Society

Saturday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Brighton shows why you shouldn’t vote Labour

I surely wasn’t the only citizen of Brighton and Hove who breathed a sigh of relief when the Green council was turfed out by Labour last May after years of misrule. To be fair, it had been a bit of a semi-farcical pass-the-parcel situation for quite some time. Labour caved to the Greens in the summer of 2020 after the leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, Nancy Platts, wrote to her team to tell them they were handing over power ‘in the interests of democracy and the city’. Regrettably, there was also the taint of allegations of anti-Semitism that had come to surround the Labour council, though she obviously

Andrew Tettenborn

Why is the UN sticking up for Just Stop Oil protestors?

Do you remember when you couldn’t get your child to school on time because of a Just Stop Oil slow march? Or when you got gridlocked on the M25 because someone had draped themselves over one of the gantries? There’s a man from the United Nations who, it seems, rather likes the idea of us going back to those times. Michel Forst, a French UN functionary with the grand title of ‘special rapporteur on environmental defenders (Aarhus convention)’, published a two-page report this week following a brief visit to London. In it, he referred to ‘extremely worrying information’ about Britain’s ‘increasingly severe crackdowns on environmental defenders’, by which he meant

David Abulafia

The danger of returning the Ghanaian ‘Crown Jewels’

I put the case in last week’s Spectator that museums in this country have been gripped by a sort of infectious madness. Since I wrote that article the number of cases of museumitis has piled up further, and there are worrying signs that the infection is spreading into Europe. It has been announced that 32 of the Ghanaian ‘Crown Jewels’ are to be sent from the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum to Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the current king of the Asante, to be exhibited in the Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi. The idea is to put them on exhibition there for three years, after which

Friday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Does Trump have evangelical Christians to thank for his second coming?

23 min listen

Donald Trump now seems certain to be the Republican presidential candidate in this year’s US presidential elections. That’s a prospect that horrifies liberal America and quite a few other Americans besides. The former president secured overwhelming support from evangelical Christians in Iowa and New Hampshire and some commentators are speculating that we’re seeing a resurgence of the so-called ‘religious right’. Does he have born-again Christians to thank for his astonishing progress so far? In this episode of Holy Smoke my guest is Ryan Burge, the American political scientist whose Graphs on Religion substack is an authoritative guide to religious allegiance and voting patterns. You may be surprised by what he has to

Jawad Iqbal

Jurgen Klopp’s departure is a disaster for Liverpool

The news that the Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp is to quit his job at the end of the season is a bombshell. No one expected it, not right now, nor anytime soon. The questions will come thick and fast, with all kinds of daft conspiracy theories about what is really behind his departure not too far behind. Football is like that.  Klopp’s decision to go comes shortly after Liverpool qualified for the final of the Carabao Cup. It is all the more unexpected because he completed a major rebuild of the playing squad last summer (usually something that suggests the coach has the long-term in mind), and Liverpool are currently

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Israel shows why conscription works

Take a step back and it’s a no-brainer: If you want a healthy society, you need a spirit of unity. As we saw in London during the Blitz – often romanticised for its fabled ability to ‘pull together’ – if citizens feel they are part of a national family, they can maintain their morale even in the face of great adversity. The same is true in modern times. It must surely be the case that, the more people feel a meaningful part of a nation, the less alienation, disenfranchisement, discrimination and resentment there will be. Deaths of despair from drug abuse or suicide will reduce, as will poverty, depression and

Steerpike Steerpike

Andrew Neil: it would be absurd for the UAE to own The Spectator

Last night The Spectator’s chairman, Andrew Neil, spoke for the first time about the sale of this magazine and the Telegraph newspaper to Redbird IMI, an entity run by the former head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, and backed financially by the United Arab Emirates. In November last year, the government issued a Public Interest Intervention Notice, halting the sale process until Ofcom, the media regulator, and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigate. They are due to report back to the government today, which could then decide to block the sale entirely. You can watch the full video here – a transcript is below: Speaking on Newsnight ahead of the government’s response, Andrew Neil branded the

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why are doctors being threatened for reporting late-term abortions?

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) this week threatened to use punitive measures against doctors who report late-term abortions to the police.  Normally, medics have to respect patient confidentiality, but they can report individuals if it’s in the public interest. But now the college is saying in its latest guidance that any medic who reports their concerns to police must ‘justify’ the disclosure of patient data or else could face ‘fitness to practise’ investigations. The RCOG’s president Dr Ranee Thakar said it’s ‘never in the public interest’ to investigate or prosecute these cases. Where a foetus is capable of surviving outside the womb, we’re talking about a very unpleasant reality That’s plainly

George Llewelyn

Barbie’s Oscars snub isn’t sexist

Not for the first time, Hillary Clinton is outraged. Reacting to the news that Barbie star, Margot Robbie, and the film’s director, Greta Gerwig, missed out on Oscar nominations, Clinton sent a message to the pair: ‘Greta & Margot, while it can sting to win the box office but not take home the gold, your millions of fans love you. You’re both so much more than Kenough.’ But the truth is that sexism isn’t to blame for the decision to snub Barbie. The reason Barbie won’t be picking up many gongs at the Oscars is that it just isn’t a very good film. The way Barbie deals with its central feminist conceit is

Arash Azizi

Airstrikes won’t stop the Houthis’ Red Sea attacks

It was less than two weeks ago that the US and UK introduced a new element to the multi-faceted conflict in the Middle East. On 12 January they carried out joint strikes against the Houthis, a militia that controls Yemen’s capital Sanaa and large parts of Yemeni territory and is recognised as the country’s government by its main backer, Iran. The UK and US strikes came in response to weeks of Houthi attacks on ships passing through the Red Sea. The militia claimed its attacks were in response to Israel’s assault on Gaza but in practice it was targeting any and all shipping in the area as well as US

Alexander Larman

The hubris of Harry and Meghan’s Jamaican photoshoot

What is it like to be Prince Harry? Spare gave us a peerless insight into the unhappy, loveless life of a frustrated young man who was saved from a downward spiral into depression and addiction by the intervention of a saintly actress from Suits – for which we must all surely be grateful. But it increasingly seems as if everything that Harry does in the public domain is dictated by a mixture of hubris and aggression. Every photoshoot and every public statement is tinged with some underlying meaning. His latest stunt is no exception. On Tuesday night, Harry and Meghan were photographed with Andrew Holness, the prime minister of Jamaica,

Jawad Iqbal

Is Saudi Arabia softening its booze ban?

Saudi Arabia, an Islamic nation where drinking alcohol is strictly forbidden, is to get its first official liquor store. There’s just one catch: only foreign diplomats will be able to buy booze there. The store in the capital Riyadh’s Diplomatic Quarter will remain off-limits to Muslims and, needless to say, ordinary Saudis. For a handful of lucky diplomats, the shop’s opening will spell an end to having to import alcohol via a diplomatic pouch or sealed official package. Yet the purchase of their favourite tipple won’t be straightforward. They will need to apply for clearance through a mobile app administered by Saudi officials. There will also be strict limits on how much

Max Pemberton

Beware the ‘K Hole’

Go to any nightclub and, if you know what to look for, you will see people on ketamine. You can spot them because, unlike those who have taken ecstasy or cocaine, they stand nearly motionless, struggling to move. They appear lost in a self-inflicted paralysis. This is called a ‘K-hole’– a state induced when ketamine is taken in large doses, causing a person to slip into a dissociative state. It can be terrifying: they are temporarily unable to interact, and even move. Users feel separated from their body and reality. Time is grossly distorted: hours passing can feel like a few minutes. Anyone who works in A&E will see people

The Spectator

Letters: Jesus was a wine connoisseur 

Benefits of abstinence Sir: In last week’s Spectator, I turned to the cover piece ‘Dry Britain’ first because I stopped drinking alcohol last January. However, contrary to the demographic expectations of your article, I am a not-young 58-year-old. My abstinence is not based on a moral position, nor fear of an appearance on TikTok, but on the fact that three people I knew of my age and younger sadly passed away in the past year. One was directly due to the effects of alcohol, and in the other two cases alcohol was a likely factor. A year ago I was relatively fit, healthy and slim in comparison to the majority

Peter Jones

What’s wrong with populism?

As elections approach and arguments become more strident, the term ‘populism’ becomes more and more thrown about, as if it is a bad thing, a form of demagoguery. But what populists do is to represent themselves as champions of ‘real’ people whose interests are completely ignored by the elite. What can be wrong with that? Let the ancient Greeks help out. In Greek, dêmagôgos was a neutral term meaning ‘leader of the people’, and in this sense was used of Pericles (d. 429 bc). But it could be used to describe a rabble rouser. The most famous example was Cleon (d. 422 bc), described by the historian Thucydides (who hated him)

Rachel Johnson

Princess Anne and Kate Moss: the best of British style

At first I didn’t realise it was Fashion Week. In Paris, there are always androgynous men in kilts stalking the boulevards and straggle-haired waifs who’ve forgotten their skirts rushing from one shoot to another, but there did seem to be more men with nose rings and Louis Vuitton city-shorts prancing about than usual. We passed a crowd of black-clad votaries standing in the icy lemon sunshine on the Avenue George V. I asked a photographer what they were waiting for. ‘Le défilé de Givenchy,’ he snapped, as if only a fool could be unaware it was the third day of Menswear Paris Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2024-25. At least he did

Quentin Letts

The customer is never right

Penny Mordaunt, who carried her sword with such panache at the coronation, has called for 2024 to become the year we ‘make the consumer the king again’. I like Mordaunt. You should see the way she demolishes her Labour and Scots Nats counterparts in the Commons. But with her call for customers to be treated as monarchs, she may face an unwinnable battle. Businesses regard customers not as kings but as potential muggers, racists and a thoroughly dodgy lot. ‘Le client n’a jamais tort,’ said the hotelier César Ritz (d.1918), and he made a fortune. The more common attitude among today’s business owners, particularly in London, is that le client

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Is it wrong to track my child?

One evening a few weeks ago, I was pottering about alone when I became aware of a feeling of great relief, of joy almost, without quite knowing why. When you spend every waking moment with a seven-year-old, it often feels euphoric to be alone, but that wasn’t it. By mistake, I’d left my phone behind, but that wasn’t quite it either. It wasn’t that I couldn’t be contacted, I realised, so much as that I couldn’t be tracked. My iPhone, with its inbuilt GPS, was at home logging only its own dismal existence. The ‘Find My Friends’ function, which, at my family’s request I keep switched on, was defunct. I

Owen Matthews

Ukraine’s new strategy hits Russia where it hurts

Ukraine is fighting not one but two hot wars against Russia. The first, a conventional, bloody land war along an 810-mile front line, has descended into stalemate. But the second – drone and missile strikes and sabotage raids deep into enemy territory – may prove to be a game-changing strategy for hitting Russia where it hurts. Last week, two Ukrainian kamikaze drones scored a spectacular hit on an oil and gas refinery and an oil export terminal in Ust-Luga near St Petersburg. At a range of 775 miles from Ukraine, the strike has severely dented Russian ability to produce and export naphtha, jet fuel and gasoil, and export liquefied natural

The Spectator

Could Nikki Haley become the first female US president? 

Madame president If Donald Trump stumbles before election day, could Nikki Haley end up becoming the first female US president? Hillary Clinton failed as the first female presidential candidate in 2016, but she wasn’t the first to stand on a presidential ticket: that honour belongs to the now-forgotten Geraldine A. Ferraro, who was picked by Walter Mondale to be his Democratic running mate in the 1984 election. Mondale had hoped to win over women voters, but his tactic appeared to backfire when a poll soon after her selection showed only 22 per cent of women voters approved of Mondale’s choice and three in five of all voters believed he had