Society

Tuesday

Patrick West

Why children peddle conspiracy theories

Teenagers today are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, and that is a very bad thing indeed. This was the unmistakeable message conveyed by a story in the Times yesterday. Citing a report published by the Commission into Countering Online Conspiracies in Schools, it related how ‘conspiracy theories are rife in classrooms’. Young people, we’re told, are more inclined to trust social media influencers than the government when it came to news sources and forming their views of the world. Teachers ‘need urgent support’ to prevent children ‘falling down rabbit holes online’ and succumbing to ‘misinformation’ they discover therein. There is nothing novel in teenagers avoiding mainstream news sources

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Andrew Gwynne and the truth about WhatsApp

Labour MP Andrew Gwynne has been sacked from the government, and suspended from the party, for sending ‘vile’ WhatsApp messages. Gwynne, who reportedly wrote that he hoped an elderly constituent who had complained about bin collections would die, is also said to have made antisemitic remarks and jokes about Diane Abbott. He stands exposed of being a callous bigot. Case closed. Gwynne’s career is over. If making horrible jokes in private is a sin, we’re all damned Except, of course, Gwynne – and his Labour colleague Oliver Ryan MP, who was also a member of the WhatsApp group and has been suspended – are not bigots. Yes, their remarks were

Geoffrey Heath-Taylor

It’s time for Badenoch and Farage to talk

Kemi Badenoch has ruled out a pact with Reform. The Tory leader told the Daily Telegraph: ‘Nigel Farage has said that he wants to destroy the Conservative Party. ‘So I’m not…I have been given something very precious. I am the custodian of an institution that has existed for nigh on 200 years…I have to look after this thing. I can’t just treat it like it’s a toy and have pacts and mergers.’ Badenoch should think again. The truth is that many Tory voters are being wooed by Nigel Farage’s Reform party. Pretending otherwise is not going to cut it. Reform MP Rupert Lowe’s rousing recent address at a Reform rally

Monday

Elisabeth Dampier

Why do so many gay men support the AfD?

‘There are many neighbourhoods we can no longer go to because we are in danger of being injured, attacked or murdered,’ Ali Utlu tells me. As a gay German man of Turkish extraction and an ex-Muslim, he’ll be voting for the hard-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party in the German elections later this month. And he’s not alone.  A survey of more than 60,000 gay German men by Europe’s largest gay dating platform Romeo found that almost 28 per cent of its users intend to vote for the AfD, making it the most popular party in Germany for gay men. The poll showed that the AfD did best among 18 to 24-year-olds: 34.7 per cent said they’d vote for the

Stephen Pollard

A charity boss cancelled for ‘Islamophobia’ has won an important victory

It sometimes feels as if there is never any good news in the fight to preserve freedom of speech in Britain. At the very moment, for example, when the United States has a president who is ripping up the shibboleths of what Suella Braverman memorably called the ‘Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati’, our deputy prime minister Angela Rayner is reportedly planning to set up a 16-person council to draw up an official definition of Islamophobia. Rayner’s Islamophobia council could be headed by Dominic Grieve, one of the worst people who could hold such a position But it isn’t all gloom. Last week saw a small but potentially very significant legal victory for

Jonathan Sacerdoti

How Hamas used starvation as a weapon of war

We asked for proof of deliberate starvation in Gaza. On Saturday, we received it. The images of Eli Sharabi, Or Levy, and Ohad Ben Ami – three hostages released by Hamas after 491 days in captivity – were haunting. Frail, skeletal, barely able to stand, they bore the unmistakable marks of prolonged deprivation. The sight evoked painful historical echoes: men whose suffering was etched into their hollowed faces and emaciated bodies, a vision chillingly reminiscent of Holocaust survivors. This was not incidental malnutrition. It was something far worse: starvation as a weapon, inflicted with intent. It was a vision chillingly reminiscent of Holocaust survivors For months, famine in Gaza had

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

What happened to William Dalrymple?

At first impression, William Dalrymple is flying high. This patrician historian of British-Indian relations, who celebrates his sixtieth birthday this year, presides over his own literary festival in Jaipur and has amassed more than a million followers on X (many of them hailing from the subcontinent). In recent years, he has grown to become a totem of centrist dads everywhere. This month, he announced that his Empire Podcast – produced by Gary Lineker’s production company – had surpassed 55 million downloads. Dalrymple’s outbursts can be venomous towards those who do not share his repugnance for the Middle East’s only democracy Increasingly, however, questions are being asked both about the Scottish

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is a ‘Trump tornado’ about to tear through Europe?

There is a wind of change blowing through the West. It emanates from Washington DC, where Donald Trump continues to dash off executive orders; more than fifty by the end of last week, the highest number in a president’s first 100 days in four decades. The liberal mainstream media is rattled. The New York Times magazine ran a piece at the weekend in which it described Trump as ‘the leading light of a spate of illiberal leaders and parties flourishing in democracies around the world’. The paper namechecked some of them: Poland, Holland, India, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Hungary and Russia. What unites and motivates these ‘illiberal’ parties is their

Felicity Gillespie

A baby phone ban is long overdue

Crucial brain development in the first few years of life depends on the ‘serve and return’ interaction with parents and carers; baby talk, storytime and games. Sitting in front of a screen is one-way traffic: a child is only in receive mode. Maybe that’s why we are seeing the terrible impact of excessive screen time on pre-school children at the start of Reception. According to Kindred’s latest school readiness report, a third of children starting Reception can’t dress themselves or communicate their needs to an adult; 45 per cent are reported to be unable to sit still for a short time. Up to a quarter of children who begin Reception are

Brendan McCord

How can we develop AI that helps, rather than harms, people?

In every technological revolution, we face a choice: build for freedom or watch as others build for control. With AI the stakes couldn’t be higher. It already mediates 20 per cent of our waking hours through smartphones, automated systems, and digital interfaces. Soon it will touch nearly every aspect of human existence. While AI promises to liberate us for higher pursuits by “extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking,” history – from the iron cage of Soviet bureaucracy to modern Chinese surveillance – serves as a stark warning that automation can just as easily erode our freedoms and condition us to passively accept social control. AI

Sunday

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Labour is doomed under Keir Starmer

Voters simply haven’t taken to the party leader and that’s becoming impossible to ignore. Presenting the public at the next election with a figure they don’t like, rate or agree with would be madness. So at some stage a new leader will have to be installed. There are certainly some mutterings to this effect in Tory circles, about Kemi Badenoch. But the die is not cast on that. Instead, we must look across the aisle to find the leader who has reached the point of no return. Cold, aloof, po-faced and priggish, the PM has set about alienating vast swathes of the electorate at breakneck pace Perhaps this sounds counterintuitive given

James Hanson

I’m sick of fare dodgers on the Tube

Go to any tube station at rush hour in London. Literally any. Then wait by the barriers and watch. Within 60 seconds it’s likely you’ll see at least half a dozen young men (it’s almost always young men) barge their way through the barriers without a care in the world. No one is shocked anymore because it happens with such depressing regularity. Paying commuters stay silent – as do the hapless high-viz clad Transport for London staff watching on. I’ve frequently seen fare-dodgers mockingly wave at TfL staff, safe in the knowledge they are powerless to stop them.  As a daily commuter on the underground, I reckon every tenth person passing

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The spectacular implosion of the Oscars’ first trans nominee

There are some Rude Awokening moments – when the whole damn #BeKind shebang collapses in on itself – that are so perfect, so freakishly unlikely, that they might be mistaken for a fever-dream on the part of we free thinkers. Often, because of their inherent silliness, the ‘trans community’ are involved in some way.  I’m thinking, for example, of the holier-than-thou trans-ally and persecutor of gender-realist women Damien Barr who in 2020 led a campaign to have Emma Nicholson, then honorary vice-president of the Booker Prize, removed for ‘homophobic views’. He was then revealed to have tweeted, to quote the BBC, ‘derogatory terms to refer to transsexuals on social media. In one

Saturday

Robin Ashenden

Kemi Badenoch has a secret weapon in the fight against Nigel Farage

Things are currently looking choppy for Kemi Badenoch. Polls last weekend were bad enough, seven of them showing Reform leading the Conservatives by a point. But now it seems this gap may have widened dramatically. A poll on Thursday showed Reform pushing the Tories in to third place, with Farage’s party on 25 per cent and the Conservatives trailing on 22 per cent. It’s when Kemi speaks from her own experience that a gap between the Conservatives and Reform seems to open up ‘The message that’s coming from this is very, very clear,’ Farage has crowed. ‘Not only do we have momentum but if you want to beat Labour, if

Tom Bower

Why Beckham’s wait for a knighthood goes on

The newspapers’ front page photograph of David and Victoria Beckham entering Buckingham Palace’s State Dining Room was a publicity triumph for England’s global icon. Beaming with pride, Posh – wearing one of her own designs – and Beckham in a specially tailored white tie and tails – had worked hard to secure the invitation last December to King Charles’s dinner in honour of the ruler of Qatar. Alex Ferguson had spotted Beckham’s weaknesses As the photographs revealed the King’s surprise guests, it was reported that the monarch was certain to propose a knighthood for Beckham. The tabloids’ headlines “Make it ‘Sir Becks” relaunched the bandwagon. Surely,  no one could deny that Goldenballs,

Friday

Chas Newkey-Burden

Soap operas have lost the plot

Soap bombshells are nothing new, but the land of light TV entertainment was rocked by some real-life drama this week: ITV announced that Coronation Street and Emmerdale will be cutting back on episodes permanently next year. It was also revealed that viewing figures for EastEnders have plummeted from 30 million at its 1980s peak, to just four million. As one of those lost viewers, I’m not surprised. The storylines are becoming ever more unrealistic, undermining the realism that is supposed to be at the heart of the genre I gave up watching soaps decades ago because the challenges of real-life adulthood made me less keen to soak up the fictional woes of others. But there was

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Katy Balls, Alexander Raubo, Damian Thompson, Daisy Dunn and Mark Mason

27 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Katy Balls analyses the threat Reform pose to the Conservatives (1:20); Alexander Raubo talks us through the MAGA social scene and the art collective Remilia (6:42); Damian Thompson reviews Vatican Spies: from the Second World War to Pope Francis, by Yvonnick Denoel (12:27); Daisy Dunns reviews the new podcast Intoxicating History from Henry Jeffreys and Tom Parker Bowles, as well as BBC Radio 4’s Moving Pictures (17:50); and, Mark Mason provides his notes on obituaries (22:46).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons. 

Kay Burley

From the archives: the Kay Burley Edition

20 min listen

Kay Burley announced her retirement from Sky News this week, after 36 years, having presented more than a million minutes of live television news – more than any other presenter in the world. To mark the occasion, here’s a special edition of Women With Balls – from the archives – when Kay Burley joined Katy Balls in 2019 to talk about how she ‘knocked the rough edges’ off her accent, her love of Jane Fonda, and why the BBC couldn’t afford her these days.

Patrick West

Lego isn’t homophobic

To the surprise of millions of children today, and to their parents who loved the toy when they were youngsters themselves, it turns out that Lego can be homophobic. This is the conclusion of a self-guided tour of the Science Museum in London. The tour, which explores ‘stories of queer communities, experiences and identities’, warns that the plastic blocks can also reinforce the idea that heterosexuality is the norm. As reported in the Daily Telegraph this morning, the ‘Seeing Things Queerly’ tour, devised by the Gender and Sexuality Network, also cautions that Lego can add credence to the view that there are only two genders. The logic behind such assertions is fantastical,

Nicholas Farrell

Marianne Faithfull and my truth about female beauty

The death of Marianne Faithfull last week at the age of 78 has got me thinking again about female beauty. The obituaries were full of descriptions of the singer and actress, who was, as the Daily Mail put it, “the poster girl for the Swinging Sixties” and “the sixties angel with big tits”. The Daily Telegraph flagged a quote from her one-time manager: “She was everything you could want in a woman that you couldn’t possibly have”. Cobblers. Faithfull played the part speaking her lines as if she were a child Faithfull, Mick Jagger’s girlfriend in the second half of the 1960s, was not beautiful. She had a timid girly voice, slim boyish hips and sad downward-sloping eyes. I