Society

Sunday

Zoe Strimpel

Skype was a relic of happier times

Sometimes epics end with a whimper not a bang. This is the case for Skype, whose demise Microsoft has announced – for those paying only the closest attention – in a preview of the latest Skype for Windows update. ‘Starting in May, Skype will no longer be available. Continue your calls and chats in Teams,’ the message reads bluntly, with a slightly sinister follow-on that asserts that a number ‘of your friends have already moved to Teams free’. RIP.  Skype, launched in 2003, defined an era of new internet possibilities, with the explosion of social media a couple years later through Facebook, and the slow migration of internet usage from

Johan Wennstrom

Why Sweden needs the bomb

Imagine the Guardian newspaper fully committing to increasing Britain’s stockpile of nuclear warheads. It may sound fanciful, but that’s the closest comparison to what happened last week, when the Swedish liberal–left leaning Dagens Nyheter wrote in a leading article: ‘We are going to need a [national] discussion about nuclear weapons. Should the French [nuclear forces] protect the entire continent, or do we need to acquire a nuclear deterrent of our own, perhaps in cooperation with our Nordic neighbours?’ The idea that Sweden – the self-described global apostle of nuclear disarmament – should produce nuclear weapons would have seemed ridiculous not long ago. In fact, when I argued in a column published in Sweden a few

Francis Pike

The crocodile casualties of the second world war

At the end of February, 1945 about 1,000 surviving Japanese soldiers based on Ramree Island off the coast of Arakan, a province in western Burma, fled the onslaught of the British Army commanded by Lt General William Slim. A squadron led by the battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth had bombarded Japanese positions on Ramree. The 26th Indian Infantry Division, led by Marlborough and Sandhurst Old Boy Major-General Cyril Lomax, swept in to finish them off. Characteristically the Japanese soldiers did not surrender. Instead, they opted to get to shore through the mangrove swamps that connected Ramree Island with the mainland. Big mistake. A Canadian soldier Bruce Wright, who is credited with

Saturday

Khadija Khan

Ramadan can be a time of suffering for those who dare break the rules

Ramadan, which this year runs until the end of March, is viewed by Muslims as a time of compassion and generosity. But for others – especially those who flout fasting rules in Muslim-majority countries – it can be a period of suffering and persecution. Liberal Muslims and those from religious minorities can be punished severely for stepping out of line during the ‘holy month’. They face harsh punishments, exclusion, and seclusion for offending religious sensibilities. Liberal Muslims can be punished severely for stepping out of line during the ”holy month’ Several young men were arrested in Kano, northern Nigeria, earlier this month for failing to observe the Ramadan fast. Those selling

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

‘Trump’s America has made a suicidal choice’: An interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy

Bernard-Henri Lévy is running on fumes. Plus ça change. “I slept as always last night, a few hours, with chemistry compelling me to sleep,” the Parisian public intellectual tells me when we speak on the phone. “I miss the process of sleep, the process of getting awake, all parts of the ceremony I miss. But insomnia has given me more than it has taken. More time, certainly more work, more vigilance; I’m awake.” “Maybe I would sleep better if I was British,” Lévy says His latest book, Nuit Blanche, which has yet to be translated into English, is a runaway bestseller in France, where it was released in January. It

Colin Freeman

Colin Freeman, Harry Ritchie, Max Jeffery, Michael Gove and Catriona Olding

35 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Colin Freeman explains how Islamic State tightened its grip on the Congo (1:23); Harry Ritchie draws attention to the thousands of languages facing extinction this century, as he reviews Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages by Lorna Gibb (8:00); Max Jeffery highlights the boxing academy changing young lives (13:20); Michael Gove reflects on lessons learned during his time as education secretary (20:30); and, Catriona Olding introduces the characters from her new Provence-based memoir club (29:27).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Howard Hodgson is a tabloid survivor

Howard Hodgson ends lunch in a rage against unearned fame. ‘Marilyn Monroe: drunken actress,’ he says, ‘fat drunken actress. Gets killed. Ohhh! Marilyn!’ He does a mocking voice for that last bit, like someone wailing about her death. ‘John F. Kennedy: one of the worst presidents the United States ever had. Bay of Pigs. Fucked everything up. Robert Kennedy was vastly more talented than John, but John gets killed. Ohhh! National monument!’ ‘Diana Spencer: borderline personality disorder, eating disorder. The eating disorders and everything were just part of her borderline personality disorder. She wouldn’t have been able to be your wife,’ Howard’s blue velvet Nehru jacket shimmers as he gestures at me, ‘let alone the Prince of Wales’s wife.

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

The licence fee is at the root of the BBC’s problems

The BBC’s reputation is in shreds – again. Its Hamas propaganda film, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, had to be withdrawn after it was revealed that its protagonist and narrator was the son of a Hamas minister. The BBC has announced it will investigate itself following the broadcast of the documentary last month, but what is to be done about the accident-prone public broadcaster? Unfortunately, every indication is that the government will continue to stuff the BBC’s undeserving pockets with money. Kemi Badenoch has threatened to reconsider the Conservative party’s support for the licence fee, now £169.50 and due to increase to £174.50 in April. What a feeble response. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has proposed mutualising the

Friday

Chas Newkey-Burden

Why does it take the snatching of a baby wombat to spark outrage about animal rights?

An American influencer called Sam Jones has been roundly denounced after she posted a video of her snatching a wild baby wombat from its distressed mother in Australia. The video, since deleted, showed Jones picking up a joey by the road and running with it to a car, while its poor mother ran after them. A man can be heard laughing callously as he films, saying: ‘Look at the mother, it’s chasing after her!’ Social media users, conservationists, animal rights campaigners, and even Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, have condemned Jones, who has now left Australia voluntarily amid calls for her deportation. It’s easy to see why so many people

Henry Jeffreys

Is Trump going to kill off champagne?

Well, it looks like it’s going to be war between the European Union and the US. A trade war that is, before you start digging a shelter in the backyard. In response to proposed EU 50 per cent tariffs on American whiskey, President Trump wrote on Truth Social, his own social media platform: ‘The European Union, one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the World, which was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States, has just put a nasty 50% Tariff on Whisky. If this Tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Why couldn’t this elite school cope with my talk on anti-Semitism?

Perhaps it is a rite of passage these days for a journalist to be cancelled. But I never expected that an elite school – one designed to create tomorrow’s international leaders, founded by a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany – would be the ones to cancel a talk about anti-Semitism from me, the son of a Holocaust survivor. My invitation was not controversial – at least, not at first As a journalist and columnist with extensive experience reporting from Israel, covering terrorist attacks across Europe, and documenting the rise of anti-Semitism internationally, I have encountered hostility before. But I had not expected it to come from an institution dedicated to

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Does Meghan Markle need another podcast?

‘Success’, Winston Churchill supposedly once remarked, ‘is the ability to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’ If this is indeed the case, then Meghan Markle’s 2025 thus far represents a remarkable series of triumphs and victories. After her recent Netflix series With Love, Meghan received reviews that ranged from the merely sarcastic and rude to the positively vituperative, it was promptly renewed for a second series. Never mind that the second instalment was commissioned (and filmed) at the same time as the first, or that the ratings for the much-maligned show have been considerably worse than Netflix’s Harry and Meghan, there will be more of the Duchess

Paul Wood

Massacre of the innocents, saving endangered languages & Gen Z’s ‘Boom Boom’ aesthetic

37 min listen

This week: sectarian persecution returns Paul Wood, Colin Freeman and Father Benedict Kiely write in the magazine this week about the religious persecution that minorities are facing across the world from Syria to the Congo. In Syria, there have been reports of massacres with hundreds of civilians from the Alawite Muslim minority targeted, in part because of their association with the fallen Assad regime. Reports suggest that the groups responsible are linked to the new Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa (formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani). For some, the true face of the country’s new masters has been revealed. Whether the guilty men are punished will tell us what kind of

Matthew Lynn

Why John Lewis’s profits have soared

Growth has ground to a halt, manufacturing is collapsing, and the government is desperately scratching around for ways to save some money so it can balance the books. There is not much to make anyone feel optimistic about the state of the British economy right now. Except, that is, for the healthy performance of the UK’s traditional, mid-market retailers. Marks & Spencer and Tesco are both in rude health. Now, John Lewis, which has reported a rise in pre-tax profits of 73 per cent to £97 million, is the latest retailer to demonstrate its ability to bounce back.  After years of steep losses under the hapless leadership of the former

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why should cohabitees get the benefits of marriage?

One way or another in life, we end up making choices, even if we think we’re choosing not to choose. The choice not to marry, to live with someone instead, is one example. Passing on the public commitment and going for sex plus domesticity is a choice, one in which, I imagine, the absence of commitment is part of the appeal. You don’t fancy the for-better-or-worse stuff, the Waterford glass wedding presents, the joint pension provision? Well, that’s just dandy, but complaining that you don’t have the perks of matrimony when your open-ended arrangement breaks up does seem to be trying to have it both ways. And having it both

Lara Brown

Have we reached peak EDI?

As the old saying goes, ‘when American sneezes, England catches a cold’. This week, the two major city watchdogs announced they will be ditching planned ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ regulation.  The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the regulator for Britain’s financial services sector, first announced their plans to impose extensive new Diversity and Inclusion rules in 2023. After significant pushback at the time, they have finally declared it has ‘no plans to take the work further’. The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), the Bank of England’s regulatory arm, has also issued a statement saying that they are not proceeding with similar proposals. Is this the first sign of a turning point in the

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

More booze won’t save France’s dying village life

Reach for the pastis, Jacques. A law is making its way through the French parliament to relax alcohol licensing, to make it easier to open bars and cafes in French towns and villages. French politicians are desperate to try anything to stimulate commerce in villages that are dying, the life sucked out of them by shopping centres with everything just five minutes away in the car. That more bars will be helpful is likely to be wishful thinking. The days when the Café de la Paix was at the centre of village life are long passé. It is easy to over-sentimentalise the role of the café in France’s 40,000 small

Nigel Jones

Save Eastbourne’s bowls club!

Somewhat unfairly (the actual median age of residents is 45) the East Sussex coastal resort of Eastbourne is known as ‘God’s waiting room’ because of the high number of old people who live in Britain’s sunniest town. Although Eastbourne’s reputation as a paradise for retirees may be overblown, it can’t be denied that the town is quieter and more sedate than the raucous youth culture pervading its coastal neighbours Brighton and Hastings. And now, according to the Times, Eastbourne’s elderly people are facing a new threat to their health and happiness alongside the inevitable aches and pains that accompany the autumn of life: their bowling club may have to close. The

The Spectator

Letters: Wokery is a form of dictatorship

Democracy rules Sir: I share the sentiments of both Rod Liddle (‘Trump displays weakness, not strength’, 8 March) and Douglas Murray (‘How MAGA turned on Ukraine’). I am one of those peculiar political animals who finds himself in agreement with certain elements of the right, including those represented by Donald Trump, on just about everything except Ukraine. Nevertheless, I see his election as an essential antidote to the poisonous ideology of the woke that has all but conquered the rest of the West in terms of the manner in which we live and are governed. Nor is the US immune. Without wishing to quibble with a courageous and eloquent speaker

Peter Jones

Does might make right?

The criminals Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin both believe that might is right. The whole question fascinated the ancient Greeks.  In his famous history of the long war between Athens and Sparta (431-404 bc), Thucydides (d. c. 400 bc) explored the question through speeches on both sides, but on one occasion – when Athens demanded the surrender of the small island of Melos – he put it in the form of a debate. Here is an edited sample, strangely apposite too: Ath: You know as well as we do that, in the real world, justice comes into it only between equals in power, while the strong do what they can