Society

Monday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

The magical power of charisma – and why the Churches are ignoring it

38 min listen

The subject of this week’s Holy Smoke is charisma, which you might think is one of the most hackneyed and devalued words in the language; only the other day I saw an advert for a ‘charismatic chartered accountant’. But its popularity is no accident. ‘Charisma’ is shorthand for one of the most revolutionary – and useful – concepts in intellectual history. Charisma refers to the personal magnetism that binds a leader to his or her followers. Our modern understanding of it is based on an idea, almost a revelation, by the great German social theorist Max Weber, who believed that the display of ‘extraordinary powers’ was one of the driving

Saturday

Roddy McDougall

Roddy McDougall, Theo Zenou, Gus Carter and Toby Young

23 min listen

On this week’s episode, Roddy McDougall remembers heroes of the speedway, (01:15) Theo Zanou examines at Stanley Kubrick’s fascination with Napoleon, (07:20) Gus Carter looks at a memorial to everyday heroism, (17:20) and Toby Young explains what’s wrong with Equity’s anti-racism guidelines. (21:35)

Friday

Julie Bindel

Disabled men don’t have a ‘right’ to buy sex

In the latest episode of ‘You couldn’t make it up’, a court has ruled that it is lawful for carers in particular circumstances to assist their clients in paying for sex. The case was brought on behalf of a 27-year-old mentally disabled man who was described as wishing to ‘fulfil a natural desire.’ Since when was paying for access to the inside of a person’s body for one-sided sexual gratification a ‘natural desire’? The ruling, unless successfully challenged, will have major implications not only for carers but for society at large. Government ministers have been granted permission to appeal the decision because it clashes with its aim to eradicate prostitution

William Atkinson

British universities aren’t institutionally racist

There is a spectre haunting British universities: the spectre of institutional racism. ‘There is a lot of evidence that points towards universities perpetuating systemic racism, being institutionally racist,’ the University of East Anglia’s vice-chancellor, David Richardson, told an upcoming BBC Three documentary ‘Is Uni Racist?’. Viewers are likely to be left in no doubt that the answer to that question is ‘Yes’. Two people I know appeared in it, and it was moving to hear them share their experiences. Yet the reality is that for most black students there has never been a better time to study at a university in Britain. Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still

Thursday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

The nightmare: Boris’s battles are just beginning

28 min listen

In this week’s podcast, ITV’s political editor Robert Peston joins The Spectator‘s deputy political editor Katy Balls to talk over this week’s cover story, on the maelstrom of mayhem surrounding Boris Johnson. (1:29) With the recent exit of Johnson’s oldest advisor, Lord Udny-Lister, from Downing Street, the rumbling row over what Boris did or didn’t say in earshot of Cabinet staff, chatty rats and John Lewis – all in all, it hasn’t been a vintage week for Boris Johnson. ‘Prime Ministers don’t often pick up the phone to newspaper editors to denigrate a former official – in fact, I can’t remember any incidence of that in British political history’ –

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Covid has emboldened our modern censors

The past year has accelerated all kinds of trends that were already moving through our societies. Social atomisation, the decline of the high street and communities, the rise of the nanny state — Covid and lockdown have brought all of these to the fore. Among the most concerning is the rise of Big Tech censorship, and the way in which a handful of Silicon Valley oligarchs have come to set the terms of debate and even rule on what is true. This week representatives from Facebook and Twitter were brought before parliament to discuss their firms’ censorship of discussion around Covid. Two particularly pertinent cases were raised — though there

Steerpike Steerpike

Licence to fill: MI6 brings in headhunters to hire new Q

MI6 is on the hunt for a new Q and in the spirit of 21st century recruitment, Britain’s secret service has turned to the one truly indestructible force of modern life: corporate headhunters. Consultants Saxton Bampfylde – dubbed the Fortnum and Mason of labour exchanges – have been brought in to lead the search for Director General Q, one of the deputies to the Chief of MI6 Richard Moore known as ‘C.’  Moore told Times Radio on Sunday the new role is inspired by the gadget specialist portrayed in the James Bond films, famously played by Desmond Llewelyn: In this one life imitates art. We were reshaping it a few years ago and we

Dot Wordsworth

The dirty truth about ‘sleaze’

‘Sleaze, sleaze, sleaze!’ exclaimed Sir Keir Starmer in Prime Minister’s Questions last week, hoping that a triple serving might stick. He meant to suggest financial corruption, though his language came from the hospitable semantic field that also corrals sexual meanings. The sexually dirty also overlaps constantly with the literally dirty. In 2013 Ukip’s Godfrey Bloom remarked that women who didn’t clean behind the fridge were ‘sluts’. This annoyed women who didn’t clean anywhere (but paid foreigners minimal rates to do it) and women who said that his was a sexual accusation. Already, the linguistic battlefield had been churned up by ‘Slut Walks’, in which women donned stereotypical underwear and fishnet

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop my sister-in-law pinching food off my plate?

Q. Since the relaxation of lockdown, my brother and his wife have started coming to our garden for takeaway meals. My sister-in-law always says she isn’t going to eat at all, so we mustn’t order anything for her. But when the food arrives, she gets a fork and enthusiastically begins picking off everyone else’s plate. Sometimes she just uses her fingers. I do like her very much but, as they married just before Covid, I feel I don’t know her well enough yet to comment or to suggest she orders something for herself. I am always left feeling slightly hungry and a bit irritable, as the whole time I am

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Why all the outrage over the European Super League?

Anything been happening in football in the past couple of weeks? No? Moving on then… Hang about though. The doomed relegation-free European Super League may have had a shorter life than the average mayfly but it generated the level of fury produced by poking a stick in a hornets’ nest. How justified was all the outrage? The idea that clubs such as City, Spurs, Arsenal, Chelsea and the rest of the ‘Shameful Six’ are friendly neighbourhood outfits where you could run into Chopper Harris down the pub has long gone. These are huge international businesses run by Arab rulers, Russian billionaires and US hedge funds. They might have backed down

Toby Young Toby Young

The problem with Equity’s anti-racism guidelines

‘Rouse tempers, goad and lacerate, raise whirlwinds.’ Those were the words that Kenneth Tynan, the most celebrated drama critic of the 20th century, had pinned above his desk. During my five-year stint as The Spectator’s theatre critic I did my best to follow that philosophy. But according to a new set of guidelines devised by Equity and embraced by the National Union of Journalists, reviews should be ‘balanced, fair and designed to be productive’. Any critic living by that credo would be more likely to raise a yawn than a whirlwind. The guidelines, part of Equity’s anti-racism campaign, have been developed to help critics ‘challenge their own biases and to

Dilyn the dog Dilyn the dog

Dilyn the dog’s Downing Street diary (as told to Rod Liddle)

I heard them rowing again this morning, look you. I had just completed my first dump of the day in Allegra Stratton’s handbag when I heard their voices spiralling upwards, the Man and the Woman. They’re not in a good place right now, which is fine by me. A plague on both their houses. Mimsy, woke Carrie, who purchased me under the mistaken impression I was a Peke who would lie gently across her bloody lap all day. And that shambling albino wreck, kind of half-dog half-man, who apparently runs the country, when his wife lets him. Money seemed to be at the heart of their disagreement — it often

Gus Carter Gus Carter

The humble heroes of London’s Watts Memorial

Folajimi Olubunmi-Adewole died last weekend saving a woman’s life. Hearing her cries as she fell into the Thames from London Bridge, the 20-year-old, known as Jimi, handed his phone to a friend, told him to call the police, and with another passer-by dived into the river. The other man and the woman were rescued. Jimi was not. His family have called for his heroism to be publicly remembered. A few minutes’ walk from the flowers left for Jimi on the riverbank sits an unassuming remnant of Victorian public-spiritedness, inspired by the same desire to remember everyday heroism. The Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice is in the former churchyard of Aldersgate’s St

Henry Mance

A vegan’s defence of field sports

In modern Britain, the quickest way to prove that you’re a good person is to show that you love animals. People share cat videos and pose with dogs in pictures for dating websites. Anyone who is seen to hurt animals — like the Danish zoo that culled a giraffe or the lawyer who clubbed a fox — is sent to a special circle of social media hell. Those who participate in field sports reside in this inferno: the men and women who shoot, stalk or hunt. They are killers in a society that doesn’t like to see death. When polled, around 85 per cent of the British public are in

The Spectator

Letters: The veiled elitism of social mobility

Levelling up Sir: In making the case for social mobility, Lee Cain unwittingly endorses the classism he hopes to fight (‘Left behind’, 24 April). As the historian Christopher Lasch has argued, the canard of social mobility merely replaces ‘an aristocracy of wealth with an aristocracy of talent’. Far from being egalitarian, the concept is inherently elitist: it implies moving up, out or away from a class, town or profession condemned as undesirable. And by paying lip service to ‘meritocracy’ it becomes a self-serving justification for elites’ power and privilege — if they had the ‘ability and ambition’ to rise to the top, it must only be indolent dullards who are

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: A political squall, sub-postmasters exonerated and India’s Covid crisis

Home By the beginning of the week, 12,071,810 people had received both doses of coronavirus vaccine, and the proportion of the adult population with both soon rose to more than a quarter. In the seven days up to the beginning of the week, 159 people had died, bringing the total of deaths (within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus) to 127,417. Fares Maatou, aged 15, was fatally stabbed at half past four in the afternoon outside a pizza shop in Newham, east London. Anthony Thwaite, the poet and editor of Philip Larkin’s letters and poems, died aged 90. A purely political squall blew up after Downing Street put it

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Who’s really to blame for the Post Office scandal?

The alleged frauds for which the Post Office prosecuted no fewer than 736 of its sub-postmasters has turned out in almost all cases to be the result of faults in a computer system called Horizon which Post Office managers and the system’s supplier, Fujitsu of Japan, were reluctant to acknowledge. That’s the short summary of a miscarriage of justice which also looks like a case of mismanagement to the point of delusion: how could anyone believe a copy-cat crime wave on this scale was sweeping through a cohort of small businesspeople generally seen as the most upstanding of local citizens? And if that wasn’t the belief, the only other explanation

Nicky Haslam

How will Carrie cope with the hideousness of Chequers?

Zut alors! The court of King Boris gets more like Versailles each day. With some talcum powder on that ramshackle hair, the Prime Minister would be the image of Louis le Something after a night on the Tuileries. His government, meanwhile, totters towards the tumbrils. Le Marquis d’Ancock, Comte de Raab and Le Petit-Maître Gove all cower in the corridors of power, fearful of ‘À la Bastille!’ being barked by sitting pretty Mme de Patel, or a strictly formal dressing-down from His Holiness, L’Abbé Rees-Mogg. Behind the screens, Madame du Carrie ponders eco-friendly lightbulbs with Mlle Lulu, or the source of the handwoven rattan for that dog’s basket. The court

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Pleasing perversity: St Pancras Brasserie and Champagne Bar by Searcys reviewed

The St Pancras Brasserie and Champagne Bar by Searcys is as expansive as its name, but ghostly. It is an immense Art Deco restaurant spilling on to an empty platform at the station. When restaurants opened their patios and gardens, I fretted that they would be too busy to be enjoyed: a diner would cling to a square of Astroturf, fearing to sink. But not here: the people have been removed, and they have not returned. Inside, it is empty if not shuttered: a great, golden brasserie with dark wood, dark leather and pale globes of light. The door to the loo is so tall I imagine they stole the