Society

Monday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Would it be immoral to raise cash for the NHS by selling £100,000 vaccines?

It is easy to be offended by the idea of the super-rich trying to buy their place in the queue for the Covid-19 vaccine ahead of your granny, and easy to feel a warm glow of satisfaction that they are being rebuffed – all supplies are being held on such a tight rein by the NHS that private clinics can’t get a look in. But would it really be such a bad idea if a handful of very wealthy individuals were allowed to have the vaccine ahead of schedule and raise some very useful cash for the NHS in the process? If we are going to vaccinate our way out

Andrew Sullivan

Where have all the lesbians gone?

I miss lesbians. It is true that most homosexual men don’t have too many integrated in our lives, but most of us have a few. And we need them. They check our sometimes tenuous grasp of reality, they roll their eyes at our hedonism, they show us how marriages can last, and take care of us when we get sick. I generalise, of course. Many lesbians have little or nothing to do with men, including gay men. But there is a special chemistry between the men and women in the gay and lesbian worlds that it’s sad to see dissipate. Same-sex worlds can get unbalanced fast. We both need a

Quentin Letts

The miraculous rise of June Sarpong

In this season for miracles, the rise of June Sarpong continues: she has been made a trustee of the Donmar Warehouse, that London theatre attended by City snoots and funded partly by taxpayers. Every era has its Widmerpool, the slaloming careerist in A Dance to the Music of Time. Who is our Widmerpool? Gove? Sir Peter Bazalgette? James Purnell? I’d plump for Sarpong. This London-born daughter of aspirational Ghanaians forewent university to work at Kiss FM radio. She became a teenagers’ TV presenter, appeared on Blankety Blank and was David Lammy’s girlfriend. Soon she was a Prince’s Trust ambassador and pals with Alastair Campbell. She now writes, adorns the British

Will Lloyd

The rise and fall of Netflix

In 2010, Jeff Bewkes, then CEO of Time Warner, was asked if he thought Netflix had any chance of taking over Hollywood. His sarcastic answer deserves to go down as one of the all-time dumb predictions. Bewkes (like the dude who wrote the internal Western Union memo that said telephones were a waste of time) was not taking Netflix seriously: ‘Is the Albanian army going to take over the world?’ A decade later, Netflix is not Albania. It’s imperial Spain during el Siglo de Oro. Massive, relentlessly mercantile and ruthlessly acquisitive, Netflix has rippled over the world to become one of the largest media businesses ever known. Count the hundreds

Cristina Odone

The parent gap: what’s happened to mums and dads in Britain?

During a recent webinar with MPs, I learned that parents in Bradford were up in arms because their children had not received their free spectacles. On a visit to the optometrist, organised by the school, the children had been diagnosed with failing eyesight. Why had the school failed to follow up in providing these near-sighted children with the spectacles they were entitled to? I was not sympathetic. When my daughter was nine, I spotted that she was near-sighted because she kept squinting as she struggled to read the road signs in our new neighbourhood. Her (state) primary school had nothing to do with our visit to the optometrist, or with

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

It’s about time we cleaned up our filthy rivers

Cold water swimming has gone from an eccentric and very niche pursuit to something everyone is doing – and is very keen to tell you about, whether or not you’re interested. There’s been a bit of a backlash against the sport’s popularity recently, with a variety of objections. The first comes from the ‘in my day, we called it swimming’ brigade, who are particularly aerated about the current fashionable term ‘wild swimming’. It’s just swimming, they say, and people who do it aren’t any more special than anyone else. The second is the one that accompanies every new trend: it’s being colonised by annoying middle class types who are turning

Camilla Tominey Camilla Tominey

Most-read 2020: Warring Windsors – the real royal conflict

We’re closing 2020 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 4: Camilla Tominey on the Prince of Wales Three years ago, Sir Christopher Geidt departed as the Queen’s private secretary. For years, he had done much to hold The Firm together, but his influence was resented by Prince Charles. The festering acrimony between Buckingham Palace and Clarence House came to a head in 2017 when Geidt, a Cambridge-educated former Scots Guard, convened a meeting of staff to announce Prince Philip’s retirement without first consulting Charles’s aides. Geidt ended up being forced out after a decade of unwavering service. Many in the family — including the Princess Royal

Sunday

Johan Norberg Johan Norberg

Why 2020 was the fourth best year in history

The Spectator has a long and proud history of fact-based optimism, sometimes represented by an end-of-the-year article explaining that statistics bear out that this was the best year ever, even if you didn’t get that impression when following the news. Well, 2020 is not a good candidate for such an article. ‘The worst year ever’, according to a Time Magazine cover story. We all share that sentiment to some extent. We will remember 2020 as a year of disease and death, and lockdowns that separated friends and relatives, and businesses from customers, causing depressions of both the economic and clinical sort. But if we were to take it literally –

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Is a high-spending, high-debt economy the new normal?

35 min listen

After a year battling coronavirus, the UK’s debt now totals more than £2 trillion. In an effort to keep the economy afloat, the Treasury has paid wages, given tax relief, and even paid for people to eat out. As recently as five years ago, Conservatives would have thought this spending unsustainable. But with Boris Johnson’s government being elected on a promise to ‘level up’ the country, will this high-spending, high-debt economy become the new normal? With Paul Abberley, CEO of Charles Stanley Wealth Managers; Jake Berry, Conservative MP and chair of the Northern Research Group; and David Miles, an economist at Imperial College London and former member of the Monetary

Andrew Doyle

Cancel culture is nothing new

Spectator contributors were asked: Which moment from history seems most significant or interesting? Here is Andrew Doyle’s answer: The Synodus Horrenda of January 897 is one of many bleak episodes in history that the Catholic Church would probably rather we forget. This is when Pope Formosus was put on trial for perjury and violating canon law. The twist is that by this point he had been dead for eight months.  The trial was an exercise in score-settling by his successor, Stephen VI. He had the corpse exhumed, dressed in his sacerdotal garb and propped up in the papal court. Pope Formosus was even provided with a defence council, but the

Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Return the Danegeld: the reparations Britain is owed

Should Britain return colonial artefacts? For some, the answer is easy: of course. But these people must also be consistent and realise that the arguments posed for the return of stolen goods cut both ways. Just as they can be applied to make the case that the United Kingdom should pay out where it has plundered, they can be used to argue that Britain should be compensated where it was wronged. While we might want to return the Benin bronzes – plundered in a punitive expedition after the massacre of an unarmed British delegation – we should also be looking to reclaim the various treasures stolen from us. The idea

David Gunnlaugsson

A woke church is doomed to fail

My church attendance leaves something to be desired and I can’t cite Bible verses for every occasion. Yet for as long as I can remember, I have been a staunch supporter of the Christian church. But while I’m always willing to speak up for the church, it is not always willing to defend itself. Iceland became a Christian country over a thousand years ago. Here, as in other Western countries, the teachings of Christianity and the work of the church have been enormously influential in shaping our societies. Yet all too often nowadays, the church in Western societies is silent on the issues that matter. All too often, it fails to

Saturday

Petronella Wyatt

Boris Johnson’s surprising new love of animals

I am amused to learn that Carrie Symonds interrupts cabinet meetings to complain about newspaper stories featuring her dog Dilyn. I was surprised that Boris agreed to a rescue dog in Downing Street. In all the years I have known him, he has never seemed very fond of animals; at least he has always shown a rather cavalier attitude towards Mini. Mini is a gentle soul, with the milk of canine kindness bursting from every pore. The only person she has ever attacked is our current Prime Minister. One could plead this was out of self-defence. Boris had just sat on her.

John Sturgis

Confessions of a failed royal reporter

Half a lifetime ago, I was, briefly, an occasional royal reporter – and watching The Crown, season four has revived memories of that inglorious chapter.  It began with my one and only encounter with my favourite Crown character, Princess Margaret, on a sweltering July evening in 1997. I had arranged a trial night shift on the Evening Standard, starting at 5pm, which only allowed me ten minutes to get from my day job at the Old Bailey across London to their offices in Kensington, by bicycle, in 90-degree heat. I arrived breathless, only for the news editor to spin me straight back out, saying I had just five minutes before

Jonathan Sumption

The moment the modern world went wrong

Spectator contributors were asked: Which moment from history seems most significant or interesting? Here is Jonathan Sumption’s answer: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919-20 was where the modern world went wrong. The consequences of France’s vindictive determination to marginalise Germany are well known, and were denounced at the time by John Maynard Keynes in one of the most biting political pamphlets ever written. It took 30 years to undo its effects. The dismantling of the Ottoman Empire in the Near East by comparison was an authentically British mess, less well known, whose consequences are still with us. At the end of the Great War, Britain dominated the region, militarily and

Friday

William Cook

In praise of Britain’s unsung cathedrals

When a kindly vicar helped me get my life back on track, 20 years ago, I vowed to light a candle in every cathedral in the British Isles. Sadly, I don’t have the time or money to do them all in one go, but I’ve been ticking them off one by one and I’ve been to 44 so far. So long as I step up the pace a bit, I still hope I can get along to all of them before I cash in my chips. How many cathedrals are there in the British Isles? Well, that depends on how you count them. There are 42 Anglican cathedrals in England,

Tim Farron

Why Christmas sends a shiver down my spine

Does Christmas send a shiver down your spine? It should. We seek at this time of year to reclaim the magic of Christmases past. We think of snow thick on the ground. Rosy-cheeked children skating on frozen ponds. Carol services by candlelight in draughty churches. In 2020, there has been very little magic and wonder. Instead there has been sickness, death and a ban on seeing our loved ones; lost jobs and lost hope. To compensate, we feel more urgency this Christmas to seek out the magic, to find those spine-tingling moments, to reach beyond the humdrum and the daily grind. But, lovely though the fairy lights and colourful baubles

Toby Young Toby Young

Most-read 2020: Quarantine with our new puppy will send me barking

We’re closing 2020 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 7: Toby Young on his lockdown nightmare When the news leaked at the weekend that the government was considering telling those aged 70 and over to self-quarantine for 12 weeks to protect them from catching coronavirus, I began to worry about my elderly neighbours. How will they get essential supplies, particularly if the supermarkets’ home delivery services get backed up? What if they’re not on Netflix and have gone through all their box sets? Who will walk their dogs? It was time to summon up that famous Dunkirk spirit and create a network of volunteers willing

Thursday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

At least Santa will arrive before Hermes

I took advantage of Google and NORAD’s ‘Santa tracking app’ to find out when my presents would be delivered. It says that my gifts should arrive in eight hours. Fine, I’m happy with that. Better than Hermes. But I notice three things. First, Google seems of the opinion that Santa is either a man or a woman, contrary to traditional thinking. There is an image of a woman Santa and a man Santa together. And yet, in the sleigh itself, there is no trace of the woman. Is she at home cooking mince pies? How recherche is that? I also notice that while Santa is allowed to be a woman,

Nick Cave

‘Fairytale of New York’ is under attack

Truly great songs that are as emotionally powerful as ‘Fairytale of New York’ are very rare indeed. ‘Fairytale’ is a lyrical high-wire act of dizzying scope and potency, and it rightly takes its place as the greatest Christmas song ever written. It stands shoulder to shoulder with any great song, from any time, not just for its sheer audacity, or its deep empathy, but for its astonishing technical brilliance. One of the many reasons this song is so loved is that, beyond almost any other song I can think of, it speaks with such profound compassion to the marginalised and the dispossessed. With one of the greatest opening lines ever