Society

Monday

Patrick West

How political ideology corrupted science

Science is no longer regarded or respected as an objective pursuit, one in which the principle of impartiality is sought with due diligence. This is the inference we can make from comments made by Ella Al-Shamahi, presenter of the new BBC science series, Human. ‘We do have to be a little honest,’ she says, ‘to many, it seems like left-leaning atheists have a monopoly on science.’ Science as presented to the public has taken a decidedly left-wing turn in recent years, and in many cases has been contaminated by hyper-liberal ideology Her remarks, reported in the Sunday Times, echo those made earlier this month by the Wellcome Trust chief executive,

Sunday

David Shipley

The UK should not have to ration water

The UK’s steady decline continued today with reports that water companies are looking to introduce ‘surge pricing’ in order to ration demand. Trials are being introduced by 15 water companies across the country this summer, with customers either paying more for water as they use more, or charged more at certain times of year.  Higher prices, the water companies say, will ‘reduce discretionary water usage’. What this actually means is making every shower or load of laundry more expensive in the summer months. In a wet, temperate climate like ours there is absolutely no reason we should have to ration water This shouldn’t be necessary, of course. It rains a

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Recovering the Sacred: Why young Christians are returning to church

Something mysterious is happening in churches across Britain: a growing number of young Christians are showing up. Millennial men, in particular, appear to be turning back to Christianity: there has been a four to five-fold increase since 2018 in 18-to-24-year-old males attending church. What’s going on? Three hundred Spectator subscribers gathered in the beautiful surroundings of St Bartholomew the Great, the oldest parish church in the City of London – and one which has seen for itself this surge in young Christians worshipping – to find out why. Michael Gove, Editor of The Spectator, was joined by Damian Thompson, presenter of the Holy Smoke podcast, and the Revd. Marcus Walker, Rector of St Barts. The Provost

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

How Live Aid ruined pop music

Today is the fortieth anniversary of Live Aid, the epic televised pop concert – or ‘global jukebox’ – designed to raise funds to alleviate the devastating Ethiopian famine. The proceedings were divided between Wembley and the Kennedy stadium in Philadelphia. It was billed, even at the time, as an epochal day, an event that would change the world and change pop music. And I think it was – but maybe not in the way everybody thought.  So, we exported Marxism to Ethiopia and it starved to death – and now we had the temerity to add Spandau Ballet, Phil Collins and Nik Kershaw on top I was 17, and though I

Neil Clark

Why I’ve changed my mind about climate change

Here we go again. Another blistering heatwave. Just a few days after the last one. Like many, and probably like a lot of Spectator readers, I was a moderate climate change sceptic a few years ago. The whole ‘climate emergency’ thing came across as hysterical and alarmist. There seemed to be a clear agenda to get us to do things which would adversely affect the enjoyment of our lives. So the natural reaction was to go the other way and dismiss it as a load of hot air about hot air. But after yet another scorchingly hot summer – and we’re barely in mid-July yet – I think such positions are no

Rory Hanrahan

Norman Tebbit, forgiveness and my father, the IRA bomber

Norman Tebbit, who died this week at the age of 94, embodied a sterner Britain. His political career was remarkable but it paled in comparison with his unyielding love for his wife Margaret, whom he wheeled through life for four decades after the IRA’s Brighton bomb paralysed her body in 1984. Tebbit never forgave those who nearly killed him and left his beloved wife in pain for the rest of her days. My dad met Tebbit several times, earning his ‘hero of the week’ nod in his Sun column for exposing the IRA My father, Sean O’Callaghan, was an IRA bomber who turned against his comrades and, in doing so,

Andy Jones

Twenty years of failing to solve the migrant crisis

The front desk call out a name, ‘Mohammed Ahmed!’ Four men – or boys as they claimed to be – arrive at the glass window ready for Asda food gift cards and a cash subsistence payment. It’s a small job to find the real Mr Ahmed – the one whose face matches the ID card on file – who eventually gets the payment as the others sit down frustrated. The route has changed, but Britain has don’t nothing to reduce the incentives. Again the merry-go-round of casual work is the big draw It’s 2003, in a converted, decaying school building in Sycamore Road, Aston, barely a mile from Villa Park

Nikki Da Costa

Why the Lords doesn’t have to accept the Assisted Dying Bill

In an effort to hasten the Assisted Dying/Suicide Bill on to the statute books, Esther Rantzen and Lord Falconer have offered a novel interpretation of the role of the House of Lords. Falconer suggested that the Lords must ‘uphold’ what ‘the Commons have decided to go ahead with’. Meanwhile, Rantzen said of Parliament’s upper chamber: ‘Their job is to scrutinise, to ask questions, but not to oppose.’ Someone like Rantzen may be forgiven for playing so loose with conventions, but a former Lord Chancellor may not. Labour’s manifesto made no reference to assisted suicide nor assisted dying The reality is that both the House of Commons and the House of

Debbie Hayton

ITV’s Transaction is painfully unfunny

The plot of Transaction, a six-part comedy currently showing on ITV2, is simple. A supermarket accused of transphobia hires a transgender night shift worker to protect themselves from an activist mob hammering on the doors. The problem for manager Simon (played by Nick Frost) is that he employs a transwoman on a mission to be outrageous, vulgar and crude, and to lecture the audience on trans rights. Promoted as humour, there’s a big problem: it just isn’t funny. Transaction was written and created by Jordan Gray who also plays the part of egocentric transwoman Liv, someone more accustomed to sponging off friends and surfing the internet than earning a living

Saturday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Wimbledon’s Royal Box has become naff

As Wimbledon reaches its climax this weekend, those of us neither interested in tennis, nor in taking a fortnight off work for solid perving purposes, are delighted it will soon be over. I couldn’t care less about the tennis, but the comings and goings in the slightly obscene-sounding ‘Royal Box’ are impossible to escape from. The comings and goings in the slightly obscene-sounding ‘Royal Box’ are impossible to escape from This year has provided a bumper bonanza: Rebel Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Celia Imrie, Rory Kinnear, Nick Jonas, Bear Grylls, Hugh Grant, Olivia Rodrigo, Priyanka Chopra, Gary Lineker, John Cena, Dave Grohl, Dominic Cooper, Judd Apatow, Leslie Mann, Russell Crowe, David

Nick Timothy

How to save Conservatism

It is impossible to deny the sense of gloom and pessimism in Britain today. The economy is stagnant, and our society is divided. The opinion polls convey what many of us know: that the public do not trust the mainstream parties to steer us away from our predicament. The conversation around many family dinner tables is dark: parents worried that their children will miss the opportunities they enjoyed, and young people contemplating emigration. Even the spectre of civil war is being discussed – not just in private but online and in the media. It is easy to list the individual things that are going wrong. But to really understand what is happening and

James Graham

Why Britain should celebrate the Battle of the Boyne

British schoolchildren spend more time learning about the American civil rights movement than the English Civil War. An entire generation has been taught, by omission as much as intent, to believe that our past and shared inheritance has little value, and that Britain has been a force for ill in the world. The Twelfth is a celebration of the freedoms secured for all British subjects This is a serious problem for the country. Only a self-confident people, unashamed of their past, can hope to build something of value today. We need a historical vision that stretches beyond the HMS Windrush’s arrival in 1948. Could the Battle of the Boyne, which celebrates

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Jewish doctors are sick of the BMA

Around sixty Jewish doctors, including senior consultants and general practitioners, have left or are planning to leave the British Medical Association. Their decision is not a fleeting protest, but a serious response to what they consider to be a deeper institutional malaise that has gone untreated for too long. Many Jewish doctors feel their concerns have been ignored The BMA, whose purpose is to protect its members’ welfare, is now regarded by many Jewish doctors as compromised. They feel that it is no longer impartial, no longer safe. For a professional body that prides itself on care, inclusion and advocacy, this represents a systemic failure of grave consequence. The resignations follow the

Friday

John Keiger John Keiger

How Macron triumphed over Starmer

‘Small boats’ are the big talking point from this week’s Franco-British summit. The consensus is that there are slim pickings for Britain, and the reason why is simple: France negotiates according to its interests, Britain negotiates according to the Chagos template. France’s president Emmanuel Macron had little incentive to agree anything but a symbolic ‘returns’ agreement with Sir Keir Starmer. Most of the French political class, public opinion and ‘humanitarian’ organisations do not support Britain returning migrants to France. Nor for that matter do other EU states. Why would they? What then was Macron seeking from the summit? The French president is still smarting from Brexit The French president is

Sophia Falkner

Sophia Falkner, Roger Lewis, Olivia Potts, Aidan Hartley and Toby Young

27 min listen

This week: Sophia Falkner profiles some of the eccentric personalities we stand to lose when Keir Starmer purges the hereditary peers; Roger Lewis’s piece on the slow delight of an OAP coach tour is read by the actor Robert Bathurst; Olivia Potts reviews two books in the magazine that use food as a prism through which to discuss Ukrainian heritage and resistance; Aidan Hartley reads his Wild Life column; and Toby Young reflects on the novel experience of being sober at The Spectator summer party. Hosted and produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Is Britain an ally or an enemy of Israel?

Even as the British parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) published its stark warning yesterday that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Quds Force orchestrates spy rings on British soil, the UK continues its public ostracisation of Israel, the very country on the frontline of seeing down that exact threat. Britain must choose. Not between Israelis and Palestinians, but between honesty and hypocrisy Earlier this week, an Afghan-Danish spy working for Iran was arrested for photographing Jewish and Israeli targets in Berlin. The intelligence trail ran through Israel, Denmark, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK. Israel’s cooperation helped foil an operation with chilling echoes of the Iranian regime’s 1980s and 90s terror

Adam James Pollock

Why Northern Ireland hates Paddington

Soaring crime and a growing air of discontent means that few Brits are happy about the state of their nation. There is one man, however, who seems to enjoy this deteriorating country quite a lot: the Ambassador of Japan to the Court of St. James’s, Hiroshi Suzuki. Paddington’s values have very little to do with what Britishness means in Northern Ireland Suzuki’s cheery social media posts, in which he extols the virtues of the United Kingdom as seen through the eyes of an ardent Anglophile, are wildly popular. From sharing photographs of himself drinking ale in the Turf Tavern in Oxford, to making an origami daffodil to promote St. David’s Day, the

Thursday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The intense and consuming stupidity of George Monbiot

Chauve souris de la lune There is an intense and consuming stupidity within almost everything George Monbiot writes, the lumpen prose devoid of both doubt and humour. Doubt and humour are blood brothers, of course – and enemies of the kind of bovine certitude which Monbiot peddles, a cacophony of privately educated green tinged nepo leftism to which the majority of the country is rightly averse. Doubt and humour are blood brothers, of course – and enemies of the kind of bovine certitude which Monbiot peddles I mention the chauve souris de la lune because he wrote a piece in the only publication which can stomach his idiocies, the Guardian, suggesting that

Mark Nayler

Keep Palestine out of Pamplona

At this time of year, I’m usually immersed in Pamplona’s San Fermin festival, which burst into life on Sunday and runs until next Monday. The fiesta is famous for its daily bull runs through the narrow streets of the old town – an anarchic, life-affirming tradition in which I have participated six times. Unable to attend this year, I watched Sunday afternoon’s opening celebration on TV from southern Spain, feeling envious of each and every one of the 13,000 people present. But I was angered and saddened by what I saw. One of their members yelled: ‘Stop genocide, free Palestine!’ before lighting the rocket. Pamplona’s mayor chooses who lights the

Douglas Murray

My tips to avoid arrest by the Met

An interesting event occurred in London at the weekend. A young man who goes by the name of Montgomery Toms attended a Pride parade. But he did not attend in order to dress in bondage gear while shouting ‘Love is love’ and ‘Free Palestine’. Instead he went with a sandwich board which had a trans flag on it, followed by an equals sign and then the words ‘mental illness’. This is a tactic pioneered by an American man known as ‘Billboard Chris’, because his name is Chris and he wears a billboard. Chris’s schtick is to walk around with a sign saying things like ‘Children cannot consent to puberty blockers’.