Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Zelensky at Sandringham, rail fare rise and Duchess of Sussex’s Chinese takeaways

Home After the humiliation of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Washington, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, quickly convened a meeting at Lancaster House with 17 European leaders, including Mr Zelensky, and Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada. Sir Keir outlined a four-point plan to form a ‘coalition of the willing’ to defend a peace agreement and to keep military aid flowing to Ukraine. Britain gave Ukraine £1.6 billion of export finance to buy 5,000 air defence missiles, to be made by the French-owned company Thales in Belfast. Mr Zelensky requested an audience with the King, which was granted with the government’s approval, and went to Sandringham for

Harry Cole

My faux pas with Washington’s most eligible bachelorette

To the Queen Anne splendour of the British ambassador’s residence in Washington for Peter Mandelson’s welcome party as our man in D.C. Downing Street did their utmost to stop lobby hacks from attending since they didn’t want us to report anything that might distract from Keir Starmer’s ring-kissing at the White House the next day. The PM’s make-or-break meeting with The Don clearly weighed on his mind. On the plane over, he looked almost ill at the prospect. Yet by the time he landed he was cracking jokes, air-kissing Tina Brown and bantering with FBI director Kash Patel – a Liverpool fan – about football. Oh, and as for Peter’s

James Innes-Smith

Stop scoffing food on trains!

I’m on the 10.45 slow train to Ipswich. It’s not even lunchtime, yet everyone around me is already gorging on food. The corpulent man opposite is posting fistfuls of cheesy Doritos into his gaping maw, washing them down with cheap lager. A woman is noisily chomping her way through a limp burger that reeks of dirty vegetable oil. On my right, I’m greeted by the unmistakable whiff of Greggs meat pie, an unholy stench best described as ‘care-home carpet’. By the time we reach Colchester, the entire carriage sounds and smells like a student refectory, with competing crisp packets and loud slurping noises adding to my sense of despair at

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The bully-boy tactics of Trump and J.D. Vance

Just before Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping announced a ‘friendship without limits’. The phrase seems to apply equally well to Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Has Trump ever breathed a word of serious criticism of Putin, questioned his democratic mandate, challenged his right to invade an independent country, condemned his kidnapping of children? Before his inauguration, Trump stepped in on behalf of ‘the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely and against their will in the Middle East’. He warned Hamas that there ‘would be ALL HELL to PAY’ for the perpetrators and that they must ‘RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!’. But although Ukraine is,

Wednesday

Jordan Peterson

Can multiculturalism be fixed?

The rape gang scandal that has afflicted Britain compels us to review the assumptions that underlie multiculturalism. It’s time for us in the free world to look at human beings and their various cultures as they truly are, and not as the bien pensants wish and then so dangerously insist they must be.  A society where women can bring their talents to the table as independent, safe, and respected individuals requires certain stringent psychological and social preconditions: a widely shared view of the value of women as equal, intrinsically, to men; a police and justice system with genuine integrity; as well as material and more specifically hygienic standards associated only

Matthew Lynn

Europe could pay the price for Germany’s debt shake-up

Germany has finally decided to join the party – but Europe may come to regret it. After two decades of limited borrowing and fiscal restraint, Europe’s biggest economy is finally joining the high-debt club. Incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz will borrow €800 billion (£670 million), and perhaps much more, to pay for extra spending on defence and infrastructure. Sure, Germany needs to spend more on its armed forces and on restructuring its economy. But it will also likely mean the euro-zone no longer has a single solvent member to anchor it. It is hard to see how this situation will end well for Europe. Merz is a centre-right, pro-business leader, but

David Abulafia

Cambridge’s Palestine vandals must be expelled

Frustrated by a High Court injunction that prohibits protestors from occupying University buildings in Cambridge so as to block a degree ceremony on 1 March, ‘Palestine Action’ has resorted to violence (for that is what it is) to make its point. The fifteenth-century gateway to the Old Schools, the administrative headquarters of the University, has been sprayed with red paint, and the slogan ‘Divest’ has been written in red on the adjoining walls. The very fact that these activists campaign to ‘divest’ illustrates their hypocrisy One might have thought that they would want to stand back, even celebrate, the fact that the judge only granted an injunction for a single

Jonathan Sacerdoti

No Other Land isn’t what it seems

The Oscars, an institution that claims to celebrate artistic excellence, this week played a leading role in a sophisticated and cynical propaganda campaign against Israel. The 2024 Academy Award for Best Documentary went to No Other Land, a film that, beneath the veneer of raw storytelling and supposed human rights advocacy, is little more than a masterclass in Palestinian distortion. It is not a documentary in the truest sense of the word but a carefully crafted piece of demagoguery –designed not to illuminate but to vilify, to cast Israel as the villain in a narrative that, in reality, it did not write. The irony is staggering. Even as Israel fights to

Chas Newkey-Burden

Why are we such swine to pigs?

We all know the nursery rhyme about “this little piggy”: one little piggy went to market, one little piggy stayed home and so on. A modern rewrite could also include the little piggy that got injected into a rich man’s body. The “super-rich” are using pigs brains to try and “biohack their way to immortality,” according to a report in the Daily Telegraph. Wealthy coffin-dodgers have regular injections of Cerebrolysin, a mixture of compounds taken from pig brains, to boost their brain health. Wealthy coffin-dodgers have regular injections of Cerebrolysin, taken from pig brains, to boost their health This isn’t the only way that pigs are being exploited in modern

Alexander Larman

Greggs is a great British success story

Whenever I’m walking down Cornmarket Street in Oxford – an otherwise unlovely thoroughfare – there is something about the spectacle of the enormous Greggs there that gladdens my soul. Compared to all the other overpriced, depressing places that sell lunchtime sandwiches in the area – I popped into Pret the other day and was astonished to be charged a fiver for some measly dried mango and a suspicious can of drink – Greggs is dedicated to giving its customers value for money that isn’t just welcome, but, in these straitened times, feels positively generous. There has been a market for a modern-day Lyons’ to come in and succeed The food

Tuesday

Mike Pitts

Were the builders of Stonehenge black?

In recent years the study of human ancient DNA – extracted from excavated remains rather than living people – has become so popular that scientists are trying to clamp down on the number of samples taken from long-dead individuals. The research keeps coming, however, and it can be hard to keep up. One recent project might have passed unnoticed outside of its specialism, but for one thing: Silvia Ghirotto, one of the scientists, told a journalist the people who built Stonehenge probably had ‘dark features’. In other words, they were black. The new study, from the University of Ferrara and published in the online journal bioRxiv, analysed ancient DNA from 348

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Netflix’s ‘With Love, Meghan’ is surreally dull

My experience of Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex and Muchness of Montecito, has I imagine been quite a common one. I started out full of enthusiasm that this apparently self-made counter-jumper (actually expensively educated by her poor doofus of a dad) was bringing a soupçon of style to the old Windsors. When it transpired that she was a liar (that ‘secret’ wedding before the public one) and a hypocrite (taking private jets like others take taxis while preaching about climate change) I naturally changed my opinion of her, as I’m not a dolt. I’ve loathed the lying, hypocritical bore ever since, and noted with pleasure the repeated failure that her ‘projects’

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Britain is not prepared for car ramming terrorist attacks

At least two people have died and several injured after a car was driven down a busy shopping street yesterday in Mannheim, in western Germany. A 40-year-old man has been arrested. It is not clear yet if this attack was ideologically motivated. But car attacks like this are becoming horrifyingly common in Germany. In Magdeburg and Munich either side of last Christmas a total of seven people were murdered in two separate car rammings. In both cases, the suspected attackers were foreign nationals. Across Europe, cars are once again becoming the weapon of choice for crazed or radicalised assailants Britain has fortunately manage to avoid any vehicle ramming terrorist incidents

Harvey Proctor

Operation Midland’s guilty men were never held to account

On March 4, 2015, I sat in the bedroom of my home, an old farmhouse overlooking the rolling beauty of the Vale of Belvoir, sipping tea with my partner, Terry. It was an ordinary early morning – until an unexpected knock shattered its peace. Through the glass, I saw the police. My first thought was that something was afoot at Belvoir Castle, where I worked as Private Secretary for the Duke and Duchess of Rutland. But as I opened the door, my world collapsed. A police officer handed me a search warrant. Subsequently, I now know it was an illegal warrant. Then, like an invading force, around 20 Metropolitan Police

Alexander Larman

Netflix’s ‘With Love, Meghan’ is Brand Sussex’s final hope

So here it is, the undistinguished thing, at last. I had hopes that, after its postponement because of the Californian fires, Meghan Markle’s new reality show With Love, Meghan, would quietly disappear from the schedules. These hopes were, as usual, disappointed. Not only has the programme arrived on Netflix as a simultaneous worldwide premiere, but there has been a blitzkrieg of hype that reminds the unwary that the Duchess of Sussex – or ‘Meghan Sussex’ – is a very big, very famous deal indeed. There has been a gushing interview with People and a New York preview screening for her most devoted fans, some of whom have celebrated the renaming

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The Trump-Zelensky clash was the most awkward TV in decades

The visits of Keir Starmer and president Zelensky to the Oval Office last week were both agonising to behold, in very different ways. We witnessed two examples of how/how not (opinions vary which was which) to approach the court of what is described memorably vividly in David Mamet’s brilliant 1987 film House Of Games (nothing to do with Richard Osman) as ‘The United States of Kiss My Ass’. They were a bit like visits to the Wonka factory. Starmer tried so very hard to be ever-so-grateful best behaviour thank-you-for-having-me golden boy Charlie Bucket; while Zelensky went in as Veruca Salt: ‘I want a party with rooms full of laughter, ten

Abbie MacGregor

The trouble with ‘gentle parenting’

What type of parent are you? Buried beneath a litany of books detailing how to raise children ‘the right way,’ you’ll find an endless array of parenting identities: there’s the ‘helicopter parent,’ ‘gentle parent,’ ‘crunchy mumma’, and ‘tiger mum’. These labels are used to encapsulate what kind of mum, or dad, you are. It’s easy to dismiss them as a bit of trendy, light-hearted fun. But their impact runs deeper. By pigeon-holing parents, we risk forgetting what it means to actually raise a child. Parents are forgetting to follow their instincts At its core, parenting is about attachment; the bond between parent and child. Like any meaningful relationship, it is

Monday

Alexander Larman

A refreshingly apolitical Oscars

It is always nice to have a personal connection to the Oscars, however slight and fleeting it might be; hearing Conclave screenwriter give a shout-out to my daughter’s godfather Simon during his acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay was a deeply pleasurable moment. Yet this joyful touch aside, what had initially looked like one of the most wide-open Academy Awards in history eventually proved to be nothing of the kind. Indie director Sean Baker’s twisted romantic comedy Anora, about a sex worker who marries an oligarch’s son, had won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year. After various twists and turns, it asserted its frontrunner status once again, taking four

James Snell

The man with the ‘golden arm’, who saved two million babies

James Harrison, who died in his sleep at a care home in Australia last month at the age of 88, possibly did more good and saved more lives, pound for pound, than almost anyone else born in the last century. His blood plasma contained a rare antibody, Rho(D) immune globulin (called Anti-D), which can be used to prevent the blood of some pregnant women from doing damage to their unborn babies. But that is under-selling it. Anti-D is extremely rare (fewer than 200 people produce enough of it to donate their plasma in Australia) and the conditions which it helps with are common. Anti-D injections protect unborn babies from Rh

Sam Leith Sam Leith

The ‘goodies and baddies’ era of world politics is over

It’s hard to overstate just how shocking, how grotesque and shaming, was President Trump’s outburst against Ukraine’s President Zelensky in the Oval Office. Pop went the last soap-bubble of hope any of us had that US diplomatic policy for the next four years would cleave to anything other than the mad king’s personal whims and grievances. “Goodies and baddies” is exactly how liberal democracies do see the world The personal stuff – the petulance and bullying – is priced in with Donald Trump. But the wider drift of what’s happening is, in a way, more alarming. Historians and international policy experts seem to agree that we’re at an inflection point: the chapter