Society

Gavin Mortimer

Hopeless and downbeat, Britain is the new France

‘Tis the season to be jolly, unless you live in Britain. An Ipsos poll last week suggested there is widespread pessimism in the UK about the year ahead. Six out of ten Brits expect food shortages in 2023, 57 per cent believe it unlikely their personal finances will improve, and two-thirds fear a general strike. British doom and gloom has been growing in recent years. According to data released last month by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the use of antidepressants in Britain has rocketed, with only Iceland and Portugal among 18 European nations having a higher consumption. In 2010, 54 people per 1,000 in Britain were

Theo Hobson

Meghan Markle and the uncomfortable truth about Britain

I’m not defending Harry and Meghan. But I think they deserve some credit, for they have put the British character under the spotlight as never before in our times. Of course, it’s mainly Meghan who has done this. Through being boldly herself, she has raised the question of who we are. How are we different from the Californian culture she belongs to, which is the dominant form of western culture? In some ways it’s obvious – we have a monarchy for a start. But she has exposed a lot of the underlying stuff that makes us different. And she forces us to ask: can we affirm this stuff? Can we

Why should my student paper report on an anti-trans documentary?

Journalists and editors make decisions every day about what stories to report and what to skip. That’s not just because there isn’t enough time, or enough staff, to report on everything. They also prioritise what they, or their publication, believe is most important, or interesting, to their readers. This is especially true for publications with a specific audience, like Edinburgh University’s Student newspaper, where I am editor. My decision not to report on Adult Human Female, a documentary due to be shown at my university by campaigners and academics who might call themselves ‘gender critical’, sparked something of a backlash. I was labelled a fascist, an enemy of free speech, ‘the

Fraser Nelson

How Britain (narrowly) avoided lockdown last Christmas

Exactly a year ago today, the cabinet met to decide whether or not to lock down to tackle Omicron. At the time, published Sage documents had outlined a range of 600 to 6,000 daily deaths unless more action was taken. Recalling the anniversary, I had an interesting exchange with Graham Medley, who chaired the SPI-M modelling committee that fed into Sage. ‘We obviously made sure that the people we were talking to did understand,’ he told me. That raises the prospect that a subset of people may have been briefed that Sage was discarding real-world South African data on the mildness of Omicron – so its ‘scenarios’ could bear no

Elon Musk will have the last laugh

It ended, as many things do these days, with a poll. Apparently on a whim, Elon Musk, while attending the World Cup final in Qatar on 18 December, tweeted: ‘Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.’ Seventeen-and-a-half million people voted, and nearly sixty per cent demonstrated their belief that, yes, the days of the Musk regime on Twitter should come to an ignominious end. Given that Musk’s schtick on the social media platform has been to offer democracy to its users – all the while making sure that he remains in charge – it appears to be a binding obligation,

Britain must address its anti-family tax system

Parenting – and indeed any talk of family life – has long been taboo in government. Nothing highlighted this more starkly than the civil service’s practice of referring to parents and children as ‘service users’. This has recently been the subject of a report by the Children’s Commissioner for England, who has urged Whitehall to get to grips with parenting and scrap the phrase, along with any other ‘technocratic’ jargon. This is all well and good, but Dame Rachel de Souza should start by pushing the Chancellor to do something about the grossly anti-family tax system. The UK tax system unfairly judges parents – mostly mothers – who want to

Brendan O’Neill

Can Jeremy Clarkson’s critics take a joke?

There is always a tipping point in Twitterstorms. A moment at which the digital hysteria over something somebody said becomes far more offensive, and far more dangerous, than what that person said. You can feel when it happens, when the shift takes place, when it is the behaviour of the howling mob that becomes the truly shameful and anti-social thing, far more than the utterance that so outraged the mob in the first place. We have reached this tipping point, already, in the fury over Jeremy Clarkson’s comments about Meghan Markle. The clamour for Clarkson’s head is now a far graver insult to decency and liberty than the thing Clarkson

Sam Leith

What adults don’t get about children’s books

Children’s writing has been having a bit of a moment over the past couple of weeks, after a conversation on social media between children’s authors gathered into a sort of cri de coeur about the public neglect of their craft. Children’s books, they said, are barely covered in newspaper review pages or on the radio these days. Prizes for their creators have dwindled in number – the Smarties and Guardian prizes have long gone by the board, and the children’s category at the Costa book awards went down with that ship. We all know about the dwindling stock of public libraries. The writers complained, too, that publishers are using celebrity name recognition for

Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s World Cup loss is nothing compared with the problems he faces in France 

One can only feel for Kylian Mbappé. If scoring a hat-trick in a World Cup final but ending up on the losing side wasn’t enough, the Frenchman then had to endure a public display of affection from Emmanuel Macron.   Understandably, given that Mbappé and his teammates were still numb with the misery of losing the penalty shootout to Argentina, the PSG striker didn’t appear that receptive to being pawed by President Macron on the pitch at the Lusail stadium.  Macron has long seen Mbappé as the role model for presidency, a kid from the tough suburbs made good and, as he explained to the media in the wake of last night’s defeat: ‘I told him he’d made

Jake Wallis Simons

Harry, Meghan and the troubling erasure of Christmas

H and M – no, the other brand – are causing trouble again. ‘Sussexes send out Happy Woke-mas card to friends’, griped the Mail on Sunday. Their crime? Wishing friends a ‘Joyful Holiday Season’ rather than a more traditional Merry Christmas. Given recent controversies, this might seem like a minor offence. But count your blessings. Last year, the Sussexes’ cards proffered a ‘Happy Holidays’ slogan, which was even more irritating to those of a sensitive cultural disposition.  “From our family to yours, and on behalf of our teams at The Archewell Foundation, Archewell Audio, and Archewell Productions, we wish you health, peace, and a very happy new year!,” write Prince

Why Russia couldn’t give up on empire  

One hundred years ago this December, delegations from the core nations of the East Slavs, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus signed the ‘Declaration and Treaty on the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’. They had with them representatives of the ‘Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Republic’ artificially constructed by the Communists who had just won a horrifically bloody civil war. In theory it was a free association of states. In practice Stalin quickly imposed even more ruthless centralisation than before. By the end of the second world war he had recovered all the territories of Imperial Russia, and achieved domination of almost the whole of Eastern Europe. On 8 December 1991, the Soviet

What the revisionists get wrong about America’s nuclear bombings

The use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is hardly a festive subject. But given that in recent conversations with President Macron, Vladimir Putin has referenced Hiroshima as a precedent that he could use to justify the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, it seems a timely moment to evaluate the subject. And this is especially the case when the case for America using the bomb against Japan has more and more come under attack. The debate about the use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been increasingly won by America’s revisionist historians. In 1945, 85 per cent of Americans thought that the use of these atom

What will Putin do next?

If you were Putin, what would you do? Predicting your adversary’s future moves requires putting yourself in his shoes. As Russia’s misadventure in Ukraine nears its first grim anniversary, we should ask ourselves how Putin sees the world, indeed – how we would see the world and what policy we would pursue if faced with a range of unpalatable options. Option one. He could declare the war lost and withdraw. If I were Putin, I would not choose this option. Why? There is grave danger in admitting defeat. Russia was built on the myth of infallibility. While the hope of victory stays alive, the people will follow the Tsar. But

How Dickens invented Christmas

Time was, the Christmas shopping season used to last a week or two. Now it drags on for months. Never mind wage inflation – what about present inflation? The whole thing is like a gigantic poker game, where the stakes are raised remorselessly every year. How did Christmas mutate into this orgy of rampant consumerism? Step forward the man who invented Christmas: Charles John Huffam Dickens Esquire. The story of how Scrooge recovers his lost innocence speaks to something deep in all of us, a yearning for lost childhood It’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that Dickens invented Christmas – but like the exaggerations of his novels, it

When it comes to migrants, Britain needs to be more French

Rishi Sunak’s fighting talk as he launched the latest Tory crackdown on illegal Channel migrants this week, with the dramatic words ‘Enough is enough’, ignores the question on many people’s lips: why doesn’t Britain send Channel migrants back to France? That, after all, is precisely what the French have been doing for years with migrants who cross into France from Italy at the border on the Riviera. So, if it’s all right for France to send back migrants to Ventimiglia, why is it not all right for Britain to send back migrants to Calais? It is claimed, above all by the French, that intercepting migrant boats in the Channel to take their passengers back to France

Owen Matthews, Christopher Howse and Olivia Potts

23 min listen

On this episode, Owen Matthews examines the original sin of Russia’s exiled media (00:44), Christopher Howse says Handel’s Messiah is as much a Christmas tradition as a pantomime (09:08), and Olivia Potts gives her recipe for boiled fruit cake (18:01). Get the full recipe to Olivia’s boiled fruit cake here: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-last-minute-alternative-to-christmas-cake-boiled-fruit-cake/

Scotland must rebel against this oppressive gender ideology

It’s been a pretty bad week for the women of Scotland. As Nicola Sturgeon doubles down on the pending legislation that would permit men to self-identify as women ­– legislation that around two thirds of voters are opposed to – the feminist NGO, For Women Scotland, lost a legal case against the Scottish government over its definition of ‘woman’, which includes, well, men.  It is little wonder that, in this world of madness, somebody decided to make a film exploring the issue, aptly entitled, Adult Human Female, which explores the silencing of those that speak out against misogynistic transgender ideology. Made by Deirdre O’Neill and Mike Wayne, both socialist activists and academics, the film gives voice

Julie Burchill

Nothing will ever be good enough for Harry and Meghan

Imagine you’ve paid good money to see a French farce – and halfway through, it turns into a Greek tragedy. Do you ask for your money back, or think ‘Well, it’s not what I expected, but I’ll give it a go anyway’? I previously wrote of Meghan Markle’s Netflix outing ‘If she can provide “content” on this level – creating a character we love to hate on a level with an Alan Partridge or a David Brent – maybe we should just cave in and award her the applause she craves, because comedy gold such as this does not come knocking every day.’ Though ‘Volume One’ made many of us ooh and