Society

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Netflix’s ‘With Love, Meghan’ is Brand Sussex’s final hope

So here it is, the undistinguished thing, at last. I had hopes that, after its postponement because of the Californian fires, Meghan Markle’s new reality show With Love, Meghan, would quietly disappear from the schedules. These hopes were, as usual, disappointed. Not only has the programme arrived on Netflix as a simultaneous worldwide premiere, but there has been a blitzkrieg of hype that reminds the unwary that the Duchess of Sussex – or ‘Meghan Sussex’ – is a very big, very famous deal indeed. There has been a gushing interview with People and a New York preview screening for her most devoted fans, some of whom have celebrated the renaming

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The Trump-Zelensky clash was the most awkward TV in decades

The visits of Keir Starmer and president Zelensky to the Oval Office last week were both agonising to behold, in very different ways. We witnessed two examples of how/how not (opinions vary which was which) to approach the court of what is described memorably vividly in David Mamet’s brilliant 1987 film House Of Games (nothing to do with Richard Osman) as ‘The United States of Kiss My Ass’. They were a bit like visits to the Wonka factory. Starmer tried so very hard to be ever-so-grateful best behaviour thank-you-for-having-me golden boy Charlie Bucket; while Zelensky went in as Veruca Salt: ‘I want a party with rooms full of laughter, ten

Abbie MacGregor

The trouble with ‘gentle parenting’

What type of parent are you? Buried beneath a litany of books detailing how to raise children ‘the right way,’ you’ll find an endless array of parenting identities: there’s the ‘helicopter parent,’ ‘gentle parent,’ ‘crunchy mumma’, and ‘tiger mum’. These labels are used to encapsulate what kind of mum, or dad, you are. It’s easy to dismiss them as a bit of trendy, light-hearted fun. But their impact runs deeper. By pigeon-holing parents, we risk forgetting what it means to actually raise a child. Parents are forgetting to follow their instincts At its core, parenting is about attachment; the bond between parent and child. Like any meaningful relationship, it is

Monday

Alexander Larman

A refreshingly apolitical Oscars

It is always nice to have a personal connection to the Oscars, however slight and fleeting it might be; hearing Conclave screenwriter give a shout-out to my daughter’s godfather Simon during his acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay was a deeply pleasurable moment. Yet this joyful touch aside, what had initially looked like one of the most wide-open Academy Awards in history eventually proved to be nothing of the kind. Indie director Sean Baker’s twisted romantic comedy Anora, about a sex worker who marries an oligarch’s son, had won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year. After various twists and turns, it asserted its frontrunner status once again, taking four

James Snell

The man with the ‘golden arm’, who saved two million babies

James Harrison, who died in his sleep at a care home in Australia last month at the age of 88, possibly did more good and saved more lives, pound for pound, than almost anyone else born in the last century. His blood plasma contained a rare antibody, Rho(D) immune globulin (called Anti-D), which can be used to prevent the blood of some pregnant women from doing damage to their unborn babies. But that is under-selling it. Anti-D is extremely rare (fewer than 200 people produce enough of it to donate their plasma in Australia) and the conditions which it helps with are common. Anti-D injections protect unborn babies from Rh

Sam Leith Sam Leith

The ‘goodies and baddies’ era of world politics is over

It’s hard to overstate just how shocking, how grotesque and shaming, was President Trump’s outburst against Ukraine’s President Zelensky in the Oval Office. Pop went the last soap-bubble of hope any of us had that US diplomatic policy for the next four years would cleave to anything other than the mad king’s personal whims and grievances. “Goodies and baddies” is exactly how liberal democracies do see the world The personal stuff – the petulance and bullying – is priced in with Donald Trump. But the wider drift of what’s happening is, in a way, more alarming. Historians and international policy experts seem to agree that we’re at an inflection point: the chapter

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why was there so little fanfare after David Johansen’s death?

We were twice transported back to the early 1970s this weekend, our memories snagged on the deaths of Roberta Flack and David Johansen. One of the two was afforded quite a send off by the media, the other wasn’t. I think they got it the wrong way around. Flack, who died aged 88 on 24 February, was a soul/pop crossover artist with a luxurious contralto range and a canny judge of what made a hit record. She had two big solo hits in the UK with “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, written by Ewan MacColl and “Killing Me Softly With His Song”, a Gimbel/Fox/Lori Lieberman confection written

Jawad Iqbal

Keir Starmer has had his best week since becoming Prime Minister

Even Keir Starmer’s fiercest detractors (and there are a fair few) must concede that he has had a very good week on the international stage: the best by a long chalk since he entered Downing Street. The Prime Minister, derided by critics as a political plodder, lacking in ideas and charisma-free, is a leader transformed. The new Starmer is a man with a mission, imbued with the confidence to lead. This was very much in evidence when he met US President Donald Trump for talks in Washington earlier this week. Starmer approached the discussions in the manner of the barrister he used to be, carefully mastering his brief and solely focused on

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

What went wrong with The Archers?

I was once a fan of The Archers, to the extent that the Guardian quoted me in 2007 outlining how ‘an unlikely combination of support from the Queen and Julie Burchill led to the transformation of Britain’s ‘everyday story of country folk’ from a dull and tired format to its present cult status.’ Apparently I wrote that ‘No longer are the women of Ambridge stuck with ‘the gallons of greengage jam that the old-guard male scriptwriters kept them occupied with for over 20 years.’ The BBC seems determined to educate listeners whom they think are ignorant Look, I know I was taking a lot of drugs back then and my judgement

Tina Stowell

The copyright battle is only part of the AI war

Artificial intelligence (AI) really is the next industrial revolution. In fact, it’s already started, and the technology’s capability is developing faster than anything we’ve seen before. Its benefits mean there is so much more to be excited, than fearful, about. But such is the extent of the technology’s power and potential, it is essential we don’t allow it to be controlled only by a small number of Big Tech companies. The approach the EU has taken is not the answer The entrenched incumbents of Silicon Valley have developed some fantastic products and services over the years that we wouldn’t want to be without. But that didn’t give them the right to

Sunday

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland is on a knife edge

Is Ireland a powder keg of racist, anti-immigrant sentiment, ready to explode at any moment? That was certainly the dominant narrative after a night of rioting in Dublin city centre in November 2023 that left a trail of destruction along O’Connell Street. On that occasion, politicians and elements of the Irish media were quick to blame far-right provocateurs for stoking tension and this was used as a convenient pretext to stress the importance of introducing the strongest hate speech legislation in the EU. Yet when it emerged that many of the Dublin rioters may themselves have been from an immigrant background, the politicians swiftly moved on to other matters. But while TDs

James Snell

The troubling truth about ‘witchcraft’ in modern Britain

Witchcraft, and accusations of witchcraft, are returning to Britain. We might think of witchcraft as a thing of the past; sadly, this isn’t the case. In multicultural Britain, folk practices like witchcraft and sorcery are more common than you might expect. Alongside the practice of witchcraft, there is also its opposite: accusations that others, particularly children, are witches, or demons, or possessed by spirits. In the last decade in Britain, 14,000 social work assessments flagged possible abuse linked to faith or belief, which includes witchcraft, and also things like spirit possession, and claims about the presence of demons or the devil. Between March 2023 and 2024 alone, there were 2,180

Saturday

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Was Starmer’s love-in with Trump really such a triumph?

Opponents of Keir Starmer would be well advised to concentrate on his many real weaknesses rather than inventing non-existent disasters just to bolster their own prejudices. The British radical online Right spent the last 48 hours not only hoping for the UK Prime Minister to be humiliated by Donald Trump, but then pretending he had been even when he clearly hadn’t. The reality is that Starmer’s visit to Washington DC was very successful, at least in the short-term.  As well as establishing an unlikely public rapport with Trump, the Prime Minister advanced a promising dialogue on tariffs and trade and got the President to endorse his Chagos Islands deal. British

Friday

Robin Ashenden

Is Trump Putin’s useful idiot?

Those whose mouths have been left hanging open by Donald Trump’s pivot towards Russia in the past fortnight, and the ruthlessness with which the Ukrainians (and Europe) have been thrust off the stage, haven’t been paying attention. The love-in between the two leaders has been going on now for a decade. It started properly in 2015, when the foreplay between the two ‘strongmen’ was conducted, like so many great flirtations, at a coy distance. Trump told CBS network he and Putin would ‘probably get along… very well,’ while Putin, to show willing, responded that Trump was ‘a very outstanding person, talented, without any doubt.’ Trump, eyelids-a- flutter, schmoozed back that

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The BBC’s reputation is in tatters after its Gaza debacle

The BBC’s admission of serious editorial failures in its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone is not just a scandal – it is a moment of reckoning. This is, without doubt, one of the most humiliating debacles in the corporation’s modern history, and it vindicates those who have long highlighted the BBC’s institutional biases when reporting on Israel. The implications of this controversy go far beyond journalistic failure; they touch on issues of public trust, financial accountability, and even national security. At the heart of this disgrace is the BBC’s failure to conduct even the most basic due diligence. That the narrator of the film – a child carefully chosen to evoke

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Alexandra Shulman Edition

29 min listen

Alexandra Shulman is one of the most influential figures in British fashion. She is the longest serving editor-in-chief at British Vogue, having led the magazine for 25 years before stepping down in 2017. Her career in journalism included time at publications such as Tatler and the Sunday Telegraph. She was later editor of the British edition of GQ, before joining British Vogue where she oversaw an increase in circulation to record figures. Alexandra was appointed a CBE for services to fashion journalism, and is now an author, commentator and writes a weekly notebook for the Mail on Sunday. On the podcast, Alexandra talks to Katy Balls about the heyday of print journalism in the late 1980s and 1990s,

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, Matthew Parris, Ian Buruma, Hermione Eyre and Francis Young

34 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Paul Wood reads his letter from the Vatican (1:17); Matthew Parris warns Conservatives from embracing causes that could lose them as much support as they would gain (7:31); reviewing Richard Overy’s Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan, Ian Buruma argues that the atomic bombs were not only immoral, but ineffective (15:35); Hermione Eyre examines the life and work of the surrealist artist Ithell Colquhoun (23:03); and, Francis Young provides his notes on Shrove Tuesday (29:12).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Katharine Birbalsingh

The questions Bridget Phillipson must answer about Labour’s Schools Bill

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which threatens the huge gains made in education over the last 15 years, is moving swiftly through Parliament. If it passes, the impact on our children, especially our most vulnerable, will be seismic. Yet this Bill is slipping by largely unnoticed. Labour’s huge majority gives it untrammelled power. But it is using this authority to push through, without proper scrutiny, a piece of legislation that will do untold damage. Here are the questions that Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson must answer about this Bill, before it is too late: Do you understand why school leaders find it odd that you did not visit a single school

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

BMW’s Oxford retreat signals deep trouble for UK carmaking

Among British car factories, Nissan at Sunderland is the most productive and Jaguar Land Rover at Solihull probably the most advanced. As for industrial landmarks, the former British Leyland complex at Longbridge is reduced to a research and development facility for Chinese-owned MG; but ‘Plant Oxford’ at Cowley, the original home of Morris Motors now owned by BMW of Germany, still produces 1,000 Minis per day. And BMW’s decision to halt a £600 million project to build electric Minis there is, I fear, a moment of destiny for the whole UK auto industry. The truth is that the transition to electric cars has descended into chaos. Total UK car production

The Spectator

Letters: American support to Europe has come at a cost

Rules Britannia Sir: Your rules for national survival in the realist world which we are now entering (‘Get real’, 22 February) make sense. However, they do not go far enough. Rule 1 (enhancing our military lethality) rightly identifies the need for better trained and equipped personnel, but it does not include the need to regain military mass in numbers of troops and battle-winning equipment. A fifth rule, covering the need to make durable alliances with friendly countries – essential for survival in a volatile multipolar world – could also usefully be added. Regarding Rule 2 (laser focus on the primary purpose of armed force), it may be that the type