Society

Thursday

William Moore William Moore

The real Brexit betrayal, bite-sized history & is being a bridesmaid brutal?

44 min listen

The real Brexit betrayal: Starmer vs the workers ‘This week Starmer fell… into the embrace of Ursula von der Leyen’ writes Michael Gove in our cover article this week. He writes that this week’s agreement with the EU perpetuates the failure to understand Brexit’s opportunities, and that Labour ‘doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t exist to make the lives of the fortunate more favourable’. Michael makes the argument that ‘the real Brexit betrayal’ is Labour’s failure to understand how Brexit can protect British jobs and industries and save our manufacturing sector. Historian of the Labour Party Dr Richard Johnson, a politics lecturer at Queen Mary University writes an accompanying piece arguing

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The Washington shooting is a chilling warning to Jews everywhere

Waking early on Thursday in London, I read the news on a half-lit phone screen: two people, Israeli embassy staff, gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington D.C. A man shouted “Free Palestine,” – of course he did – after he had fired his weapon and walked inside the building – where, in an extraordinary confusion of roles, guests offered him water and comfort, believing he too had been a victim. In a way, maybe he had. A man shouted “Free Palestine,” – of course he did – after he had fired his weapon Though our airwaves and streets have been filled with talk of genocide, that word

Andrew Tettenborn

Allowing camping on Dartmoor is a terrible mistake

Away from the hamlets and farms that dot the edge of it, the high moor on Dartmoor is a wild and solitary place, especially overnight and in the early morning. But if you like that sort of thing, you might be well-advised to make the most of it while you can. As a result of an unfortunate decision from the Supreme Court yesterday, the solitude may not last much longer. The peculiarity of Dartmoor is that even though it looks like a public space, most of it is privately owned. The land is looked after by a mixture of large estate owners, farmers and others. Public access, for centuries tolerated

Lara Brown

King’s College Cambridge is wrong to cut ties with arms firms

Who says that student activism is pointless? Setting up a tent, donning a keffiyeh, and camping out on your university’s front lawn might look like a waste of time, but at Cambridge it’s a strategy that pays off. King’s College – which has been repeatedly targeted by pro-Palestinian protestors – has agreed to cut ties with arms companies. The college announced that it will divest money from weapons manufacturers after its governing body voted to ‘adopt a new responsible investment policy’. King’s College – which has been repeatedly targeted by pro-Palestinian protestors – has agreed to cut ties with arms companies In an email sent to students on Tuesday, King’s College said it

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

It’s time to get rid of the Rich List

Here’s a takeover tale that captures the zeitgeist. It involves two FTSE 250 companies and some deep-pocketed US investors – and I’ll explain it as simply as I can. In essence, how would you feel if your GP surgery fell into the hands of American investors associated with the book title Barbarians at the Gate? The first of the two London-listed companies is Assura, which owns 600 NHS surgeries and diagnostic facilities and has accepted a cash offer of £1.6 billion from a pair of New York investment giants. They are Stone-peak, which holds a huge global portfolio of infrastructure assets, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, whose initials KKR may be

The Spectator

Letters: In praise of the post office

Reeves’s road sense Sir: Is it stubbornness, denial, inexperience or some other agenda that prevents Rachel Reeves changing course in the face of uncomfortable facts? A multitude of surveys have told her that punitively taxing the rich means they will leave (‘The great escape’, 17 May). Recently I had lunch at a fashionable London club that was half-empty. When asked why this was, our waiter commented that he now rarely sees his previous international regulars, and if he does, they are only in town for a short stay. Endless business surveys have also told Reeves that her employer taxes will cost jobs, close companies, weaken growth and raise inflation, yet

Sophia Money-Coutts

The brutality of being a bridesmaid

There stands the bride. Perfect hair, perfect nails, perfect fake tan. She may not have slept the previous night or eaten for six months but, still, she’s beaming. And there behind her stand the bridesmaids. All 95 of them. ‘My sister-in-law asked how much weight I could drop because the dresses only went up to a size 12’ When Kathryn McGowan got married in County Down this month, she couldn’t decide which of her pals should have the honour of holding her train and checking she didn’t have lipstick on her teeth. ‘It was quite stressful,’ she said of the dilemma, ‘and then one day the idea came to me.’

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The battle over fishing is a sideshow

So far, so routine. Labour wants to update and if possible upgrade the United Kingdom’s arrangements with our immediate neighbour and by far our biggest trading partner, the European Union. As any new government would. The recent destabilisation of world trade adds urgency to the task. So our government goes to Brussels and (after the customary silly European ‘to the wire’ theatrics) hammers out what looks like a sensible improvement on the existing unnecessarily irksome restrictions and procedures. The deal involves – inevitably – a few concessions on both sides (we concede a bit on fishing) but overall looks modestly advantageous for us and for them. A thoroughly workmanlike result.

Douglas Murray

The death of public discourse

It is said that since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, it is once again possible to use the word ‘retarded’. Or at least to use it without being cancelled by a group of demonic online third parties pretending to be woefully offended by the use of an often-useful term. I don’t know how long this window of opportunity will remain open, so let me note while I can that it is hard to think of a country in the world that has a more retarded public discourse than Britain. Almost everyone in public life aims to stop any discussion of the issues via obfuscation and misrepresentation The journalist

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

I’ve reached zero tolerance on zero tolerance

I know an astonishing 89-year-old who climbs mountains, uses a chainsaw and has the muscular, vice-like grip of a gym-built thirtysomething. He refuses pills and painkillers and considers it vital to embrace life’s most horrifying experiences. Last week the astonishing 89-year-old tore his Achilles tendon (leaping into a moving car), was driven to A&E and referred for an ultrasound. On the way to the scanning room, helped along by a male nurse, he put his injured leg down by mistake and yelled: ‘FUCK!’ At this, the nurse turned on his heel and walked off, saying: ‘I don’t have to put up with this.’ This is the 89-year-old’s version of events,

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Butlin’s is cashing in on nostalgia

Butlin’s is no longer a holiday ‘camp’. The company has evolved from its postwar heyday and now describes its properties as ‘resorts’ which are crammed with restaurants, bars and venues for live gigs. It’s like a cruise but on dry land. I went to Bognor Regis for a nostalgic ‘Ultimate 80s’ weekend where the performers included half-forgotten acts such as Aswad and T’Pau, and the remnants of the boyband Bros. The site lies 200 yards from Bognor’s shallow, pebble-strewn beach. The town itself is doing all right, if not exactly thriving. The charity shops are cheap, the estate agencies are full of recently vacated bungalows and the funeral parlours offer

Charlie Taylor

Can anything solve Britain’s prisons crisis?

While we were inspecting HMP Elmley on the Isle of Sheppey, a commotion broke out on one of the wings. ‘What’s up?’ one of my team asked the nearest prison officer. ‘Bloke who’s getting out tomorrow has just been told he’s being shipped to Rochester jail.’ The man was manhandled towards a prison van. ‘If I was him, I’d kick off too,’ the officer added quietly. Reducing the prison population will do nothing to stem the flow of drugs pouring into every jail in the country That week things were so desperate in the south of England that the prisoner was being forced to spend one night in a jail

Richard Williams

The BBC’s war on the SAS

The SAS is under fire, not from terrorists or insurgents, but from ill-informed commentators and our state broadcaster. Our Special Forces are globally respected, they have been a vital part of Britain’s national security capability for nearly 80 years and they run enormous risks so that we might all be kept safe. Nevertheless, an exercise in making sure that they, like all who serve the Crown, are held properly to account risks being used by the ignorant, the sensationalist and the malicious to undermine the regiment and weaken our security. Panorama presents the footage as a sort of snuff movie, divorcing it from its purpose as a coaching tool In

Toby Young Toby Young

How do I feed my children now my wife has gone on strike?

Caroline has gone on strike. At least, as far as cooking is concerned. Her case for downing spatulas is that she’s been cooking steak, chicken and bacon for my three sons and me for the best part of 25 years and, as a vegetarian, she’s had enough. Henceforth, she’s going to prepare vegetarian meals. If we’d like to share those with her she’s happy to make enough for all, but if we want something meaty we’re on our own. Now, I wouldn’t mind the occasional nut cutlet and sweet potato – I can even stomach tofu and scrambled egg. But for Caroline, a ‘vegetarian meal’ consists of a fried egg

Christopher Howse

Typos are an unintentional delight

Afriend of mine was once delighted to get a job at the Radio Times, where he ‘corrected’ a golfing picture caption to ‘Steve Ballesteros’. Typos, literals or misprints are often committed in an effort to expunge them. Pity the poor subeditor who blanked out the wrong half of the word that is conventionally printed as mother*****r. The harder you try to whack the moles, the faster they come. The other rule is: the bigger, the easier to miss. In 96pt type the front-page headline in the Guardian on 5 November 1980 was: ‘Landside makes it President Reagan.’ That is what optimistic journalists call a ‘self-correcting literal’ – one that readers

Roger Alton Roger Alton

How football found God

Without wanting to sound like a refugee from the 1950s, it was a shame that last week’s Cup Final was not the climax to the domestic season but sandwiched between a cluster of Premier League games – and kicked off at 4.30 p.m., which must have been unhelpful for those hoping to get a train back to Manchester. Palace wholly deserved to win: they defended brilliantly, broke like lightning and cunningly sabotaged any momentum a ponderous Manchester City might have been trying to develop by hurling themselves to the ground at the slightest opportunity. Never mind: the Palace fans were fantastic and kept Wembley afloat on a rich sea of

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do you decipher modern RSVPs?

Q. I was caught off guard last week by a busybody mother at my son’s boarding school asking us to join them for their sports day picnic. I pretended we would have our son’s godparents with us but she just said words to the effect of ‘bring them, the more the merrier’. My son doesn’t even like their son. How can I get out of this without causing offence? Name and address withheld A. Tell the busybody you have thought through her kind invitation but, realistically, you want the godparents to concentrate on your son because ‘they see him so rarely’. At the event itself, the busybody may not notice

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Food that’s both serious and serene: Babbo reviewed

After a week in which Israel triumphed at the Eurovision Song Contest with second place – western Europe is for them, eastern Europe slightly less so (plus ça change) – I review Babbo, the new neighbourhood restaurant in St John’s Wood. Restaurants tend to drift in, settle and drift onwards here. The Victorians knew it as a land of mistresses and smut; now it is a world of private hospitals, bad parking and MCC members, who seem bewildered by it all, as if Lord’s landed like a spaceship in an alien land. Only Oslo Court seems impregnable, because it manifests Jewish solidity – it is disguised as the home of

Catriona Olding

Two years without Jeremy Clarke

Two years ago, at five to eight in the evening of Monday 22 May 2023, I ran into the department store Galeries Lafayette at CAP 3000 next to Nice airport, grabbed two black blazers and rushed to the nearest checkout. ‘Je suis vraiment désolé, Madame, mais nous fermons.’ ‘Please, it’s not eight o’clock yet. My husband died yesterday morning – I need a smart jacket for the funeral on Friday. There are no shops where I live.’ Shaking and fighting back tears, I tried on both in front of the two assistants at the till. ‘Quelle?’ They agreed on the first, and with no mirror close by I took their