Society

Thursday

Bruce Anderson

Let’s hope for good cheer this Christmas

A couple of years ago, I saw a charming cartoon. A boy and a girl aged about seven were in an earnest conversation. ‘Of course I don’t believe in Father Christmas,’ said the boy. ‘But we’ve got to keep up the pretence for the sake of the parents.’ This Christmas, all over the world, many parents will be especially keen to dwell on the great festival’s innocent joys. Innocence: in many places the fear is that the glory of birth will give way to the massacre of the innocents. Like the shepherds, a large number of people are sore afraid. Unlike the shepherds, their fear has no relief at hand

Wednesday

Joanna Williams

Why are MPs endorsing Stonewall’s rainbow laces campaign?

Our Members of Parliament are not short of stuff to do. There’s immigration – of the legal and illegal varieties – an economy on life support, post-lockdown problems with education, mental health and getting people back to work, as well as the NHS collapsing under the weight of its own waiting lists. Yet, remarkably, ten of our trusted representatives have found time amid their crushing schedules to become part of a charity’s marketing campaign. The Labour party features heavily, with Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Stella Creasy, Angela Eagle and several others putting in an appearance; Alison Thewliss and Kirsten Oswald from the SNP are game, and so, too, are a number of

Tuesday

Jawad Iqbal

Turkey’s shameful referee attack was waiting to happen

All football matches in Turkey have been suspended after a club president invaded the pitch and punched a referee in the face. The ugly and violent assault took place at the end of a game between Ankaragucu and Caykur Rizespor, which ended in a 1-1 draw. Faruk Koca, the Ankaragucu president ran up to the referee, Halil Umut Meler, and struck him in the face. Meler fell to the ground, only to be kicked by other people while he tried to protect himself. The referee had to be led to safety surrounded by a cordon of police officers. He is now recovering in hospital after sustaining a facial fracture. Koca and two

Alexander Larman

The convenient timing of Meghan and Harry’s Christmas video

There’s that well-known saying of ‘anything you can do, I can do better’. In what can only be an attempt to upstage the official Royal Family’s latest offering, this seems to be the credo of Harry and Meghan as they release a new, wholly vainglorious video showing the ‘impact’ of the Archewell foundation in 2023. If you’ve ever seen a teenager create a flashy ‘what I did on my holidays’ clip that is clearly designed to go viral on social media, you’ll have a good idea of what to expect from this entirely immodest offering. Over a tinkly would-be power anthem that begins with the lyrics ‘Over the hills and

Monday

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Why Nigel Farage failed on ‘I’m a Celebrity…’

The coronation of Sam Thompson, Scrappy Doo in human form, as King of the Jungle in this year’s I’m A Celebrity… was an inevitability. It was unthinkable that Tony Bellew – his still, stoic Scouse sparring partner – would not come second. And that Nigel Farage wouldn’t trail in third. When Farage made it through the public votes, all the way up to the final, there was much amused speculation about him coming out on top. The ‘banter’ outcome would’ve seen Farage take the crown, just for the sheer devilment of it. Yes, that would’ve been delicious, the ultimate wind-up of Farage’s many detractors. It was a pleasant daydream to imagine

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Stop sending Christmas cards! 

Christmas cards are the pits, aren’t they? A positive engine of seasonal ill-will. They take hours to do, if you do them properly, and wing across the country (and have you checked the price of a stamp lately?) to be received by people you like but don’t see, or people you see but don’t like – and to find themselves consigned to the recycling bin, in many cases, within thirty seconds of being opened. You feel guilty when you get a card from people you failed to send one to; and resentful when you don’t get a card from people you remembered to send one to. It strikes me, though, that we

Kristina Murkett

Teenage teachers won’t fix Britain’s classroom troubles

Teaching in the UK is in trouble. Less than half the number of secondary school teachers required this year, a record low, have been recruited, according to government figures released last week. STEM (science, engineering, technology and maths) subjects are particularly struggling: we only have 17 per cent of our target number of physics teachers and 63 per cent of maths teachers (down from 88 per cent last year). Yet this is a problem across the curriculum: the only subjects where the government met its targets were classics, PE and history. Teach First, the largest teacher training programme in the UK, announced this weekend that in order to tackle this

Sunday

James Hanson

Nigel Farage has left the jungle. What now?

Nigel Farage has left the jungle. For a brief moment it looked as if the original Brexiteer might pull off yet another electoral upset. Instead, he finished a creditable third on I’m a Celebrity… one of the biggest popularity contests on TV. This won’t be the last we hear of Nigel Farage Throughout the series, left-leaning commentators have accused ITV of deliberately ‘fun-washing’ (a depressingly 2023 phrase) Farage’s reputation. The comedian Stewart Lee wrote an especially humourless piece for the Guardian, which included a passage implying that because of Farage’s appearance in the jungle, Ant and Dec were somehow sympathisers of the Norwegian white supremacist Anders Breivik (yes, really). I

Ed West Ed West

The Tories aren’t being honest about foreign marriages

Western liberalism was built on the principle of marrying out. Our beliefs about the freedom of the individual ultimately stem from the Catholic Church’s ban on cousin marriage, which helped create a worldview that was open, trusting and opposed to both clannishness and xenophobia. The medieval Church’s insistence that marriage be consensual was revolutionary and strange; back in the 13th century a romantic poem, The History of William Marshal, has the protagonist coming across an eloping couple who have defied their parents to seek true love. Our hero then robs them, and since the story was commissioned by Marshal’s sons to glorify him, we can assume that public opinion might have thought this

Niall Gooch

The Turner prize doesn’t make sense anymore

In 1950 the American critic Lionel Trilling suggested, in his book The Liberal Imagination, that there was no meaningful right-wing philosophy in the US. ‘The conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not… express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.’ He was giving voice to a venerable, and continuing, strain in left-liberal thought which regards conservatism as little more than incoherent grumbling about inevitable and irresistible change. In this view, such change is, naturally, best managed by those clever, mature left-liberals. Conceptual art has, like so many previous artistic movements, run out of steam There is a grain of

Saturday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Brighton says ‘no’ to Eddie Izzard

‘If there’s one thing Eddie Izzard can’t be faulted on, it’s enthusiasm,’ Steerpike opined this week on the news that the comedian and actor, who also self-identifies as Suzy, is standing to become the Labour candidate for Brighton Pavilion – only a year after trying, and failing, to do so in Sheffield Central. There’s been a few raised eyebrows in my adopted hometown of Brighton & Hove (so good they named it twice) about the fact that Her Ladyship (I’m not going to call Izzard Her, but I don’t mind going that extra mile, as befits such an expensively-educated type) has promised grandly to make Brighton their ‘main home’ –

Friday

Matthew Goodwin

How mass immigration is worsening the housing crisis

Sometimes, what matters in politics is how one issue merges with another to produce an explosive reaction. In the 2010s, it was the fusion of immigration with the European Union which collided to pave the way for Nigel Farage, Brexit, and then Boris Johnson, dramatically expanding the amount of space for these populist revolts. But what about the years ahead? The 2020s and the 2030s will likely see immigration become steadily linked with a very different issue – housing – in a way that will produce a similarly explosive result. The blunt reality is that millions of ordinary people up and down Britain are utterly fed-up with how immigration is

Jawad Iqbal

What Joey Barton gets wrong – and right – about female football pundits

Joey Barton, the ex-Manchester City, Newcastle and QPR player, is in hot water again – this time over a series of blatantly sexist posts on social media, criticising women commentators and pundits. He posted that ‘women shouldn’t be talking with any kind of authority in the men’s game’, arguing it was the same as him ‘talking about knitting or netball’. Barton added: ‘Any man who listens to Women commentary or co-comms needs their headed testing …’ He refused to back down in a subsequent television interview with Piers Morgan, in which he maintained that ‘it’s not to do with sexism at all’, and instead blamed what he described as a ‘woke agenda’ in football.

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is terrorism really a mental health problem?

When news first broke of the terrorist attack last Saturday in Paris, the French government rushed out a statement describing the suspect in custody as a French citizen born in France. His name was given as Armand R.   More details gradually emerged and the picture painted of the man accused of stabbing to death a German tourist was what every western government dreads – that of a man who bit the hand that fed him. It is a story not too dissimilar to that of Salman Abedi, who detonated a bomb at the Manchester Arena in 2017, killing himself and 22 others. Abedi was born in Manchester to Libyan parents who

Thursday

Christopher Snowdon

KFC is right to take on the public health zealots

There was some good news for the people of Sunderland last month when local councillors managed to stop a small business from opening. They had received an application to open a Mexican takeaway restaurant on premises formerly occupied by a dog grooming salon on Tunstall Village Road. Spotting the words ‘Mexican cuisine’ in the temporary change of use application, the council concluded that the company would ‘not support or improve the health and wellbeing of local communities’ and turned it down.  Those who live in and around Tunstall Village Road may have been saved from having burritos within walking distance, but the residents of less fortunate communities remain at risk. The Times has

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

‘This is generous food’: The Salt Pig Too, reviewed

Swanage is a town torn from a picture book on the Isle of Purbeck: loveliness and vulgarity both. It is famous for fossils, Purbeck marble, a dangerous-looking small theme park, and Punch and Judy. My husband is very attached to Swanage, because it exists in a state of 1952 – in homage to this, it has a branch line with a station from The Railway Children. In the summer, on the beach, you see fat sunburnt people with handkerchiefs on their heads. I didn’t think they existed anymore: I thought they were all dead. Some parts of Dorset have gentrified, though this doesn’t really describe what has happened to Sand-banks,

Wednesday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Who really controls The Spectator?

Now that the government has triggered a public-interest intervention (PIIN), who will end up owning the Telegraph group, and this paper, after deliberations finish in late January? If it dismisses objections to the sale to the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, that family’s vehicle, RedBird IMI, takes control. A leading national newspaper and our most venerable British magazine are thus nationalised by an authoritarian Arab state. If the government rejects the Redbird IMI bid, in law the titles stay with the Barclay family (as they do right now, since the Barclays’ debt to Lloyds bank has been discharged, though under a ‘hold separate’ order which deprives the Barclays of executive

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

When it comes to education, Scotland is an example of what not to do

Scots have, in the past, bragged about having the best education system in the world. Scottish sixth-formers study a broader range of subjects and aren’t forced to specialise too early. And look at our history: the literature, the Enlightenment, our universities, all due to world-class schools. But however true this may once have been, it’s hard to make the same claim now. Scottish education is in crisis. Confirmation came this week with the PISA international league tables for school pupils in 81 different countries. Up to 10,000 pupils in each system sit tests in maths, reading and science, and the results are a gold standard in comparing schools. Scotland has

Gyles Brandreth

King Charles isn’t racist

This week I have been working with the great Dame Judi Dench. We have been rehearsing a song by Noël Coward for a show we are doing together at the Royal Albert Hall next Friday. Judi met Sir Noël not long before he died in 1973. What she remembers best is his amused smile and the strong scent of the fragrance he wore. Whenever I think of him, I recall his wise advice to anyone confronted with unfair criticism: ‘Rise above it.’ I hope that is what the King is going to do in the face of the bewildering brouhaha that has come with the publication of Omid Scobie’s book

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: royal ‘racists’, Scottish pandas and celebrity deaths

Home James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, told the Commons that to gain a work visa, migrants must in future secure a salary of at least £38,700 instead of the present £26,200. The government also said it would stop health and care workers and students bringing family dependants to Britain. He said this would have disqualified 300,000 who came to Britain last year. Mr Cleverly then flew off to Rwanda and signed a treaty intended to ensure that no one relocated there would risk being returned to a country threatening their life or freedom. Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour party, said in an article in the Sunday Telegraph: