Society

Monday

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

The bizarre story of the ‘Jewish Taliban’

One of the more bizarre stories to have hit the headlines in recent days was the unsuccessful attempt by police to arrest 20 members of a radical Jewish sect in Mexico. Where to start with a story like this? We could talk about how their jungle base, 11 miles north of Tapachula in Chiapas state, was raided last Friday and two members were detained on suspicion of human trafficking and serious sexual offences. We could talk about how the raid took place after an investigation and surveillance operation lasting months, carried out by Mexican and Guatemalan authorities with the assistance of a four-man team of former Israeli spooks. We could

Sam Leith Sam Leith

What’s so funny about Elon Musk?

At the end of last week, at an AI event in California, Elon Musk unveiled his latest project: a humanoid robot called Optimus. Optimus wobbled onto the small stage like a contestant in Stars In Their Eyes: ‘Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be a 1970s idea of what a robot butler would look like if he’d been at the sherry.’  Musk told his bemused audience that this was the first time Optimus had walked anywhere without a tether, and admitted he was relieved it hadn’t fallen over – but assured them that the moment heralded ‘a fundamental transformation of civilisation as we know it’. He promised that one day not

Sunday

Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

What do the Tories have to show from their time in power?

After 12 years in Downing Street, four prime ministers (so far), two monarchs, and one mini-budget, the public are starting to drop hints that it’s time for Tories to head home. As Conservative conference kicks off, it’s as good a time as any to take stock: what do the Tories have to show for their many years in office? The truth is that the party’s legacy amounts to little, but it has done one thing well: keeping Labour out of power. This is hardly something to boast about. The 2010 Conservative manifesto opened with the declaration that ‘our economy is overwhelmed by debt’. The public finances would dominate David Cameron’s

Friday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

This is Iran’s George Floyd moment but where is the West?

George Floyd was a 46-year-old petty criminal from Minneapolis who died on 25 May 2020 after a police officer knelt on his neck while arresting him. The protests at the brutal manner of his death began the next day and by early June an estimated half a million people demonstrated in his name across the USA. The protests went global: from Beirut to Gothenburg to Sydney where, on 2 June, around 3,000 people gathered in memory of Floyd. The next day in London an even bigger crowd demonstrated, one of many protests held throughout the UK that month. Police officers, footballers and Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour party,

Thursday

Adrian Hilton

Kirill’s crusade against Ukraine is more jihadi than Christian

Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, has again preached to the faithful of the Russian world. He told them that if they heed their president’s call to arms, they shall be absolved of their sins and avoid any possibility of Hades. ‘The Church realises that if somebody, driven by a sense of duty and the need to fulfil their oath… goes to do what their duty calls of them, and if a person dies in the performance of this duty, then they have undoubtedly committed an act equivalent to sacrifice,’ he told his national congregation earlier this week. ‘They will have sacrificed themselves for others,’ he continued,

Wednesday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The genius of Hilary Mantel

Yes, but why did the IMF put out its Tuesday night statement? Even if all its criticisms of the government’s new economic policy were correct, why the rush? The IMF’s action is insulting to a G7 country and premature because its thoughts were inevitably composed without full knowledge. It is best seen as part of a pattern, like the early attempts to reverse Brexit, or the US government’s related interventions over the Northern Ireland Protocol. The people who have been running the developed world badly for more than two decades resent those who now challenge them. They pick their moments. The coup de grâce to Boris Johnson earlier this year

Gus Carter Gus Carter

In defence of Warhammer

Warhammer is a tabletop battle game. Players build and paint little models of aliens, tanks and killer robots and then set their armies against one another on a miniature battlefield. It’s a hobby that lights up the obsessive bits of the male brain: collecting, DIY, military uniforms, hierarchy and complex calculation – all in the name of domination. There are Warhammer clubs across the country as well as 138 dedicated Games Workshops where players can battle one another. Enthusiasts have long been stigmatised as hygienically challenged young men with limited knowledge of the opposite sex; that’s certainly how I remember my early teens when I was – briefly – into

Owen Matthews

War has come home to Russia

Moscow A week of somewhat mixed messages from the Kremlin. One day Vladimir Putin opened Europe’s largest Ferris wheel and presided over citywide celebrations of Moscow’s 875th anniversary, full of calm and good cheer and mentioning the war only in passing. A few days later he appeared on national TV telling the world that he was ‘not bluffing’ about using nuclear weapons and announcing a partial mobilisation. Putin has never fought a contested election in his life, so he’s never been a great one for the common touch. But in his latest address he looked as pale and dead-eyed as Nosferatu. Russians know better than most that the more strenuously

Paul Sargeantson

Red kites should never have been reintroduced to Britain

I own a grass farm in the Chilterns which provides grazing for horses and haymaking. It also provides habitat for hares, skylarks, lapwings and field voles (the staple diet of my resident pair of barn owls) – which is why I am so set against the red kites. Between 1989 and 1994, red kites from Spain were imported and released into the Chilterns by the RSPB and Natural England. The population here had dwindled and the RSPB describes the reintroduction programme as ‘one of the UK’s biggest conservation success stories’. But it’s only a success story if you ignore the devastating effect red kites have had on other wildlife. The

Dan Hitchens

Why has Oxford killed off a much-loved Catholic college?

Few institutions can match the global prestige of Oxford University. Just look at the gifts lavished on it, like offerings brought to some mighty emperor of the ancient world. There’s the Saïd Business School, controversially funded with £50 million from Wafic Saïd, who helped to broker the British-Saudi arms deal. There’s the carbuncular Blavatnik School of Government, criticised by Russian dissidents for how the funder made his millions. There’s the new student housing at St Peter’s College, partly paid for with a donation whose original source was the mid-20th-century fascist demagogue Oswald Mosley. Yes, people do sometimes ask whether there’s any cash the university won’t accept. And now they have

Douglas Murray

I’m in trouble with the police

There is almost nothing I like more than a running battle. As my friend Julie Burchill also says, when a really good row comes along it gives you this warm, cosy feeling inside. So it was not with disappointment that I received a noteworthy response to my column of last week. For those who were sleeping on the job (or only read Rod’s column), I made some pertinent comments about community relations in the Leicestershire area. Community relations, you may recall, have essentially broken down, with Hindu and Muslim gangs facing off in the city and some of the surrounding area. In passing I noted the number of female police

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why is the right not making the moral case for lower taxes?

There was an article recently in the increasingly woke but still useful New Scientist which attempted to gauge the degree to which luck was responsible for who we are and, hence, an individual’s life circumstances. I think it came in third place after genes and the environment – which are also both down to luck, really, I suppose. The thesis seemed to be we pay too little attention to the role of luck when considering why one man is a millionaire and the other is a lavatory attendant or a book reviewer. I would beg to differ. Ascribing luck to one’s unfortunate position in life is very prevalent indeed and

Bruce Anderson

Why the dry martini is the finest cocktail of all

We were discussing bourbon and whether American whiskey could ever rival Scotch. I recalled the first time I ever tried the transatlantic spirit. It was more than 50 years ago, in an undergraduate room in Oxford. The occupant was an ingenious fellow. At the beginning of one term, he wrote to Jim Beam, the whiskey makers. He informed them that he had discovered their wonderful product in the States, but it appeared to be impossible to come by in Oxford, which was a pity, because it deserved to be better known (in truth he had never tasted it and had never been to the US). A case shortly arrived, followed

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

City slickers’ reaction to Kwarteng’s unfunded plan is entirely rational

‘Fury at the City slickers betting against UK plc,’ shouted the Daily Mail on Tuesday, after Monday’s mayhem saw the pound hit an all-time low of $1.03. A more accurate corporate metaphor, though less punchy as headline material, would have been something like this… Activist mavericks seize boardroom control of giant sluggish utility. Novice finance director slashes prices, raises dividends for rich shareholders, shuns in-house forecasters and says he’ll borrow whatever it costs. To which markets reply: ‘Blimey, mate, that’s bonkers. So we’re dumping your shares and the cost of your debt just doubled.’ And that, I’m afraid, is an entirely rational response, not a wickedly speculative one. Moments after

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Shame should not be heritable

Vice-chancellor Stephen Toope claims it was ‘inevitable’ that a university ‘as long-established as Cambridge’ would have links to slavery. Now that faculties gorge on racial guilt as Cambridge dons once famously feasted on roasted swans, what was really inevitable is that a body christened ‘The Advisory Group on the Legacies of Enslavement’ would find links to slavery. Why, it must have frustrated the authors of the report released last week that their three-year inquiry didn’t manage to dredge up any evidence that the university ever directly owned slaves or plantations. Rather, it’s the money that was tainted; lucre having always passed through dirty hands somewhere along the line, there’s no

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Maybe Nanny does know best

Not least among the shivers down my spine as I listen to Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng pump up the rhetoric on their economic revolution is the evocation of myself – myself when young. Like Ms Truss, I too joined the Liberal party as an Oxbridge fresher. I too believed in the power of personal choice. I too had a dream of unhindered competition liberating the animal spirits of enterprise and individual genius. I too told myself that we liberals must grit our teeth and keep the faith when sink-or-swim left some to sink. I too thrilled to the metaphor of ‘tall trees’ being allowed unencumbered access to the light.

Robin Oakley

The lessons of Newmarket

The swallows who nest yearly in my garage have agreed that ‘that’s enough baby-making for this year’, and started their 6,000-mile trip to the southern Sahara. Between burps, many thousands of wildebeeste are currently sniffing the Kenyan air and nudging each other south for new shoots on the grassy plains of the Serengeti. To me, Newmarket’s Autumn Double meetings, embracing the Cambridgeshire and the Cesarewitch, bring the same strong sense of seasonal change with the second of those Heritage handicaps over two miles and two furlongs offering a strong challenge to the Flat trainers from jumps specialists warming up their charges for the winter season. We also look to Newmarket

Melissa Kite

AA only admits the right sort of alcoholics

The support group groupies have issued another ban. They have attempted to slap an exclusion order on another long-standing member, in addition to the one they have meted out to my friend, the bricklayer. This latest victim hasn’t been to a meeting in Surrey for seven years because the last time he went, the local area committee accused him of something so Orwellian it was impossible for him to do anything other than leave. They accused him of believing in God too much. During a ridiculous row over whether members should be forced to applaud the giving out of sobriety chips, this fellow wouldn’t back down in his belief that

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The hidden benefits of smart motorways

In 2015, Holborn Underground station was suffering from serious overcrowding at peak hours, with a bottleneck forming in the space leading to the escalators. So Transport for London tried an experiment. Abandoning the usual ‘stand on the right, walk on the left’ convention, they placed signs on two of the three ascending escalators instructing people on both sides to stand. Outrage followed. But the experiment worked. Escalators with passengers standing transported an average of 151 people per minute, compared with 115 for the dual-use escalator. People cannot all walk up an escalator in strict lockstep for fear of ending up on the sex offenders register You can see why people

Jeremy Clarke

The joy of morphine sulphate

Two football friends, brothers, Mick and Pete, came to visit last week. We’ve been going to matches together since 1969, aged 12, in the good old skinhead days when the police enjoyed a punch-up as much as anybody. We used to travel all over the country on Lacey’s Coaches for away games and looked up to the older hooligans as gods. Those dockers were good honest scrappers, kind, fearless and very fun, in an era long before the sociologists or politicians started paying attention or hooligans wore designer jumpers. Mick still goes with Arthur, his son. Me and Pete haven’t been to a game since the team moved to its