Society

Tuesday

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Is Charlie Kirk a Christian martyr?

This feels deeply inappropriate, I thought, as I started watching Erika Kirk’s hagiographic eulogy. I am watching a grieving widow in order to analyse her performance, and pass judgement on her message. Her husband was brutally murdered just ten days ago – let her grieve. Don’t use her as journalistic material. But anyone who chooses to speak of the most serious matters, in whatever circumstances, is subject to criticism. Being a victim of some terrible act of violence is no exemption. Victim status does not authorise one to tell a nation what the essence of Christianity is, for example, and expect one’s account to be unchallenged. Her forgiveness of her

Alexander Larman

The fall of Fergie

Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson, the beleaguered Duchess of York, may have finally met her reputational Waterloo. Despite showily cutting off all contact with the late paedophile and financier, Jeffrey Epstein, after his 2008 conviction and imprisonment for sex offences, it has emerged that she sent Epstein a toadying email in 2011 calling him a ‘steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family’. Fergie also insisted in the leaked message that she had not called him a paedophile (ironic, really, because he very much was). After the email came to light this week, she was dropped by several of the charities where she was a patron. It is arguable how

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Private Eye’s shameful Charlie Kirk article

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a peculiar phenomenon has re-emerged: the casket caveat. Instead of simply condemning the dreadful murder of a young man, many eulogies to Kirk are laced with qualifications. Clods of faint praise scattered over a fresh grave. ‘It’s regrettable that he was shot, no matter how much of a bastard he was,’ is the sentiment – or ‘We gather in solemn remembrance of a man who, though admired by many, really had it coming.’ A piece on Kirk’s murder, under the pseudonym ‘Lady Liberty’, drips with insinuations Such weasel words have proliferated since Kirk’s murder, often tarted up as balanced commentary, but reeking of

Monday

Madeline Grant

Has Farage managed to put Boris to bed?

How do you solve a problem like B Johnson? It has troubled the Conservative party since his departure, not least as they presumably do not relish the idea of him going down in history as the last person ever to win them a majority. Interestingly, Labour rarely mentions him, preferring to resurrect Liz Truss again and again. Ironically it has since become clear that they are guilty of many of the things they once criticised Boris for doing; the same love of freebies, a certain economy with the truth, and, inevitably, not knowing that the best time to go was yesterday and the second-best time is today. Zia Yusuf spoke of

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Forget Palestine – when will Starmer recognise Britain?

Who does Keir Starmer think he’s kidding? There he is in that glossy video imperiously decreeing there should be a State of Palestine, yet he can’t even hold the British state together. Under his half-hearted purview our borders have become more porous, our state machinery has become more enfeebled, and the country has become the laughing stock of the civilised world. Forget playing fantasy states overseas, Sir Keir: fix the one you run. Here’s my question for the PM: when will you recognise the British state? Here’s my question for the PM: when will you recognise the British state? We have become a nation where you risk being branded far

Alexander Larman

Is Prince Harry angling for a royal return?

Royalist or republican, you have to feel some sympathy for King Charles. In the past ten days alone, not only has he been largely responsible for ensuring that the first part of Donald Trump’s unprecedented second state visit went smoothly but before that, he had an audience with his hitherto estranged son, Prince Harry. It was a condition of the meeting that no readout of their conversation be leaked to the press. So far, this has been adhered to, but it has not stopped a ‘royal insider’ – who bears a suspicious resemblance to a member of the Sussex camp – from offering their spin on what this might mean

James Sunderland

Starmer risks repeating Britain’s Palestine mistake

Britain has formally recognised a Palestinian state for the first time. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his announcement yesterday keeps ‘alive the possibility of peace’. Given Britain’s history in the region the move is deeply symbolic, even if it is unlikely to change the reality on the ground. Britain will recognise a country with whose past it is deeply enmeshed and correct a historical injustice. But Starmer would do well to learn from Britain’s involvement with Palestine a century ago: promises and words are cheap, a viable two-state solution will require more. Seventy-seven years after the last High Commissioner left Palestine, his vision of two states for two peoples

Nicholas Farrell

Stromboli is at war with goats

Those in charge of Sicily have at last swung into action after a quarter of a century of inactivity to cleanse the tiny volcanic island of Stromboli in the Ionian Sea of its plague of goats. There are well over 2,000 extremely agile, stubborn and aggressive, semi-wild goats on Stromboli (human population 500) whose active volcano is visible in the night sky from mainland Italy 30 miles away. The Stromboli goats devour anything that is green and has roots and clamber into trees and onto the flat roofs of the houses to defecate and urinate. The islanders use their roofs to collect rainwater, their only source of fresh water. The

Sunday

Matthew Wilcox

What rewilders don’t understand about the British countryside

It comes without warning. A black shape shearing out of the sky, a clap of wings like a sail breaking. The foal has no time to startle. Talons hit, the ground shakes, and in the next breath it is gone, dragged upward into the light. Rewilding is the countryside’s answer to cosplay This summer on South Uist, a Scottish island in the Outer Hebrides, crofter Donald John Cameron says he lost five Shetland pony foals from his hillside farm, each one vanishing between May and July. He believes they were carried off by white-tailed eagles, reintroduced to Scotland in the 1970s after the species had been hunted to extinction. The foals,

Saturday

Angela Epstein

Andy Burnham isn’t the answer to Labour’s woes

There was a palpable feeling of euphoria across my home city of Manchester when the Gallagher brothers finally buried years of ferocious feuding and reunited Oasis. After all, we Mancunians are nothing if not effusive in both pride and ownership when success blooms in our own back yard. We feel it personally. So, as Keir Starmer struggles through the gluey mess of the Mandelson/Epstein (no relation) scandal, are we locals cheerleading Andy Burnham’s mooted leadership plans? Don’t bet on it. Are we locals cheerleading Andy Burnham’s mooted leadership plans? Don’t bet on it Our Mayor of Greater Manchester is reportedly circling to challenge the Prime Minister. Burnham has never been shy about

Charlotte Henry

Lib Dems have an answer for why their party isn’t doing better

Whatever the weather, there will be sandals and socks aplenty in Bournemouth this weekend, as the Lib Dems descend on the coastal town for their party conference. It’s a chance for them to get their voice heard and make an impact, something that has not happened much in the 14 months since a hugely successful General Election that resulted in a record 72 MPs heading to the House of Commons. A Lib Dem Peer feels that because the party is “reasonable,” they are simply not getting coverage The Lib Dems are polling at 15 per cent, according to the latest YouGov data, just above half of what Reform are on

Piotr Wilczek

Lazy Polish stereotypes are spoiling British films

Netflix’s film of The Thursday Murder Club has all the makings of a British export hit: a cosy crime plot, a cast of national treasures, a backdrop steeped in English eccentricity. And then comes Bogdan Jankowski, a Polish labourer with a confiscated passport – a character who could have been lifted straight from a tabloid cartoon. The Pole has too often been cast as brute, victim or buffoon It is hardly a new trope. Since the post-war years, the Pole has too often been cast as brute, victim or buffoon. Tennessee Williams’s Stanley Kowalski set the mould in A Streetcar Named Desire: sweaty, violent, his foreignness exaggerated for the audience’s unease. British culture

Friday

Harry Mount

Oxford’s decline and fall is no surprise

What’s the quickest way to make the two most famous universities in the world go wrong? Make it easier to get in. That’s exactly what Oxford and Cambridge appear to have done in recent years. And so – no surprise – it’s just been announced that neither university was in the top three British universities for the first time since the records, produced by the Times, began 32 years ago. Oxford’s slipping standards don’t just apply to those trying to win a place This decline must at least partly be blamed on the universities offering ‘contextual offers’ or using ‘contextual data’ in assessing applicants who may have lower grades. It appears to be

John Power

John Power, Nick Carter, Elisabeth Dampier, Maggie Fergusson & Mark Mason

26 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: John Power argues the Oxford Union has a ‘lynch-mob mindset’; Elisabeth Dampier explains why she would never date a German; Nick Carter makes the case for licensing MDMA to treat veterans with PTSD; Maggie Fergusson reviews Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island by Mike Pitts; and, Mark Mason provides his notes on guided walks. Mark will also be hosting a guided walk for the Spectator, for tickets go to www.spectator.co.uk/events Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Patrick West

Nish Kumar has been cancelled – but not for the reason he thinks

Nish Kumar isn’t the first television comedian to throw himself into activist politics in recent times. Another former panellist on the now defunct BBC comedy show Mock the Week, Frankie Boyle, did likewise a decade ago, and with little success. So far, Kumar’s decision to do similarly seems to have proved even less popular. Having appeared alongside Zarah Sultana early this month live at the London Podcast Festival, Kumar was at the forefront of the anti-Trump protests orchestrated by the fringe left this week, appearing as host at the Stop Trump protest in Parliament Square in London, where he tossed from the stage a large balloon with a picture of

Robin Ashenden

We need Brian Sewell more than ever

‘Rouse tempers, goad and lacerate, raise whirlwinds’ were the words theatre critic Kenneth Tynan had pinned above his desk. Perhaps no writer of our times followed those instructions more obediently than the late Brian Sewell, who died ten years ago today. Called by the Guardian ‘Britain’s most famous and controversial art critic’, Sewell, who wrote mainly for the Evening Standard, never seemed far away from trouble. According to Brian’s memoir, he was reportedly spat at and thumped by RA exhibition-organiser Norman Rosenthal, received a black eye from one young painter – ‘the blow so heavy that it disrupted sight for several weeks’ – and was beaten over the head by a Bond Street art dealer with a

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

800 years on, why is Aquinas Gen Z’s favourite philosopher? 

26 min listen

This year marks 800 years since the birth of the theologian St Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas, best known for his theory of natural law and his magnum opus the Summa Theologia, argued for the existence of God through faith-based reason. The influence of the 13th Century theologian on the philosophy of religion is unquestionable, but what is curious is his resurgent popularity amongst Generation Z – particularly in America. Is this part of the recovery of the sacred seen across the global west? Fr Gregory Pine OP, professor of dogmatic and moral theology at the Dominican House of Studies, joins Damian Thompson to talk about Aquinas’s legacy, unpack some of the

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Led By Donkeys’s Trump stunt is their lamest yet

Has there ever been a lamer protest group than Led By Donkeys? I’m old enough to remember when protest was raucous, occasionally even sexy. The young and the angry rising up in fury against their irritant rulers. Now it’s four craft-beer bros from Stoke Newington whose idea of ‘rebellion’ is to titillate the middle classes with a naff projection about how awful Brexit is. Led By Donkeys have never exactly been daring The chattering class’s favourite faux troublemakers are back with another cunning stunt. This time they’re giving Brexit, Nigel Farage and Liz Truss a break and are aiming their macchiato-fuelled spleen at Donald Trump. I bet you’re shocked that

Michael Gove

Weimar Britain, the war on science & are you a competitive reader?

36 min listen

First: a warning from history Politics moving increasingly from the corridors of power into the streets, economic insecurity exacerbating tensions and the centre of politics failing to hold; these are just some of the echoes from Weimar Germany that the Spectator’s editor Michael Gove sees when looking at present-day Britain. But, he says, ‘there are grounds for hope’ – what are they? Michael joined the podcast to discuss.   Next: why did science succumb to the ‘culture wars’? Biologist and peer Matt Ridley bemoans the ‘cultification of science’, arguing that ‘left-wing ideological nonsense’ ended up permeating through all scientific disciplines. Thinking ‘neutral facts’ were safe, Matt admits he – and colleagues

The Spectator

Letters: The shale gas illusion

The shale illusion Sir: Your leading article rightly makes the case for extracting as much of our North Sea resources as we can (‘All at sea’, 6 September). However the enthusiasm for developing shale gas is misplaced. As energy minister, I commissioned work to establish how much of the onshore gas in-place could be recovered. The truth is just a small proportion – maybe 10 per cent. An energy policy based on shale would put our energy security at risk. Economically, at a time when global gas prices are expected to fall, UK shale would simply not be competitive and projects would fail. It is no accident that none of