Society

Tuesday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The great flaw in Labour’s assisted dying bill

Believe it or not, the most compelling argument against assisted dying today came from Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, usually reliably on message with every socially progressive cause. But in a BBC radio interview, he almost diffidently put forward his reservations about the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill, arguing that it would make vulnerable people feel like a burden. The mere existence of the choice changes everything Davey, who cared for his elderly mother through her final days and has a disabled son, said, in paraphrase, that if the bill became law, it could have a subtly negative effect on the elderly and disabled. He argued

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Can Justin Welby cling on?

MPs are getting involved in the row over Justin Welby’s position as Archbishop of Canterbury, with Conservative MP Nick Timothy requesting an urgent question in the Commons today. Pressure for Welby to resign has been building from various quarters within the Church of England’s General Synod and the wider church. As in politics, some are focused on specific issues, while others have broader grievances with Welby. How will the Church and other institutions commit to meaningful change? The current pressure stems from the Makin Review’s report on the Church’s handling of ‘serial child abuser’ John Smyth, a barrister and Christian leader who is said to have abused boys in a

Alexander Horne

How strong are the safeguards in the assisted dying bill?

After a long wait, Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying legislation – the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill  – was published overnight, ahead of its second reading in the Commons on 29 November. The bill has already been subject to much debate in advance of its publication. Now its proponents and critics have the chance to engage with the detail – most critically the safeguards in the bill which are designed to stop abuses. Opponents of euthanasia and assisted dying frequently point to the ‘slippery slope’ which they suggest is inevitable once it is legalised, highlighting misuse in other jurisdictions such as Canada. They claim that older people will feel that they are a burden,

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Farewell Gary Lineker, you won’t be missed

Gary Lineker is to leave Match of the Day at the end of the current football season, and to exit the BBC entirely after the 2026 World Cup. It was 1999 when he took over Match from Des Lynam, though in a strange discord with the usual swift passage of time, it feels much longer.  Because despite his close association with it as a player and a pundit Lineker is really nothing much to do with football. His punditry, as we all know, is far wider in its scope than such enjoyable trifles. Younger readers may find it hard to believe but there was a time when we didn’t know or care what these

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Gary Lineker’s opinions were never welcome at the BBC

Having thought it was all over, several times, it is now – for Gary Linker as presenter of Match of the Day. Lineker who has occupied the hot seat since 1999, has announced he will be quitting the show at the end of the season, though he will remain at the corporation until the end of an 18 month contract extension taking him up to the 2026 World Cup.  It is tempting to think that Lineker may have thrown in the towel as a result of certain political events across the pond, that the crushing defeat of all things woke stateside had caused a tsunami that has engulfed our progressive public

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The Marsh family and the sad spectacle of Trump-bashing Brits

There is something slightly uncanny about the musical Marsh family of Faversham in Kent, who recently gathered millions of YouTube views with ‘Gimme Hope Kamala’, their rewrite of Eddy Grant’s ‘Gimme Hope Jo’Anna’. They are a combination of two big fads of the 70s, The Partridge Family and Jonestown. Mad Ma Marsh in particular has the shining eyes of someone appearing in a slightly different kind of video, containing the words ‘My captors are treating me very well and I now fully support their valiant armed struggle’. If you really did believe fascism was returning, dropping a comic song on the internet would probably not be your first action The musical endeavours

Monday

Alex Klaushofer

The truth about Britain’s transition to ‘clean energy’

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Under leaden November skies, came news of what many have suspected: energy rationing for British households could be officially on the cards. The NESO-Miliband plan for a low-carbon future is going to involve a lot more than just waiting a while for a cup of tea The bearer of these tidings is the National Energy System Operator (NESO), the UK’s new energy systems operator which began work last month. NESO’s first main act has been to publish a report arguing that ‘demand side flexibility’ – which appears to be a euphemism for rationing at peak hours – is vital if the country is to make the

Kristina Murkett

Labour’s exam reforms make some sense

In an address to 1,500 school and academy trust leaders, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson last week asked schools to stop focusing solely on exam results. She said the government would not have a ‘tunnel vision’ on academic success, but ‘widen our ambition’ to give students a ‘sense of wellbeing and belonging’. On the surface this seems like a worthy sentiment: it is true that too many schools now simply teach to the test at the cost of a more holistic experience, and the GCSE treadmill means that schools inevitably fixate on getting cohorts of 16-year-olds through the eye of a very narrow scholastic needle. However, criticising schools for ‘chasing a

Richard Ekins

The great flaw in the Human Rights Act

Our new government’s most closely-held commitment is to the primacy of human rights law. Shortly after taking office, Keir Starmer vowed that under his leadership the UK will ‘never’ leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Last month, the Attorney General, Lord Hermer KC, undertook ‘to counter the false choice, offered by some, between parliamentary democracy and fundamental rights.’ Fair enough, save that Lord Hermer has confused protection of fundamental rights with judicial application of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA).  The HRA invites judges to answer questions that they are ill-suited to answer It is true and important that Parliament enacted the HRA and has not yet repealed it. But it does not follow

Terry Barnes

Jamie Oliver shouldn’t have cowed to some Aboriginal offence-takers

The celebrity cook Jamie Oliver has a sideline as an author. Not all his books are about cooking and food: Oliver has written two children’s books as well, Billy and the Great Giant Adventure and its sequel, Billy and the Epic Escape. Oliver’s books sell very well, thank you, and have presumably made a fortune for him and his publisher, Penguin Random House. But Billy and the Epic Escape will no longer be an earner for them. Thanks to a handful of Australian Aboriginal offence-takers, the book has suddenly been withdrawn from sale, not uncoincidentally while Oliver is in Australia on a promotional tour. It’s a work of fantasy fiction, for heaven’s sake One chapter

John Keiger John Keiger

Germany and the politics of blame for the First World War

Wars begin and end in controversy. The war that ended 106 years ago today with the armistice of 11 November 1918 carried the germ of controversy before it even broke out. Prior to Britain declaring war on the German Empire on 4 August the Germans rushed into print their ‘White Book’ of diplomatic documents on the war’s causes revealingly titled: How Russia and her Ruler betrayed Germany’s confidence and thereby made the European War. The day after war began Britain responded with its ‘Blue Book’, followed by the Russian ‘Orange Book’, the Belgian ‘Grey Book’ and the French ‘Yellow Book’ at the end of November 1914, entitled ‘How Germany forced the War’. By the

Ed West Ed West

Why Britain should actually woo Trump

We went to Skye last year on a family holiday – an amazing island, beautiful scenery, so many great people. Towards the end of our trip we visited Dunvegan Castle, ancestral home of the mighty Clan MacLeod. It featured much about the history of the family and its famous sons and daughters, although I noticed that it failed to mention perhaps the most influential and important MacLeod of all time – Donald J. Trump. Take him to our top golf clubs, make him a member of the Order of the Thistle, and have the head of the Clan MacLeod give him the honour with all the pomp we can muster Trump’s mother Mary Anne

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Peanut the squirrel shows Elon Musk is wrong about the mainstream media

Was it Peanut wot won it? One of the stranger and more incendiary aspects of the run-up to the recent US election was a Twitter/ X howl-round about Peanut the squirrel. The house where Peanut lived was raided, and this blameless rescue-rodent euthanised, after a complaint was apparently filed to a government agency by a neighbour. And Peanut’s story went super-viral.  The shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later approach to ‘news’ can leave any or all of us riddled with bullets. Just ask Peanut Rather than seeing it as a local hard-luck story, many social media users supposed this to be a paradigmatic instance of what was at stake in the election. This wasn’t human

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Evangelicals have questions to answer over the John Smyth scandal

Justin Welby has said he considered resigning as Archbishop of Canterbury over the findings of the Makin Review into the serial abuser John Smyth. That report, which emerged this week, found the Church of England had, from 2013, missed opportunities to bring Smyth to justice: from that point onwards, Welby and other senior figures knew about the abuse that Smyth exacted on his victims in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  That line, ‘you will protect the work?’, is particularly telling Smyth, a barrister and Christian leader, was accused of beating and abusing boys in the shed in his garden in Winchester. Instead of ever being brought to justice, Smyth

John Keiger John Keiger

What the First World War can teach us about the Third

It is our duty on Remembrance Sunday to honour the fallen. But to do justice to their sacrifice, we should also remember why the world descended into war in 1914. The history of the Great War has captivated and divided historians since Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip fired that fateful shot at Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914. Only later did we come to realise the full significance of that date. British military historian of the First World War and Conservative cabinet minister, Alan Clark, recorded the moment in his diary on Tuesday, 28 June 1983, with characteristic wit: ‘Today is the sixty-ninth anniversary of the assassination of the

Alexander Larman

The Royal Family must be careful with Kate

If this year’s Remembrance Sunday was unusually affecting, it was in large part due to the presence of both the King and the Princess of Wales at the service. After one of the hardest years for the monarchy in living memory, surpassing even the so-called ‘annus horribilis’ of 1992, there is hope that, as 2024 draws to a close, business as usual has been resumed – as far as it can be. The King has been dutifully pursuing his obligations for some time now – including a high-profile recent visit to Australia – but it was Catherine’s appearance that most people have been eagerly anticipating. Catherine may be the Firm’s

Patrick West

The strange death of English literature

The interest in reading books and the appreciation of English literature is at a nadir. This week it was revealed that only 35 per cent of eight to 18-year-olds enjoy reading in their spare time. The finding, by the National Literacy Trust, represents more than an 8 per cent per cent drop on last year, and the lowest level ever recorded by the charity since it began surveying children about their reading habits, 19 years ago. The drop has been especially pronounced among boys. It also emerged that Canterbury Christ Church University is to scrap degrees in English literature because of a lack of demand in applicants. The establishment, in

David Christopher Kaufman

Trump’s plan to make America safe again

Donald Trump’s critics like to paint his supporters as hardcore right-wingers. The truth is rather plainer: many of those who voted for Trump are refugees from the conservative establishment desperate for a leader unafraid to speak their truth.  We Americans are scared. Literally  Shamed by the elites, mocked for their beliefs – sidelined by rising ‘wokeness’ and DEI-culture for being white or straight or male – they saw in Trump a man-of-action sympathetic to their back-to-basics worldview. Tired of being told what to say and how to feel, Trump’s supporters were ready to reclaim their voices in the safest space possible: the ballot box. The anti-elitist populism that swept Trump

Matthew Lynn

Elon Musk’s support for Donald Trump is a masterstroke

Elon Musk contributed huge sums of money. He campaigned relentlessly. And his social media network X provided a platform for the candidate. Of all the architects of Donald Trump’s return to the White House this week, arguably none was more influential than Musk, and certainly none were playing for such high stakes. If he had lost, the X owner would have faced a furious regulatory backlash. As it happens, however, the election has been a triumph for Musk – and will make him more powerful than ever. Even from this side of the pond, it was hard to escape Musk’s presence during the US election. The entrepreneur behind Tesla and

Saturday

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, Sean Thomas, Imogen Yates, Books of the Year II, and Alan Steadman

30 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Paul Wood analyses what a Trump victory could mean for the Middle East (1:16); Sean Thomas gets a glimpse of a childless future while travelling in South Korea (8:39); in search of herself, Imogen Yates takes part in ‘ecstatic dance’ (15:11); a second selection of our books of the year from Peter Parker, Daniel Swift, Andrea Wulf, Claire Lowdon, and Sara Wheeler (20:30); and notes on the speaking clock from the voice himself, Alan Steadman (25:26).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.