saw it. This wasn’t just one bad incident. Our beloved pub was being strangled in red tape.

Alexander Larman

How the drive-thru took over Britain

Britain has received many things from America that we have little reason to be grateful for: Black Lives Matter, Instagram, the word ‘gotten’ – and the brief and unlovely period that Meghan Markle was a resident of this country. Yet one of the most enduring American imports is something that we no longer much notice: the drive-through – or ‘drive-thru’ – restaurant. The all-American tradition of stuffing yourself with burgers and fries while sitting in the comfort of your car is here to stay. Thanks, America There are now over 2,600 drive-thrus in Britain. A good number, of course, are McDonald’s – 1080, to be exact – but such is