Society

Charles Moore

The joys of the wireless

Obviously, one’s first instinct is to agree that parliament should step in and decree that all the hundreds of sub-postmasters convicted in the Post Office scandal should be exonerated without their appeals needing to be heard. But I suspect that instinct is wrong, for at least two reasons. The first is the precedent. These are individual criminal cases (though with strong common characteristics). If parliament feels it can interfere with such cases, it is usurping the process of law. Once MPs feel they can decide questions of individual guilt, where’s the end to it? Politicians cannot judge evidence to a legal standard. Justice will become politicised. The political proclamation of

Brendan O’Neill

The disgusting attempt to silence Joey Barton

I have a question. What’s more ‘dangerous’ and ‘disgusting’ – a footballer sounding off on social media or a government minister threatening to clamp down on speech that he personally considers to be ‘not acceptable’? For a government functionary to decree that some opinions are unacceptable, and therefore might have to be hushed, is the stuff of tyranny It’s the latter, isn’t it? People saying zany things online is par for the course in a free society. But for a government functionary to decree that some opinions are unacceptable, and therefore might have to be hushed, is the stuff of tyranny. This is the case of Joey Barton, the ex-footballer

Joey Barton
Mark Galeotti

Has Putin really revived Stalin’s infamous spy-catching unit?

Is Moscow reviving a notorious 1940s security agency? Or is the suggestion that the infamous SMERSH counterintelligence unit has been revived in Russia simply a way to troll the West? Worse yet, could it be that the country is facing the threat of a neo-Stalinist revival? A recent video circulated on Russian social media shows a young man from the Belgorod region making a public apology for having filmed and posted footage of Russian air defences online. In front of him, with only their backs shown, are two uniformed men. On their vests are patches with the infamous name ‘SMERSH’, a contraction of ‘Smert’ Shpionam‘ or ‘Death to Spies’ on

It’s time the King distanced himself from Prince Andrew

During the eighteen months or so that Charles has reigned, there is a great deal to commend him for. Two confidently delivered King’s speeches at Christmas; a genuine interest at dealing with his subjects that far exceeds the often rote ‘Have you come far?’ formalism of his mother. There has even been a compassionate hand extended to his troublesome younger son – although this seems an uncertain and unhappy state of affairs, given Prince Harry’s volatility and near-obsession with court cases. Yet there is one area in which King Charles might be commended on a personal level but deserves criticism in his role as monarch: his continued loyalty to his

Joey Barton doesn’t know anything about women in sport 

Joey Barton – the Pied Piper of disaffected football fans – has had a busy week. He began by comparing female football commentators to Fred and Rose West, the serial killers who murdered 12 young women. He then went on to imply that female commentators had slept their way to the top. It would be unwise to take Barton too seriously. It’s long been the chosen road of the deeply insecure man to attack confident women. I’ve worked in sport all my life. And throughout it I’ve faced opposition from the small-minded, although never from the stars themselves or the people who matter. It’s always the man in the county

Police are in a muddle over transgender strip searches

Have you ever been strip searched? I have. The date it happened – 7 September 2020 – is etched on my mind. That morning, as part of a security sweep on HMP Wandsworth’s H Wing, a group of male and female officers ‘span’ my cell. With the door closed, the women left, and one of the officers asked me to remove my vest, then shorts, then boxers. Next, they asked me to squat, while one of the men bent down and shone a torch at my anus. I felt vulnerable. My knees shook. When he said: ‘Sorry mate, I promise you this is worse for me than it is for

Australia sees sense on its plan to ditch the monarchy

Australia’s government has been determined to ‘do a Barbados’ and ditch the British monarchy for an Australian republic with an Australian president. But now, it seems, prime minister Anthony Albanese has lost his nerve. In the week that the first Australian coins of Charles III’s reign entered general circulation, and it was confirmed the King and Queen will visit Australia later this year, Albanese and his government scuttled away from his party’s proclaimed republican intentions with a speed that makes even Rishi Sunak look decisive and in control. After campaigning for office with a commitment to put the future of the monarchy to a constitutional referendum in Labor’s second term

Gareth Roberts

TV trigger warnings are out of control

The warnings on what we now call ‘content’ (i.e. what we used to know as films and TV shows) are getting ever more ludicrous. Almost everything made before 2000 now carries a cigarette packet-style exhortation or exculpation about race, sex and offensive attitudes. But it’s getting even crazier. A friend of mine was channel hopping over the festive period and caught a stern banner, on nostalgia channel That’s TV, reading, all in capitals: CONTAINS ADULT HUMOUR AND REFLECTS THE STANDARDS, LANGUAGE AND ATTITUDES OF ITS TIME. SOME VIEWERS MAY FIND THIS CONTENT OFFENSIVE. What was this antediluvian horror? Birth of a Nation? Song of the South? No, it was an

Could Idris Elba’s solution help tackle knife crime?

Actor Idris Elba took to the airwaves on the Today programme this morning to call for more to be done to tackle the scourge of knife crime in Britain. Elba asked the government to speed up the ban on the sale of machete and ‘zombie’ knives to prevent more young people dying in knife attacks. Few will disagree with Elba’s practical solution for tackling this issue. It is, at least, more likely to succeed than some of the more fashionable solutions – particularly so-called ‘public health’ approaches – which are occasionally suggested as a solution to knife crime. The rhetoric of a ‘public health’ solution to violence is very popular

Julie Burchill

The unbearably smug spectacle of the Golden Globes

Does anybody actually watch televised Hollywood award shows anymore unless, like me, they’re being paid to? Until ‘The Incident’ at the 2022 Oscars between Will Smith and Chris Rock, the answer was clear; between 2014 and 2020, even the Academy Awards lost almost half their audience, which fell to 23 million. But in 2023, figures were up by a whopping 18 million as eager punters tuned in, perhaps hoping to see a spot of ‘bitch-slapping’ between Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh. The Golden Globes, lacking the iconic oomph of the Oscars, has fared even worse, despite being a broader church in that they cover the year’s top televisual as well

Julie Burchill

What do Munroe Bergdorf and Andrew Tate have in common?

For inadequate men scared by self-willed women, by the start of the 21st century, things were getting dangerously out of hand. The old right-wing ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche’ method of corralling and controlling us had been woefully discredited with the second world war. (Like the old brand of anti-Semitism, coincidentally, which was also looking for a new angle – and found it in the fresh’n’funky Islamist kind.) A ‘caring’ and ‘progressive’ way to thwart uppity women was needed, but repeated and risible attempts at ‘men’s rights’ movements were rightfully mocked. So how could men abuse women while not being accused of sexism? Simple, say: ‘We’re women too. How can we be misogynists?’ And so the shock-frock-troops of transvestism formed a pincer movement with the aggressive masculinists embodied by Andrew Tate to assault the gains

Why hasn’t Russia collapsed?

Following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the calamitous, early missteps of the Russian army, many Western experts fairly crowed over the possibility of Russia disintegrating. ‘It’s high time to prepare for Russia’s collapse,’ ran a typical headline on the Foreign Policy website, while a survey of 167 foreign-policy experts by the Atlantic Council think tank last January found that 40 per cent of them expected Russia to break up internally within ten years due to ‘revolution, civil war, political disintegration’ and so on. Meanwhile, an article from the Hudson Institute was more prescriptive, issuing a list of points to consider when ‘Preparing for the Final Collapse

Max Jeffery

The sad world of the online influencer

Walid Sharks is taking a nasty beating at the AO Arena in Manchester. It’s the second round of his fight against ‘Deen the Great’, and he has just been knocked down by a punch to the face. ‘His eyes are rolling right now,’ says a commentator. ‘He doesn’t know where he is!’ But Sharks doesn’t mind: he’s fighting before a sell-out crowd, with a million people livestreaming at home, and they’ll be loving the drama. ‘Hit ’is jaw off!’ someone in the stands shouts to Deen The Great, wishfully. Sharks isn’t a professional boxer, but a social media ‘influencer’. Being used as a punchbag is worth it to grow his internet

Tom Slater

The trouble with Armando Iannucci

Armando Iannucci is a bit of a mystery to me. With shows like The Day Today and The Thick of It, he created some of the most astute political satire of the 1990s and 2000s. And yet put him in front of a microphone now and the man will display all the political insight of a draught excluder. Iannucci regularly pops up in the media to promote his new projects and dispense milquetoast Guardianista opinions. Trump? He’s so mad he’s beyond satire! Brexit? What a mess, eh? Now, inevitably, he’s weighed in on wokeness – and spectacularly misunderstood what it actually is. On Newsnight last night, Iannucci was asked about wokeness and whether it led comedy writers like him

Theo Hobson

When will Rory Stewart’s time come?

Can a dose of moral earnestness revive Tory fortunes? This is the question raised by Rory Stewart’s recent memoir, Politics on the Edge: A Memoir From Within, which sits on top of the bestseller charts more than three months after it came out. Another question the book raises is this: is Stewart’s brand of moral earnestness the right one? His politics is rich in old-world honour, like that of a John Buchan hero. The reader half expects him to uncover a plot to sell Britain to China, and then be chased by soulless technocrats through moonlit moorland. On one level, it didn’t work: when he stood for the leadership against

Oscar Pistorius should still be in prison

The murderer Oscar Pistorius was released from prison on parole today, more than a decade after shooting his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. He killed her in an horrific act of femicide: the murder of females by males because they are female. Because such crimes are so normalised and common, criminal justice systems around the world tend to excuse these particular men for committing the most serious crimes against women. In the UK, for example, one woman dies every three days at the hands of a current or former male partner. Some men even come in for preferential treatment: those that are famous, wealthy and conventionally attractive are often treated less harshly than

The Epstein files heap fresh embarrassment on Prince Andrew

Four days in, and 2024 shows every sign of being yet another annus horribilis for Prince Andrew. After – by his, admittedly reduced, standards – a triumphant Christmas, in which he processed to church at Sandringham with the rest of the Royal Family and, bizarrely, an apparently rehabilitated Fergie, the cold clear light of reality has intruded once again. To kick things off, Andrew is facing the prospect of not one, but two docudramas raking over the humiliation of his Newsnight interview. (The potentially consolatory fact that he is to be played in them by Rufus Sewell and Michael Sheen respectively has been dampened by the fact the famously handsome

Isabel Hardman

Why the BMA is now at loggerheads with NHS leaders

Trust between the BMA and politicians has never been particularly strong. In the middle of the longest strike in NHS history, we are now seeing a breakdown in trust between the doctors’ union and leaders in the health service. Last night the union issued what was, even by its own standards, a bit of a stinker of a letter in which it accused NHS trust leaders of bowing to political pressure to undermine the junior doctors’ strike. Addressed to NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard, the letter says ‘derogations’ – the ‘last resort’ call for striking medics to return to work as a result of safety concerns – are being misused

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?