Society

Wednesday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why Liz Truss’s political journey matters

As is now well known, Liz Truss has travelled politically. Her parents are left-wing, and there is a photograph of her as a child posing with them and their CND banner in Paisley. She herself was active in the Liberal Democrats. Professor Truss is reportedly upset that his daughter became a Conservative. I can identify with this story a little since both my parents were/are (my mother is still alive) ardent Liberals and I fear my own move to the right – though never really a party-political thing – upset them. Parents tend to be more upset by children moving to their right than to their left. This is because non-conservative politics

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Why the ‘ThickLizzie’ slur is so stupid

There’s a funny thing about humans: when we want to help people, we often end up hurting them — and vice-versa. Take the ‘ThickLizzie’ hashtag that has been trending on social media. The new Prime Minister is, according to large numbers of Tory-loathers, a moron. There is an undercurrent of sexism here, yes. There’s also an overcurrent of stupidity. It’s just clearly not true. Truss may not be the most dynamic public speaker. She can be awkward. She may have poor judgment. She may turn out to be a disaster as Prime Minister. How many of the people calling her stupid on Twitter today got into Oxford to read Philosophy, Politics

Daisy Dunn

Emily Maitlis tries too hard not to be teachery on her new podcast

The competition between news-led podcasts is nearing boiling point. If you tuned in to The Media Show on Radio 4 last Wednesday, you’d have felt the tension between the podcasters leading the guard: Alastair Campbell of The Rest Is Politics, Jon Sopel of The News Agents, plus his executive producer, Dino Sofos, Nosheen Iqbal of the Guardian’s Today in Focus, and Adam Boulton, who has just launched a politics show with Kate McCann on Times Radio. Kiran Moodley and Minnie Stephenson might reasonably have joined this line-up as they launch a new series of their news pod with Channel 4 this week. The Fourcast, like The News Agents (where Sopel

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Meghan Markle’s self-centred psychobabble

Move over Liz Truss, the real leaders of our global future are in Manchester this week – not Westminster. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, having apparently got bored of their LA exile, appeared at the One Young World Summit to speak to the next generation of ambitious strivers. The event, described as ‘a chance for the individuals responsible for shaping the future, to come together to confront the biggest challenges facing humanity,’ had Meghan down for a speech about gender equality. What they got was a lecture about… Meghan. Leadership tomorrow means talking about yourself today. In seven short minutes, the duchess managed to squeeze in 54 references to

Alexander Larman

The Harry ‘n’ Meghan circus shows no sign of coming to an end

It seemed fitting that, for her return to Britain, Meghan Markle was joined at the One Young World summit in Manchester by none other than Sir Bob Geldof. The presence – on a Monday, no less – of the Boomtown Rats hitmaker-turned-all-purpose humanitarian was designed to show the worthy company that the Duchess of Sussex keeps these days. But it also ran the risk of suggesting that she, too, is in danger of repeating her single greatest hit all too often. Does Meghan still have a loyal audience, or is her schtick in danger of wearing thin? She decided to be emollient. Although recent press interviews with her have trotted

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Why don’t we put warnings on smartphones?

On a recent trip to Sainsbury’s, I was perplexed to find nothing where it should be. I’m used to things being switched about to a small extent. It can even be quite fun to track down rice pudding where the clingfilm used to be and the clingfilm where the baked beans once were. But this was a dizzying change of topography, like returning home after a tsunami to find your bathroom in the basement and your sofa sailing off into the sea. All was made clear by a helpful sign: ‘LOOKING FOR YOUR FAVOURITES? The government is introducing new rules in October for products containing high fat, sugar or salt.

Monday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Joe Lycett isn’t funny – or brave

Can we all take a moment to marvel at the courage of Joe Lycett? Imagine the cojones it must take to go on the BBC and make fun of the Tories. How truly stunning and brave. Roll over Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks – there’s a new comedy insurgent in town. I’m being sarcastic, clearly. And sarcasm, as we know, is the lowest form of wit. Apart, perhaps, from going on the BBC to make fun of the Tories. I honestly cannot think of anything more pedestrian and less amusing than that. Witness the way Lycett kept looking over at Emily Thornberry, the doyenne of bourgeois London leftism Lycett is

Friday

Tom Slater Tom Slater

The truth about Extinction Rebellion

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse – Extinction Rebellion are back! Well, if you thought an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis, fuelled by a global scramble for gas, would have led the eco-irritants to sit things out for a bit, you don’t know XR. For them, the ‘climate emergency’ trumps all. Plus, reading a room has never really been their strong suit – as we saw when they tried to win the hearts and minds of commuters by climbing on top of Tube trains, or when an animal-rights XR offshoot went after that most universally disliked of figures in Britain, the Queen. This time their target is the Houses

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Why has the West caved in to the progressive witch-finders?

34 min listen

Is western society in the grips of a progressive hysterical epidemic comparable to the Salem Witch Trials? My guest on Holy Smoke this week, Andrew Doyle, argues precisely that in his book The New Puritans. He suggests that gender ideology, and particularly the dogmas of trans activists, together with the fantasies of Critical Race Theory, are dragging society into an alternative reality that resembles a fanatical religion. But it’s one that doesn’t have to employ its own ideological police – because actual police forces, along with other powerful institutions including the churches, have signed up to the New Puritanism (usually without understanding it). Andrew Doyle has a doctorate in Renaissance

Thursday

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

How to make a true apple strudel

It’s possible that, like me, your first encounter with the Grande Dame of the Austrian pastry world, the apfelstrudel, was not in fact in one of the famed Viennese grand cafés, but rather from the freezer aisle at the supermarket. If it was anything like mine, it was probably a latticed, puffed version; the one I remember from childhood had blackberries mixed into the apple, which peeked through the holes in the pastry. I have no interest in denigrating our Sunday lunch pudding staple. In fact I loved it, served with thick, cold custard, straight from the carton. But it is fair to say that a true apple strudel is

The Spectator

Letters: Lockdown saved lives

Lockdown saved lives Sir: Rishi Sunak presents an alarming picture of what happened during lockdown (‘The lockdown files’, 27 August) – and one echoed by lockdown sceptics who claim that Covid policy was a disaster, stoked by fear and based on questionable scientific advice. Worst of all, they cry, the trade-offs were not even discussed. But none of this is true. I know because I sat around the cabinet table as politicians, scientists, economists and epidemiologists agonised over the extent to which lockdown would devastate lives and livelihoods. It was not an easy decision for anyone. Looking back, it’s clear that the biggest mistake we made wasn’t locking down, but

Katy Balls Katy Balls

‘Those Jedi mind tricks don’t work on me’: Dominic Raab on Truss, Sunak and his own future

If Liz Truss is named prime minister next week, her administration will look rather different to the government of the past few years. Rishi Sunak has suggested he won’t accept any job offer. Michael Gove, a Sunak supporter, has pre-emptively ruled himself out. Other prominent backers are expected to join the pair on the backbenches – such as the Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab. Truss’s allies say he deserves what’s coming his way for having likened her economic plans of immediate tax cuts to an ‘electoral suicide note’. Yet for a man on political death row, Raab is remarkably cheery when we meet at The Spectator’s offices.

Keiron Pim

What young Ukrainians will learn from reading Joseph Roth

As Russia’s assault on Ukraine continues, Volodymyr Zelensky’s ministry of education has just announced changes to the national curriculum that include removing almost all the Russian authors on the foreign literature syllabus. In last week’s Spectator, Svitlana Morenets revealed the new names: we see Robert Burns, whose inclusion may be a nod to Britain’s support during the conflict. Then there is Joseph Roth, a master of German prose, whose writing about interwar Europe speaks to Ukraine’s modern upheavals. Roth was born in 1894 in Brody, a town that now stands in western Ukraine but then lay in what was known as Galicia, the eastern Austro–Hungarian crownland. He left as soon

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The mathematical formula that proves London is over

Some years ago, an Australian neurologist was in the habit of walking barefoot across his lawn. This being Australia, the lawn was slightly prickly, and the experience was painful but not intolerable; until one day, when one of the pricks in his heel was more pronounced than usual. He had been bitten by a snake and, again this being Australia, the snake was highly venomous. Doctors saved his leg and he made a complete recovery. But there was one lasting side-effect: he now found walking across his lawn agonising. In terms of the stimulus to his feet, nothing had changed. What had changed was how his brain processed the stimulus.

Michael Gove

My Ibiza diary

You wait 11 years for a Tory leadership election and then three come along in quick succession. The first in which I had a vote was in 2005. In August of that year my candidate, David Cameron, was being told to fold his tents. The final choice was a foregone conclusion: it would be a battle between the big beasts, David Davis and Ken Clarke. The Cameroon cohort in parliament at that point was more notable for quality – Boris Johnson, George Osborne, Oliver Letwin, Nick Soames – than for quantity. They may have made a fine first eleven but it was a struggle to find a twelfth man (or

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Will energy bills kill off working from home?

‘The jury’s out’, was Liz Truss’s pert response to the question ‘Macron: friend or foe?’ at last week’s Norwich hustings. ‘I’ll judge him on deeds not words.’ In a video clip of the event you can see a bald bloke in the second row applauding wildly, as if she had just delivered from memory the whole of Henry V’s speech before Agincourt. Hard to know which is worse: whether as Foreign Secretary she thinks it’s shrewd diplomacy to cast doubt on the bona fides of our nearest ally and Europe’s only current statesman; or whether, even with victory in the bag, she’ll say anything to win the vote of every

Dot Wordsworth

The changing language of ‘mental health’

It is easy to laugh at young people asking for sympathy because ‘I’ve got mental health’. I think I heard the journalist-turned-teacher Lucy Kellaway on the wireless recently noticing in a half-baffled way the tendency of pupils to call mental illness mental health. Mental health hasn’t quite achieved that meaning in standard speech, but it could. It is partly a matter of euphemism. Mad and madness are now hardly usable at all with reference to everyday circumstances, being reserved for different times and cultures, for King Nebuchadnezzar, King Lear or King George. A mental case is ‘increasingly avoided’, noted the Oxford English Dictionary in its 21st-century revision of entries that

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Was I wrong to tell my friend’s boyfriend he was snoring?

Q. I have had an email inviting me to an old girls’ reunion, class of 1976. The organiser suggested we ‘reply all’ so that everyone could see who else was able to attend. Now I have had no fewer than four super-excited emails from other old girls saying they can’t wait till the reunion, so can we meet up separately before that? I can hardly fit in seeing my family and close friends, let alone people I haven’t seen for 45 years, but I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. – Name and address withheld A. Email each of the four women saying you too can’t wait to see them

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Why didn’t more people resist lockdown?

Last week’s Spectator interview with Rishi Sunak conveyed the anti-science ‘science’, the paucity of even fag-packet cost-benefit analysis and the ideological lockdown of Boris Johnson’s cabinet that brought forth calamitously extensive lockdowns of everyone else. Ever since, numerous politicians and institutions implicated in this rash experiment have had a vested interest in maintaining the myth that putting whole societies into standby mode, as if countries are mere flatscreens that can be benignly switched on and off by governmental remote, saved many millions of lives. As it will take years for culpable parties to retire, I once feared that a full generation would need to elapse before we recognised lockdowns for

Toby Young Toby Young

How science became politicised

Here’s a paradox. Over the past two-and-a-half years, a cadre of senior politicians and their ‘expert’ advisers across the world have successfully promoted a series of controversial public policies by claiming they’re based on ‘the science’ rather than a particular moral or ideological vision. I’m thinking of lockdowns and net zero in particular. Yet at the same time, this group has engaged in behaviour that has undermined public confidence in science. Why appeal to the authority of science to win support for a series of politically contentious policies – and then diminish its authority? Take Anthony Fauci, for instance, who recently announced he’s stepping down as chief medical adviser to