Society

Monday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why was there so little fanfare after David Johansen’s death?

We were twice transported back to the early 1970s this weekend, our memories snagged on the deaths of Roberta Flack and David Johansen. One of the two was afforded quite a send off by the media, the other wasn’t. I think they got it the wrong way around. Flack, who died aged 88 on 24 February, was a soul/pop crossover artist with a luxurious contralto range and a canny judge of what made a hit record. She had two big solo hits in the UK with “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, written by Ewan MacColl and “Killing Me Softly With His Song”, a Gimbel/Fox/Lori Lieberman confection written

Jawad Iqbal

Keir Starmer has had his best week since becoming Prime Minister

Even Keir Starmer’s fiercest detractors (and there are a fair few) must concede that he has had a very good week on the international stage: the best by a long chalk since he entered Downing Street. The Prime Minister, derided by critics as a political plodder, lacking in ideas and charisma-free, is a leader transformed. The new Starmer is a man with a mission, imbued with the confidence to lead. This was very much in evidence when he met US President Donald Trump for talks in Washington earlier this week. Starmer approached the discussions in the manner of the barrister he used to be, carefully mastering his brief and solely focused on

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

What went wrong with The Archers?

I was once a fan of The Archers, to the extent that the Guardian quoted me in 2007 outlining how ‘an unlikely combination of support from the Queen and Julie Burchill led to the transformation of Britain’s ‘everyday story of country folk’ from a dull and tired format to its present cult status.’ Apparently I wrote that ‘No longer are the women of Ambridge stuck with ‘the gallons of greengage jam that the old-guard male scriptwriters kept them occupied with for over 20 years.’ The BBC seems determined to educate listeners whom they think are ignorant Look, I know I was taking a lot of drugs back then and my judgement

Tina Stowell

The copyright battle is only part of the AI war

Artificial intelligence (AI) really is the next industrial revolution. In fact, it’s already started, and the technology’s capability is developing faster than anything we’ve seen before. Its benefits mean there is so much more to be excited, than fearful, about. But such is the extent of the technology’s power and potential, it is essential we don’t allow it to be controlled only by a small number of Big Tech companies. The approach the EU has taken is not the answer The entrenched incumbents of Silicon Valley have developed some fantastic products and services over the years that we wouldn’t want to be without. But that didn’t give them the right to

Sunday

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland is on a knife edge

Is Ireland a powder keg of racist, anti-immigrant sentiment, ready to explode at any moment? That was certainly the dominant narrative after a night of rioting in Dublin city centre in November 2023 that left a trail of destruction along O’Connell Street. On that occasion, politicians and elements of the Irish media were quick to blame far-right provocateurs for stoking tension and this was used as a convenient pretext to stress the importance of introducing the strongest hate speech legislation in the EU. Yet when it emerged that many of the Dublin rioters may themselves have been from an immigrant background, the politicians swiftly moved on to other matters. But while TDs

James Snell

The troubling truth about ‘witchcraft’ in modern Britain

Witchcraft, and accusations of witchcraft, are returning to Britain. We might think of witchcraft as a thing of the past; sadly, this isn’t the case. In multicultural Britain, folk practices like witchcraft and sorcery are more common than you might expect. Alongside the practice of witchcraft, there is also its opposite: accusations that others, particularly children, are witches, or demons, or possessed by spirits. In the last decade in Britain, 14,000 social work assessments flagged possible abuse linked to faith or belief, which includes witchcraft, and also things like spirit possession, and claims about the presence of demons or the devil. Between March 2023 and 2024 alone, there were 2,180

Saturday

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Was Starmer’s love-in with Trump really such a triumph?

Opponents of Keir Starmer would be well advised to concentrate on his many real weaknesses rather than inventing non-existent disasters just to bolster their own prejudices. The British radical online Right spent the last 48 hours not only hoping for the UK Prime Minister to be humiliated by Donald Trump, but then pretending he had been even when he clearly hadn’t. The reality is that Starmer’s visit to Washington DC was very successful, at least in the short-term.  As well as establishing an unlikely public rapport with Trump, the Prime Minister advanced a promising dialogue on tariffs and trade and got the President to endorse his Chagos Islands deal. British

Friday

Robin Ashenden

Is Trump Putin’s useful idiot?

Those whose mouths have been left hanging open by Donald Trump’s pivot towards Russia in the past fortnight, and the ruthlessness with which the Ukrainians (and Europe) have been thrust off the stage, haven’t been paying attention. The love-in between the two leaders has been going on now for a decade. It started properly in 2015, when the foreplay between the two ‘strongmen’ was conducted, like so many great flirtations, at a coy distance. Trump told CBS network he and Putin would ‘probably get along… very well,’ while Putin, to show willing, responded that Trump was ‘a very outstanding person, talented, without any doubt.’ Trump, eyelids-a- flutter, schmoozed back that

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The BBC’s reputation is in tatters after its Gaza debacle

The BBC’s admission of serious editorial failures in its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone is not just a scandal – it is a moment of reckoning. This is, without doubt, one of the most humiliating debacles in the corporation’s modern history, and it vindicates those who have long highlighted the BBC’s institutional biases when reporting on Israel. The implications of this controversy go far beyond journalistic failure; they touch on issues of public trust, financial accountability, and even national security. At the heart of this disgrace is the BBC’s failure to conduct even the most basic due diligence. That the narrator of the film – a child carefully chosen to evoke

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Alexandra Shulman Edition

29 min listen

Alexandra Shulman is one of the most influential figures in British fashion. She is the longest serving editor-in-chief at British Vogue, having led the magazine for 25 years before stepping down in 2017. Her career in journalism included time at publications such as Tatler and the Sunday Telegraph. She was later editor of the British edition of GQ, before joining British Vogue where she oversaw an increase in circulation to record figures. Alexandra was appointed a CBE for services to fashion journalism, and is now an author, commentator and writes a weekly notebook for the Mail on Sunday. On the podcast, Alexandra talks to Katy Balls about the heyday of print journalism in the late 1980s and 1990s,

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, Matthew Parris, Ian Buruma, Hermione Eyre and Francis Young

34 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Paul Wood reads his letter from the Vatican (1:17); Matthew Parris warns Conservatives from embracing causes that could lose them as much support as they would gain (7:31); reviewing Richard Overy’s Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan, Ian Buruma argues that the atomic bombs were not only immoral, but ineffective (15:35); Hermione Eyre examines the life and work of the surrealist artist Ithell Colquhoun (23:03); and, Francis Young provides his notes on Shrove Tuesday (29:12).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Katharine Birbalsingh

The questions Bridget Phillipson must answer about Labour’s Schools Bill

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which threatens the huge gains made in education over the last 15 years, is moving swiftly through Parliament. If it passes, the impact on our children, especially our most vulnerable, will be seismic. Yet this Bill is slipping by largely unnoticed. Labour’s huge majority gives it untrammelled power. But it is using this authority to push through, without proper scrutiny, a piece of legislation that will do untold damage. Here are the questions that Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson must answer about this Bill, before it is too late: Do you understand why school leaders find it odd that you did not visit a single school

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

BMW’s Oxford retreat signals deep trouble for UK carmaking

Among British car factories, Nissan at Sunderland is the most productive and Jaguar Land Rover at Solihull probably the most advanced. As for industrial landmarks, the former British Leyland complex at Longbridge is reduced to a research and development facility for Chinese-owned MG; but ‘Plant Oxford’ at Cowley, the original home of Morris Motors now owned by BMW of Germany, still produces 1,000 Minis per day. And BMW’s decision to halt a £600 million project to build electric Minis there is, I fear, a moment of destiny for the whole UK auto industry. The truth is that the transition to electric cars has descended into chaos. Total UK car production

The Spectator

Letters: American support to Europe has come at a cost

Rules Britannia Sir: Your rules for national survival in the realist world which we are now entering (‘Get real’, 22 February) make sense. However, they do not go far enough. Rule 1 (enhancing our military lethality) rightly identifies the need for better trained and equipped personnel, but it does not include the need to regain military mass in numbers of troops and battle-winning equipment. A fifth rule, covering the need to make durable alliances with friendly countries – essential for survival in a volatile multipolar world – could also usefully be added. Regarding Rule 2 (laser focus on the primary purpose of armed force), it may be that the type

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

A trap for the right

On Thursday 16 August 1739, the young John Wesley met and for an hour argued with the middle-aged Bishop of Bristol, Joseph Butler. It was an ill-tempered encounter. Wesley believed that God communicated directly with individuals, invested his promises and purposes in them personally, and charged them with missions to reveal and explain the divine will. Butler, famous for his rationalism, reacted with cold indignation. ‘Sir,’ he told Wesley, ‘the pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing.’ The Bishop spoke for England. We do not ‘do’ God – not even the 49 per cent of us who actually believe

Simon Heffer

Buckingham University’s shameful treatment of Professor Tooley

One of many reasons I felt blessed, seven years ago, to be offered a professorship at the private University of Buckingham to teach modern British history was that Buckingham appeared to reject the doctrinal horrors that were, and still are, poisoning many other universities. I, blissfully, had never heard the term ‘woke’, which certainly did not apply at Buckingham. This did not mean we all went around being gratuitously offensive about minorities, women, people who change their gender or any other traditional targets of so-called white male privilege. What it did mean was that we had freedom of speech and of discourse, and proper academic liberty to advance anything we

Ross Clark Ross Clark

How I became a missing person

The Forcan Ridge off Glen Shiel can be a tricky place this time of year. There wasn’t a huge amount of snow, but the rocks in places were encased in ice. Without crampons, an ice axe and a head for what you are doing there are plenty of opportunities to fall to your death, but I didn’t. I bagged my hills, drove back to the holiday cottage where I was staying, had supper and turned in for an earlyish night. The only casualty was my phone which I had sat on while descending a rock, delivering the fatal blow to an already cracked screen. So I emailed my wife from

The Spectator

Who’d be in the Jailhouse of Commons?

Picking a pope To choose a new pope, 120 cardinals will be confined in the Vatican until they have reached a decision. To pick Pope Francis in 2013 took two days – but in November 1268, when cardinals gathered in the town of Viterbo to choose a successor to Clement IV, there was deadlock. Locals locked the cardinals in the episcopal palace and even removed the roof to speed them up. It still took until September 1271 to pick Teobaldo Visconti, who became Pope Gregory X. Jailhouse of Commons Ex-Labour MP Mike Amesbury was jailed for assault. In a House of Commons made up of MPs and former MPs jailed

Judi Bevan

I was told I was too middle-class to adopt

Too many books? Yes, we had too many books. That’s what our social worker told us when we were being assessed to see whether we were suitable parents to adopt a baby from China back in 1996. It seemed to us, a middle-class, well-educated couple, an extraordinary statement and so it appeared to our friends and acquaintances. But that was, and is still to some extent, the credo at work in assessing potential adoptive parents. A significant number of social workers continue to believe that a child should be matched as closely as possible with the social class and ethnic background of the adoptive parents, even if that means children

Francis Young

How Shrove Tuesday inspired the animal welfare movement

In some countries Shrove Tuesday (the day of merrymaking before the rigours of Lent) developed into a ‘carnival’ that lasted several days, but in England it was only ever a half-day holiday, since it was not an official Church feast day. Apprentices and schoolchildren claimed the right to an afternoon of ‘sport’, and from at least the 15th century the most popular Shrove Tuesday recreation was ‘throwing at cocks’. This was a cruel custom that involved immobilising a cockerel, either by tying its foot to a stake or half burying it in the ground, while bystanders took turns throwing stones, tools and bricks at the cockerel in an attempt to