Society

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will Labour MPs stomach Liz Kendall’s benefits crackdown?

To underline that there was government agreement on the welfare cuts and reforms she was announcing, Liz Kendall had Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and a slew of other cabinet and senior ministers sitting behind her in the Commons. The Work and Pensions Secretary announced ‘decisive action’ on the benefits system, which she said was ‘failing the very people it is supposed to help and holding our country back’. That ‘decisive action’ was a reform package that Kendall said was expected to save over £5 billion in 2029/30. It included restricting the eligibility for the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) so that only those who have the highest level of

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The plight of James O’Brien

Pity poor James O’Brien. The long-suffering remainer has always had a raw, fiery quality unusual in the British phone-in host. Where most of his male colleagues tend to be pear shaped more than bear shaped – and where female radio presenters often resemble head girls sitting bolt upright in the front row of the class with their hands up – O’Brien has always been an outlier. Even if O’Brien sounds the part as a radio host, he has never quite looked it. In LBC promo photographs of the smiley, ‘say cheese’ variety, he looks uncomfortable. O’Brien resembles a bouncer in the background in a wedding album. He has hosted a weekday

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Do Labour know what they want from welfare reform?

Liz Kendall and her ministerial colleagues were forced to offer an hour’s worth of holding statements about the government’s welfare reforms this afternoon when they appeared at Work and Pensions Questions in the Commons. Those reforms are supposed to be coming in a green paper this week, probably tomorrow, but the Work and Pensions Secretary ended up dodging questions on whether she even had collective agreement from her colleagues. Those questions came from Kendall’s shadow Helen Whately in the topical section. When Whately asked whether there had been collective agreement, Kendall replied that the shadow minister would have to ‘show a little patience’, before mocking the Conservatives for having no

Steerpike Steerpike

Even Italians are horrified by the NHS

Anyone who has the misfortune of stepping foot into a hospital recently will know how bad things are with the NHS, where the only good thing about the long waits is that they stave off the subsequent terrible treatment. Still, it is helpful sometimes to see how other countries view our health service – which has for years been described by politicians as the ‘envy of the world’. In that vein, Mr S was alerted by Spectator commentator Susucat to a revealing article which was published yesterday by the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, based in Milan. In the piece, the paper’s correspondent, Luigi Ippolito, explains his experience of dealing with

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Happy St Patrick’s Day – but not for Ireland’s Jews

‘Céad míle fáilte’, the Irish love to say. It means ‘a hundred thousand welcomes’. It’s emblazoned in the arrivals hall at Dublin airport. You’ll see it written in the Celtic font on the walls of Ireland’s cosy pubs. It has led to Ireland being christened ‘the land of a thousand welcomes’, where all visitors, no matter their heritage, will be greeted with a hearty hug. The tragic truth is that Ireland is awash with Israelophobia Well, not all. There’s one group of people to whom Ireland’s famed friendliness seems not to extend. ‘Zionists are not welcome in Ireland’, barks an Irish leftie at an Israeli gentleman in a chilling video

Patrick West

The audacity of ‘decolonising’ Shakespeare

It seems to have become an unspoken requirement of recent that anyone in charge of promoting or putting on the plays of Shakespeare must first of all hate him and his works. We have long grown accustomed to the Royal Shakespeare Company prefacing his plays with trigger warnings reminding us of what a terrible man he was, that his works contain all manner of bigotry, sexism and racism. So it was no surprise to read yesterday that his birthplace is now being ‘decolonised’, in response to concerns that the playwright is being used to promote ‘white supremacy’. According to the Sunday Telegraph, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which owns buildings connected

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Is ‘good enough’ all we want from TV?

For those people with a therapeutic bent of mind, the phrase ‘good enough’ has an almost magical power. It says: don’t beat yourself up because your child isn’t a straight-A student, your marriage isn’t the best thing since Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, and your sobriety is patchy. Sure, you hit your kid – but you didn’t stab them. Sure, you hate your husband – but you haven’t plotted with a stranger to have him killed. Sure, you’re depressed – but you got up this morning and went to work like any other normie. All these instances of your fallibility are opportunities for growth. As they say in twelve-step programmes, it’s

Theodore Dalrymple

Britain has become a pioneer in Artificial Unintelligence

In some countries, the study and pursuit of Artificial Intelligence (AI) proceeds apace, while in this country the practice of Artificial Unintelligence (AU) becomes ever more widespread. AU is the means by which people of perfectly adequate natural intelligence are transformed by policies, procedures and protocols into animate but inflexible cogs. They speak and behave, but do not think or decide. They are always only carrying out orders and stick to them through thick and thin. AU is much in evidence in the organisation of the NHS. Its great advantage, from a certain point of view, is the multiplication of job opportunities for bureaucrats that it necessitates. But for patients,

Sunday

Robert Taylor

The Falkland Islands have become surprisingly diverse

What springs to mind when you think of the Falklands? You might imagine the wild, windswept landscape, sparsely populated by the sheep-farming communities that have made the Islands their home for nearly 200 years. Those of my vintage will recall grainy television images of the war in 1982, Margaret Thatcher’s subsequent visit, and grateful islanders speaking to her in accents that sounded like a mixture of West Country and Kiwi. And those fortunate enough to have visited (I’ve had that privilege several times) will recall the sheer Britishness of the place, with a Victorian cathedral that wouldn’t be out of place in rural Somerset, pubs to help weary travellers just

James Heale James Heale

Can Dale Vince make Labour go even greener?

Dale Vince has donated millions of pounds to Labour, but the green energy tycoon is only just getting started in politics. Having helped remove the Tories from power last summer, Vince is turning his attention from party donations to offering ministers a ready-made policy platform instead. The 63-year-old wants to champion an eco-agenda for Keir Starmer’s government via his Green Britain Foundation. The six-man outfit works to apply ‘green principles to transport, food, sport, telecoms, jewellery’ – and now the world of Whitehall too. When we speak over Zoom, Vince is critical of Labour’s decision to press on with both carbon capture and the Sizewell C reactor. The former, he argues, will not work at scale, while the new nuclear

Cosmo Landesman

My day talking about penis size on the TfL cable car

For me, one of the great pleasures of public transport is getting into a conversation with a stranger. But in our age of smart-phones and headphones, where everyone is plugged into their own private space, it’s a pleasure that’s becoming increasingly rare. So when I heard of a new scheme by Transport for London (TfL) to encourage people to chat to each other, I was eager to sign-up. I admit that I’m not keen on most of TfL’s schemes to affect public behaviour. Has the public ever been subjected to a slogan more irritating – and relentless – than TfL’s demand that we be on our guard and, ‘See it, Say it,

Zoe Strimpel

Skype was a relic of happier times

Sometimes epics end with a whimper not a bang. This is the case for Skype, whose demise Microsoft has announced – for those paying only the closest attention – in a preview of the latest Skype for Windows update. ‘Starting in May, Skype will no longer be available. Continue your calls and chats in Teams,’ the message reads bluntly, with a slightly sinister follow-on that asserts that a number ‘of your friends have already moved to Teams free’. RIP.  Skype, launched in 2003, defined an era of new internet possibilities, with the explosion of social media a couple years later through Facebook, and the slow migration of internet usage from

Johan Wennstrom

Why Sweden needs the bomb

Imagine the Guardian newspaper fully committing to increasing Britain’s stockpile of nuclear warheads. It may sound fanciful, but that’s the closest comparison to what happened last week, when the Swedish liberal–left leaning Dagens Nyheter wrote in a leading article: ‘We are going to need a [national] discussion about nuclear weapons. Should the French [nuclear forces] protect the entire continent, or do we need to acquire a nuclear deterrent of our own, perhaps in cooperation with our Nordic neighbours?’ The idea that Sweden – the self-described global apostle of nuclear disarmament – should produce nuclear weapons would have seemed ridiculous not long ago. In fact, when I argued in a column published in Sweden a few

Francis Pike

The crocodile casualties of the second world war

At the end of February, 1945 about 1,000 surviving Japanese soldiers based on Ramree Island off the coast of Arakan, a province in western Burma, fled the onslaught of the British Army commanded by Lt General William Slim. A squadron led by the battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth had bombarded Japanese positions on Ramree. The 26th Indian Infantry Division, led by Marlborough and Sandhurst Old Boy Major-General Cyril Lomax, swept in to finish them off. Characteristically the Japanese soldiers did not surrender. Instead, they opted to get to shore through the mangrove swamps that connected Ramree Island with the mainland. Big mistake. A Canadian soldier Bruce Wright, who is credited with

Saturday

Khadija Khan

Ramadan can be a time of suffering for those who dare break the rules

Ramadan, which this year runs until the end of March, is viewed by Muslims as a time of compassion and generosity. But for others – especially those who flout fasting rules in Muslim-majority countries – it can be a period of suffering and persecution. Liberal Muslims and those from religious minorities can be punished severely for stepping out of line during the ‘holy month’. They face harsh punishments, exclusion, and seclusion for offending religious sensibilities. Liberal Muslims can be punished severely for stepping out of line during the ”holy month’ Several young men were arrested in Kano, northern Nigeria, earlier this month for failing to observe the Ramadan fast. Those selling

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

‘Trump’s America has made a suicidal choice’: An interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy

Bernard-Henri Lévy is running on fumes. Plus ça change. “I slept as always last night, a few hours, with chemistry compelling me to sleep,” the Parisian public intellectual tells me when we speak on the phone. “I miss the process of sleep, the process of getting awake, all parts of the ceremony I miss. But insomnia has given me more than it has taken. More time, certainly more work, more vigilance; I’m awake.” “Maybe I would sleep better if I was British,” Lévy says His latest book, Nuit Blanche, which has yet to be translated into English, is a runaway bestseller in France, where it was released in January. It

Colin Freeman

Colin Freeman, Harry Ritchie, Max Jeffery, Michael Gove and Catriona Olding

35 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Colin Freeman explains how Islamic State tightened its grip on the Congo (1:23); Harry Ritchie draws attention to the thousands of languages facing extinction this century, as he reviews Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages by Lorna Gibb (8:00); Max Jeffery highlights the boxing academy changing young lives (13:20); Michael Gove reflects on lessons learned during his time as education secretary (20:30); and, Catriona Olding introduces the characters from her new Provence-based memoir club (29:27).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Howard Hodgson is a tabloid survivor

Howard Hodgson ends lunch in a rage against unearned fame. ‘Marilyn Monroe: drunken actress,’ he says, ‘fat drunken actress. Gets killed. Ohhh! Marilyn!’ He does a mocking voice for that last bit, like someone wailing about her death. ‘John F. Kennedy: one of the worst presidents the United States ever had. Bay of Pigs. Fucked everything up. Robert Kennedy was vastly more talented than John, but John gets killed. Ohhh! National monument!’ ‘Diana Spencer: borderline personality disorder, eating disorder. The eating disorders and everything were just part of her borderline personality disorder. She wouldn’t have been able to be your wife,’ Howard’s blue velvet Nehru jacket shimmers as he gestures at me, ‘let alone the Prince of Wales’s wife.

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

The licence fee is at the root of the BBC’s problems

The BBC’s reputation is in shreds – again. Its Hamas propaganda film, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, had to be withdrawn after it was revealed that its protagonist and narrator was the son of a Hamas minister. The BBC has announced it will investigate itself following the broadcast of the documentary last month, but what is to be done about the accident-prone public broadcaster? Unfortunately, every indication is that the government will continue to stuff the BBC’s undeserving pockets with money. Kemi Badenoch has threatened to reconsider the Conservative party’s support for the licence fee, now £169.50 and due to increase to £174.50 in April. What a feeble response. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has proposed mutualising the

Friday

Chas Newkey-Burden

Why does it take the snatching of a baby wombat to spark outrage about animal rights?

An American influencer called Sam Jones has been roundly denounced after she posted a video of her snatching a wild baby wombat from its distressed mother in Australia. The video, since deleted, showed Jones picking up a joey by the road and running with it to a car, while its poor mother ran after them. A man can be heard laughing callously as he films, saying: ‘Look at the mother, it’s chasing after her!’ Social media users, conservationists, animal rights campaigners, and even Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, have condemned Jones, who has now left Australia voluntarily amid calls for her deportation. It’s easy to see why so many people