Society Archives

Sunday

14 Sep 2025

Autists are the answer to Britain’s worklessness crisis

The UK’s worklessness problem is a well-documented crisis. Over six million people in the UK – almost a sixth of the working-age population – are on out-of-work benefits, a number that has nearly doubled in the last seven years. The government’s attempt to begin to address this with the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill ended in fiasco. Diagnoses for the spectacular rise in worklessness vary from the long-term effects of the pandemic through to a lack of well-paid jobs to the perverse incentives within the welfare system. But one notable culprit seems to have escaped the attention of policy wonks: autism. People with autism could therefore make up

Paddy Stephens

The forgotten history of France’s doomed invasion of Taiwan

The French language may not be the global lingua franca it once aspired to be, but I’ve found myself using it in some unexpected places far beyond the Hexagon. Near the busy port of Keelung (pronounced Ji-long), beneath the steep hills surrounding a natural harbour less than twenty miles from Taiwan’s capital Taipei, is a curious burial site. It has the natural placidity of a churchyard, despite its proximity to a main road; trees shade the headstones, whose first line reads “Ici repose…”. This is a French military cemetery. So what is it doing in Taiwan? Few remember this history in Europe, but in Keelung it is commemorated in a

Saturday

13 Sep 2025

Matthew Wilcox

Bored of Banksy

Another Banksy appeared this week, this time on the flank of the Grade I-listed Royal Courts of Justice in London. Naturally, the world’s news agencies leapt to attention. Not because of the image – a judge walloping a protester is the sort of wit you’d find on a novelty birthday card – but because the press can’t resist its favourite pantomime revolutionary. Within hours, it was boarded up and placed under guard. It was later scrubbed off the wall – a rare moment of good sense from the authorities. If only the same fate could befall the rest of Banksy’s wretched oeuvre. If only the same fate could befall the rest

Claire Jackson

When did libraries become so noisy?

Beside me, children sing the ‘Hokey Cokey’. I subconsciously put my left foot in – and out – under the desk, where I face an empty page. Willing concentration to return, I turn to a tried and tested method: staring out of the window. The small garden is a stage for white butterflies that flutter in the vista, ringing in the cyclical changes viewed from this spot. Snowdrops, daffodils, dandelions, grasslands, mud. The library was the last refuge of those in need of peace and quiet; now, the apple has been plucked from the tree ‘Woah, the hokey cokey cokey!’ The sharply increased volume makes me physically jump. To my

Friday

12 Sep 2025

Adrian Hilton

The Oxford Union and the shameful response to Charlie Kirk’s killing

George Abaraonye was elected in June to be the Oxford Union president for Hilary term 2026. He is a PPE student at University College and was the Union’s director of press when he became president-elect. The Oxford Student reported that he ran independently ‘under the #RESET slate and endorsed by the #HOPE slate’. He has certainly called into question his suitability for the role of president, given his comments on the Charlie Kirk assassination this week. His response to the murder of Kirk on the Utah Valley University campus has been published and circulated widely. Screenshots from WhatsApp and Instagram show him writing ‘Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s fucking go’ and

Damian Thompson

Archbishop of Canterbury: who’s on the shortlist?

22 min listen

It is 10 months since the resignation of Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury. Now, finally, the Crown Nominations Commission is believed to have drawn up a shortlist of candidates, and a successor to Welby could be approved by October. Theologian and author Andrew Graystone joins Damian Thompson to talk through what he calls ‘a weak list’ of potential candidates – weak because there are no obvious frontrunners and the Commission is choosing between ‘half a dozen equals’. These range from the more talked-about Michael Beasley (Bath and Wells), Guli France-Dehqani (Chelmsford) and Rose Hudson-Wilson (Dover) [all pictured in the thumbnail] to the ‘others’: Stephen Lake (Salisbury), Martyn Snow (Leicester),

Alexander Larman

What is Prince Harry up to in Ukraine?

The Ginger Pimpernel – as the world will probably not be calling the Duke of Sussex – has popped up once again. It was widely assumed that, after his surprisingly successful quasi-royal visit to Britain this week, he would be returning to Montecito and his family, but he has wrongfooted everyone by instead hopping over on an unannounced visit to Kyiv. There, he and other members of the Invictus Games Foundation were due to meet wounded military personnel and to announce new initiatives to offer unspecified (but presumably financial) assistance, which will be going towards sports recovery programmes to aid the rehabilitation of veterans injured in the ongoing conflict. It

Nick Cohen

Keir Starmer was a fool to ever tie himself to Peter Mandelson

There is a unique, and bitter, flavour to the corruption of the men of the 1990s. Peter Mandelson – who was yesterday sacked as UK ambassador to Washington – Tony Blair, and the former German and US leaders Gerhard Schroeder and Bill Clinton came from the left, and offered a hard but plausible message to their supporters. The right had monopolised power under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, they said. The only way to win in the late 20th century was for Labour in the UK, the Democrats in the US, and the Social Democrats in Germany to abandon their old notions of standing up to the bosses on behalf of the

Thursday

11 Sep 2025

Matthew Lynn

Even John Lewis is struggling in this Labour economy

It is a worker’s cooperative. It promotes sustainability, emphasises its social responsibility, invests in its people, and, of course, has an attractive range of home accessories in every shade of beige you could possibly imagine. If the government is looking for a company that symbolises the kind of economy that Labour is trying to champion it would surely be John Lewis. But hold on. It turns out that even Labour’s favourite chain has been hammered by the tax raid in the last budget. And if even John Lewis can’t survive all the extra costs the party has imposed on business then who can. The losses perfectly illustrate the shambolic incompetence

Alexander Larman

Will Prince Harry keep quiet about his meeting with King Charles?

The King received a man at Clarence House yesterday afternoon who has a justifiable right to be aggrieved with the ill treatment that has been meted over to him over the years. He has been unfairly discriminated against for reasons that are not his fault, and he has dealt with the opprobrium that has been hurled his way with dignity, maturity and personal righteousness. If he has a persecution complex, then he can hardly be blamed for having developed such a thing. He deserves our respect and admiration. Yes, King Charles’s encounter with Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg, for whom he performed an investiture, was important and no doubt affecting for

Brendan O’Neill

The usual suspects were curiously quiet about Iryna Zarutska’s brutal murder

Did Iryna Zarutska’s life matter? Judging by the delayed, sheepish media coverage of her killing in North Carolina last month, it seems not. Apparently the violent death of this young, beautiful refugee to the United States was a non-event, undeserving of the liberal rage and tsunami of pained thinkpieces that tend to follow other senseless killings in the US. For two weeks her tragedy was disregarded, her suffering ignored. The suspect is one Decarlos Brown Jr, a mentally ill, African-American vagrant. He has been charged with first-degree murder We need answers on the cold indifference of the activist class and the media establishment to this abominable slaying of an innocent.

William Moore

Royal treatment, neurodiverse history & is everyone on Ozempic?

45 min listen

First: a look ahead to President Trump’s state visit next week Transatlantic tensions are growing as the row over Peter Mandelson’s role provides an ominous overture to Donald Trump’s state visit next week. Political editor Tim Shipman has the inside scoop on how No. 10 is preparing. Keir Starmer’s aides are braced for turbulence. ‘The one thing about Trump which is entirely predictable is his unpredictability,’ one ventures. And government figures fear he may go off message on broadcast – he is scheduled to be interviewed by GB News. It is rare for leaders to receive a second visit, especially those in their second term. But, as Tim says, ‘Britishness is

The Spectator

Letters: White working-class pupils have been forgotten

In the way of justice Sir: Robert Jenrick is right to suggest that, as well as leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), Britain needs to reform its judiciary (‘Something’s gone very badly wrong’, 6 September). Although Britons already had all the rights and freedoms we needed under common law, Tony Blair, for entirely political reasons, granted the ECHR jurisdiction here for the first time under his 1998 Human Rights Act. Unlike common law, continental law, beloved of the ECHR, does not rely sufficiently on either precedent or the letter of the law. This permits continental judges too much latitude, obstructing certainty, permitting political judgments and inviting activism. With

Ross Clark

Autism isn’t a ‘superpower’

A very warm welcome for Margaret Thatcher inside autism’s ever-growing tent – if she can find space to wield her handbag. I could even lead the welcoming party myself as I am in there – according to some of my friends – on account of my unusually good ability to recall dates and a liking for solitude. As for Thatcher, she has gained entry on the strength of her biographer Tina Gaudoin’s diagnosis, which is based around the former PM’s absence of a sense of humour (or at least an inability to share the jokes of her male, public school-educated colleagues), a lack of embarrassment, her ‘special or restricted interests’

Mary Wakefield

How to raise a patriot

‘Good news for patriots,’ said one of our most celebrated national newspapers this week: ‘Your numbers are likely to swell.’ This was on the editorial page, where the opinions of the paper are laid out, and it referred to a poll conducted by ‘More in Common’ which had found, to everyone’s surprise, that British teenagers are pretty patriotic. About half of all 16- and 17-year-olds feel proud of their country, it found, which is more than their parents. It was an interesting poll for anyone considering the rise of Reform and how that might interact with the incoming slew of teenage voters. Interesting too for those of us in liberal

Henrietta Harding

The wild world of the ‘Ozempic safari’

Safari log: 3.56 p.m. and the Land Rover is parked up on the savannah. Inside, we wear dark glasses and muted clothes. Minutes pass and we still can’t spot the animal we have come to see. We are told that she only comes out at certain times of day, that she is shy. No, we’re not actually in Africa; we’re in a prep school car park in the Home Counties, on what is known as an Ozempic safari. We have gathered to spot the ‘Mounjaro Mummies’ prowling around after the summer holidays. It’s wild, in all senses. It’s also socially and morally dubious. Word on the street is that the

Dan Hitchens

Will assisted dying become a cover for abuse?

Every year, thousands of stories of abuse pour into Compassion in Care, a charity that supports whistleblowers in the care sector. Volunteers manning the charity’s helpline hear of old people dismissed as ‘end of life’, deprived of food and water, abandoned in corners with neglected bedsores, needlessly sedated to make them less time-consuming. And now, says the charity’s founder and director Eileen Chubb, a former care whistleblower herself, they are bracing for ‘a massive increase in abusive cases’. That’s if the assisted suicide bill, which begins its journey through the Lords this week, becomes law. ‘We can foresee whistleblowers contacting us,’ Chubb tells me, ‘saying people died who didn’t want

Olivia Potts

Save our sausages!

Who first thought of grinding up all those little unused odds and sods from an animal carcass and stuffing them into a bit of intestine? Many people, apparently. Sausages are one of those products which, while seemingly not intuitive, emerged independently all around the world thousands of years ago. As far as we can tell, sausages have been produced since we began butchering animals. The first record of sausage-making is from around 2,000 bc: an Akkadian cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia mentions intestines filled with forcemeat. Sausages feature in The Odyssey as a simile for Odysseus tossing and turning in bed (‘When a man besides a great fire has filled a

Rachel Johnson

Nick Ferrari’s big fat Provençale wedding

It was the morning after the night before and I was picking glass out of my leg by a pool, blotting the blood trickling down my calf with a navy spotted handkerchief. I was trying to work out how the shards of glass came to be there… and then it came back to me. But first, let’s rewind. I was taking my seat on the British Airways 10 a.m. flight to Nice. ‘Not another one!’ a woman right behind me in steerage complained. ‘Is this some special flight or something?’ I stowed my Globe-Trotter in the overhead locker and made eye contact with her. ‘Piers Morgan is up front,’ she

Melissa Kite

The anarchy of a breakfast buffet

The Portuguese guest wanted an egg, but she didn’t want it to look like an egg. She came down to breakfast with her seven-year-old son and asked me to disguise two eggs by frying them on both sides so the yolks didn’t show. I’ve been getting to grips with the dietary habits of the travelling public all summer, so much so that I’m almost used to a peculiar trend that I can only describe as pretend veganism. My B&B guests seem to be balanced on a capricious meat-vegan knife edge which defies all logic and prediction, with most of them eating either some meat or some dairy, but never both.