Society

Thursday

Bruce Anderson

My adventures in rosé

During the festive season, I usually spend far too much time thinking and talking about politics. But the latest was an exception. One hostess fixed me with a gimlet eye and announced that she had forbidden any discussion of Israel/Palestine. At a recent dinner party, the table had been repeatedly banged, someone had stormed out and others were now on non-speaks. I quoted the late Clarissa Eden. During the Suez crisis, she felt that the Canal was running through her drawing-room. This girl gave a hearty nod in agreement. I was happy to agree with the ban, but declared my surprise. How could anyone be so sure of the solution?

Robin Oakley

Il Est Francais really is something special

Some people seem to get all the bad luck. No Cheltenham Festival regular will ever forget the 2020 Triumph Hurdle when Goshen, trained by Gary Moore and ridden by son Jamie, came to the final hurdle coasting and 12 lengths in the lead, only to make a fractional misjudgment and hurl his rider into the turf. The communal ‘Oh my God, no’ gasp of horror that swept the stands lives for ever in my mind. But for the Moores things got worse. In December that year Jamie broke his back. In May 2022, brother Josh nearly died after a fall in which he broke his leg, many ribs and suffered

Wednesday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Harvard’s Claudine Gay isn’t a victim of racism

A month ago, Claudine Gay of Harvard University was obsessed with putting things into context. Asked at that now infamous Congressional hearing on campus anti-Semitism whether calling for a genocide of the Jews is a violation of Harvard’s code of conduct, Gay said it would depend on the context. Her remarks raised eyebrows worldwide. The idea that there are some contexts in which it might not be a violation of Harvard’s code of conduct to say ‘Kill all Jews’ made many wonder what the hell is going on at that university. Fast forward four weeks and now Gay seems content to do away with context completely. Consider her resignation letter

The Spectator

It’s junior doctors – not underfunding – pushing the NHS to the brink

Yet again we start the year with news that the NHS is facing the worst crisis since its inception. This has a real impact. People who think the health service is in crisis will be less inclined to use it. As we saw over lockdown, this leads to fewer treatable conditions being diagnosed, more ‘excess deaths’ from various causes and a greater healthcare burden for the longer term. It’s a calamity that only worsens. The NHS is forever on the point of disintegration and collapse. Or, in the words of the British Medical Association, the system is under ‘intolerable and unsustainable’ pressure. Why, then, do so many members of the

The Spectator

What was banned this week?

For the love of dog XL Bully dogs were banned in England from this week, although there is an exemption for animals which are neutered, registered, insured and kept on leads and muzzled in public. Some other things that have been banned this week: – Parking on the pavement in Edinburgh. – Importing disposable vapes in Australia. – Selling new homes with gas boilers in the Australian state of Victoria. – Displaying toys in Californian shops under male and female sections. A gender neutral section must now be included. – English councils trying to charge for disposing of waste from DIY projects. – Withdrawals in dollars from banks in Iraq.

Sarah Vine

I’ve had enough of Sadiq Khan

To the Garrick, for a festive feast with my dear ex-husband and offspring. My daughter and I decide to make the pilgrimage from Turnham Green by taxi, owing to a combination of torrential rain, vulnerable blow-dries and high heels. Schoolgirl error: we could have flown to Manchester in roughly the same length of time – and at a fraction of the price. Thank you, Sadiq Khan. What a splendid job you’ve done turning London into a giant car park. We eventually arrive, half an hour late, dodging the garish rip-off rickshaws blaring headache-inducing yuletide tunes which now infest the West End (again, take a bow, Mr Khan), and enter the wood-panelled

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: backlog bluster, New Year honours and tornados in Manchester

Home James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, said that all 92,000 ‘legacy’ applications for asylum (made before 28 June 2022) had been processed, but 4,500 were reclassified as ‘complex’ and 17,000 were withdrawn. Of 112,138 applications subject to an initial decision in 2023, 67 per cent were granted. The number of migrants to cross the Channel in small boats came to 29,437 in 2023, 36 per cent fewer than the 45,774 in 2022. Flooding in a tunnel under the Thames led to cancellation for a day of all Eurostar trains across the Channel. Doctors below the rank of consultant began a six-day strike. A surge in scabies was reported amid a

Dot Wordsworth

How do events become unrecognisable?

I grabbed my husband by the lapel outside Waitrose and he leapt – if not like a young deer, then like a deer in retirement that had spent a long time grazing undisturbed in a bean field. ‘Sorry, darling,’ he exclaimed. ‘I didn’t recognise you.’ It was not as though I was wearing a balaclava. Recognition can say as much about the recogniser as the recognised. It’s particularly true of recognising a ‘characterisation’, a fancy word for a description. When the PM was asked in a Commons committee before Christmas whether he recognised the characterisation of ‘a Blob wandering down Whitehall thwarting the ambitions of ministers’, he replied ‘No.’ He’s not

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: how do I stop house guests stealing my phone chargers?

Q. I have been invited (solo, not with my long-term partner) to a wedding next year. The format appears to be: ceremony, drinks reception, then the main wedding party is dining together before we all get back together for an evening celebration. In the hiatus, guests are encouraged to eat in one of the local restaurants – a list is provided. How do I discreetly find out which of my friends might be attending? I texted a friend who I assumed would be invited, only to get ‘NFI’ as a response. I’m now wary of approaching others. – Name and address withheld A. It is quite acceptable to go directly

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The box-tickers shall inherit the Earth

Back in the late 1960s, a Welsh surgeon was returning home late, fell asleep at the wheel and fatally crashed into a tree. My aunt, a doctor, remarked that 30 years earlier a surgeon of such eminence would have had his own driver, and the accident would not have happened. Probably true. And it reminds us of a time when people who did useful things were given people to work for them so they could do useful things more easily. These were drivers, secretaries, assistants and orderlies. They made useful people’s lives easier. What is the great-grandson of the 1930s chauffeur doing? There is a worryingly high chance that he

Toby Young Toby Young

Could a 100-bottle limit help me cut down on drinking?

My New Year’s resolution is to cut down on my drinking. I’m not talking about bringing it within the NHS’s recommended limit, obviously. I’ve never met anyone who confines their alcohol intake to 14 units a week, which amounts to a bottle and a half of wine, ideally spread over many days. I’m thinking of something more in the region of two bottles a week. Why not simply stop altogether? Partly because I’ve tried that before and don’t have the willpower. The longest stretch I’ve gone without a drink was in the two years leading up to my marriage in 2001, because I didn’t think Caroline would go through with

Matthew Dennison

Why it’s time to bring back wassailing

Before the Industrial Revolution shrank Christmas celebrations to two days, many workers across rural England might have spared a minute or two over Christmastide to bring out the family wassail bowl. Wassailing – sometimes in houses, sometimes in apple orchards – was a ceremonial toast to the health of friends, family and neighbours, or a ritualised routing of the bad spirits that lurk among fruit trees. Orchard wassailing, intended to guarantee bumper crops in the year ahead, was a rambunctious affair of gunshots, the banging together of trays and buckets and the blowing of cow horns (to scare away evil spirits), singing, drinking and bonfires. Amid the bucket-banging, harvesters found

Sinclair McKay

What progressives get wrong about Winston Churchill

Please be advised that the following article contains outdated racial representations and views some readers may find distressing. Only joking! Yet that always seems to be the unspoken line running through modern academia’s head whenever the subject of Winston Churchill is raised. This year sees the 150th anniversary of Churchill’s birth; it will also see cohorts of academics jostling to tell us just how horrifically racist, imperialist, sexist and probably transphobic he was. As though that could be a surprise. Yet what might genuinely surprise many now is to learn that in certain respects, Churchill was in the vanguard of the woke movement. He was a progressive pioneer. Churchill was

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

My election advice for Starmer? Offer a new Citizen’s Charter

A giveaway Budget in March preceding a general election in May against an improving economic backdrop: that, we’re told, is Downing Street’s favoured scenario. But still the election is Keir Starmer’s to lose, so here’s my start-the-year advice to him. Don’t bang on about Rishi Sunak being too rich; don’t make immigration the issue, because you have no solutions; don’t pretend to admire Margaret Thatcher; but do channel John Major – to whom you bear much closer comparison – and offer a new Citizen’s Charter. What? Isn’t that 1991 exercise in footling managerialism, forever associated with the ‘cones hotline’, remembered as a laughable failure? Maybe, but its intention was good:

The Spectator

Letters: the genius of Morten Morland

Beyond good and evil Sir: In your Christmas issue, both James Macmillan (Composer’s Notebook) and Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, in his interview with Andrew Roberts, refer to the ‘war between good and evil’, as if most of us experience life on Earth as a continuous struggle of this kind. But many issues cannot be polarised so simplistically, and our understanding of religion and psychology has moved on. Who is to decide which people are good and which evil? Some fundamentalist Christians regard the Dalai Lama as evil. In international relations, it is surely dangerous to use this kind of language: while the actions of Hamas are undoubtedly evil, I doubt

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Hell hath no fury like the left scorned

Over a leg of lamb, I joined five other expat Americans for Christmas. Our topic du jour was which faction in our homeland we were most afraid of. Revisiting that boisterous conversation appeals, because in this re-enactment, I’m the only one who gets to talk. With forbidding rapidity, one armchair assertion has gone from audacious augury to trite truism: that whichever party wins the presidency, a substantial proportion of the losers will not accept the result as legitimate. Imagine, then, that it is Wednesday 6 November 2024, and a presidential victor has been declared. Whose indignation would pose the greater threat to American civic order – the left’s or the

Colin Brazier

Farming is fighting its own culture wars

I have come late to farming. There was no epiphany, no eureka moment watching Clarkson’s Farm. The blame lies partly with my neighbour, who’s my running partner and a fellow Pony Club Dad. He’s an agronomist and would enliven our jogs along country lanes with talk of crop rotations. In the end, that other form of muck-raking – journalism – provided the shove I needed. After 24 years at Sky TV, I joined the first presenter line-up (of many) at GB News. I went in the hope of a fresh start at an exciting new channel, only to be thrown out of it when my ratings failed to pass muster. So,

Douglas Murray

Why I’m considering a life of crime

Some people may have noticed the happy new guidance released between Christmas and New Year by the National Police Chief’s Council. This guidance to police in England and Wales was that police officers ought to try to go to properties that have been burgled. Even better, they should try to do so within an hour of the burglary being reported. This seems to me to be an eminently sensible piece of advice. After all, if you get to the scene of a robbery within an hour, you might be able to track down the stolen goods, log evidence while the crime scene is fresh, or even – imagine – find

Peter Jones

How the ‘gangsters’ code’ took over the world

Cicero’s statement salus populi suprema lex esto (‘Let the security of the people be the ultimate law’) has been the motto or guiding principle of any number of institutions and thinkers from the state of Missouri to Hobbes and Locke. Benjamin Netanyahu is well aware of this and knows that, whatever action he takes, his failure to keep Israel secure from Hamas’s inhuman attacks on civilians will be the end of him. Cicero (d. 44 bc) was the first person we know of to produce a code of conduct for warfare. In it, he argued that battle should be confined to the military and civilians should have no involvement in