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Society

Sunday

James Tidmarsh

The crisis gripping France’s Le Monde newspaper

Once one of France’s most respected publications, Le Monde is in crisis. Its newsroom is gripped by a climate of fear, where only left-wing and woke views are tolerated, and dissenters whisper their frustrations in the shadows. Once a beacon of intellectual rigour and fearless reporting, an investigation by its rival Le Figaro paints a damning picture of a newspaper strangled by ideological conformity and toxic cancel culture. ‘People are afraid; it’s an omerta,’ admits one anonymous journalist. The glory days of Le Monde are gone, replaced by a paper which appears to be more concerned with parroting the ideological consensus than holding power to account.  Le Figaro’s investigation reveals a newsroom

Damian Reilly Damian Reilly

Tyson Fury was robbed in Riyadh

Watching Tyson Fury get robbed last night in Riyadh, I realised on balance that I am in favour of Saudi Arabia’s often ludicrous-seeming recent efforts at sports-washing. Why not? Sure, staging ultra-high profile boxing matches like this in a nation with no boxing heritage whatsoever is obviously a shameless effort at changing negative perceptions, but it’s also an attempt to integrate with the outside world. Ultimately, integration is a good and civilising thing, not least because it means abiding by different, and in this case better, rules. It’s no coincidence, for example, that it became possible at the start of this year to buy booze in the kingdom. Likewise, it

Charles Amos

What my GB News incest row critics fail to understand

The overwhelming response to my defence of incest on GB News has been one of disgust: I’ve been called a pervert thousands of times over. It’s water off a duck’s back to me.  What is extraordinary is the absence of decent arguments against my liberal position. If reproductive and non-reproductive incest are so bad, why do people resort to personal attacks as opposed to moral arguments? There are two reasons: our evolution has predisposed us to viscerally reject incest; and the moral arguments against incest come unstuck because they risk dreadful consequences.  After stonewalling me at dinner last night, my mum gave the same response to the same question I fear that

Druin Burch

Lucy Letby and the killer nurse I worked with

Most of those commenting on the guilt or innocence of Lucy Letby – the nurse who is serving 15 whole-life jail terms for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others – don’t know what it’s like to work alongside a killer nurse. I do. Benjamin Geen, whom I worked with at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire, took the lives of at least two patients during his time there. Something in the nature of our interest in murderers has a habit of making us forget logic Geen’s case has, like Letby’s, become popular with conspiracy theorists. Public fascination has been far greater with Letby. But the two cases share an attraction

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

How to save the parish church

Parish churches are in trouble: about fifty churches close every year, according to a report from Civitas. The review, published last month, strongly echoes the case of the Save the Parish campaign: the Church of England’s leadership has failed to support local parishes, diverting funding to more modern-sounding initiatives. About twenty years ago some bright clerical manager types said that the parish is not good at reaching ‘the networks of contemporary life’, so new looser types of church should be set up. The vague assumption was that these would resemble the amorphous evangelical mega-churches like Holy Trinity Brompton. But no new model has really emerged, and traditionalists are understandably disgruntled.

Saturday

Anthony Seldon

Why homeschooling rates have doubled

Schools are a relatively new phenomena in human history. In Britain, they expanded in the 19th century and early 20th century in step with industrialisation and urbanisation, but in many places in the world, what little education the young receive occurs at home. The assumption most share, not unreasonably, is that where there are schools to attend, parents should send their children to them so they can avail themselves of the opportunities for academic learning, for socialisation and working through what they might do after they leave with the rest of their lives.  Covid gave an enormous boost to homeschooling The number of children being home-schooled in the last hundred

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

How the Magdeburg Christmas market attack will change Germany

More than 200 people were injured and at least five lost their lives after a man ploughed a car into crowds at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg last night. Among those who were indiscriminately murdered was a small child. Like many Germans, I felt a deep, burning anger rising in me when I heard about the incident. It immediately brought back sickening memories of the 2016 Christmas market attack in Berlin in which 13 people were killed and dozens injured. My sister worked very closely nearby that day. I remember texting ‘Are you okay?’ with a shaky hand and waiting agonising minutes before her reply finally

Andrew Watts

Christmas II: Andrews Watts, Marcus Walker, Ali Kefford, Roger Lewis, Ayaan Hirsh Ali and Christopher Howse

48 min listen

On this week’s Christmas Out Loud – part two: Andrew Watts goes to santa school (1:11); Marcus Walker reads his priest’s notebook (7:20); Ali Kefford spends Christmas on patrol with submariners (12:34); Roger Lewis says good riddance to 2024, voiced by the actor Robert Bathurst (20:57); Ayaan Hirsh Ali argues that there is a Christian revival under way (32:41); and Christopher Howse reveals the weirdness behind Christmas carols (38:34).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Kristina Murkett

Labour’s axing of Latin lessons is an act of cultural vandalism

The Labour government seems determined to undermine excellence in schools. The Department for Education has announced that from February it will be terminating its Latin Excellence Programme, which taught Latin to over 5,000 pupils, as part of a cost-saving measure. The cutback comes a month after an external review suggested ‘middle-class bias’ should be removed from the curriculum and that ‘high-brow pursuits’, such as ‘visits to museums, theatres and art galleries’, might be replaced with more ‘relatable’ activities such as graffiti workshops. This retrograde decision is deeply frustrating because it makes the so-called elitism surrounding Latin a self-fulfilling prophecy The decision to effectively end Latin lessons in some state schools is particularly

Christopher Howse

A church service with the Chaldeans of West Acton

I joined the Chaldeans in church on the morning after the night that the rebels in Syria took control of Damascus. We weren’t in Aleppo or on the plains of Nineveh but cocooned in a warm church at West Acton in London, where a community of Christian migrants from Iraq has settled in recent decades. Many came to this country during Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime or after facing persecution from Islamists and militias after the invasion of Iraq. We’re linked here to a misty ancient world in which Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees and the Assyrians came down like a wolf on the fold Outside, rows of bare pollarded lime trees

Friday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Why Britain’s benefits problem is likely to get worse

More than half of Britons receive more from the state than they pay in taxes, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. The proportion of those receiving more through benefits than they paid in taxes last year fell slightly to 52.6 per cent, down a percentage point compared with the year before. The data – which factors in use of public services, such as schools and the NHS, as well as welfare payments and benefits – highlights the fundamental problem underlying the British state: how do we support a population that is aging, getting ill and becoming increasingly workshy? As you’d expect, more than 85 per cent of

Alexander Larman

King Charles has a long road to recovery ahead

At the end of what has undoubtedly been a true annus horribilis for the monarchy, King Charles, at least, seems to have recovered something of his joie de vivre. Over the past few weeks alone, he has been seen bravely pretending to enjoy himself at a particularly strenuous Royal variety show and bestowing much-deserved honours on Sir Christopher Nolan and Dame Emma Thomas. He has also been hosting the Emir of Qatar on a state visit, an occasion that may have had more to do with money than genuine affection. After the grimness of the first part of the year, 2024 might appear to be ending on a high note

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Maureen Lipman Edition

36 min listen

Dame Maureen Lipman has been a fixture of stage and screen for over five decades. She has been a member of Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre company and the Royal Shakespeare Company; she is well known for her roles in acclaimed films like Educating Rita and The Pianist; and most recently she has had an award-winning run in soap Coronation Street. For a generation she will always be ‘Beattie’: the grandmother from the BT adverts. On the podcast, Maureen talks to Katy Balls about her journey from ‘the cobbler of Kazimierz Dolny to the cobbles of Corrie’. They discuss selling comedy as a commodity, whether you can separate art from the

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The remarkable courage of Gisèle Pelicot

Justice was served on Dominique Pelicot today when an Avignon court found him guilty of raping his ex-wife, Gisèle, over a ten year period, and enlisting more than 50 other men to molest her as she slept. From 2011 to 2020, the 72-year-old Pelicot drugged his wife of 38 years and invited men he had met online to rape Gisèle. She had no idea of the abuse that was being inflicted on her, nor why she was suffering from memory loss and blackouts. His depravity came to an end in 2020 when he was arrested for filming under a woman’s skirt in a supermarket. When police examined his phones and laptop,

Wednesday

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Shame on George Carey

There are many grey areas in this safeguarding saga. So it is nice when some black and white emerges. It is surely impossible for anyone to doubt the culpability of George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who resigned his priestly orders yesterday. First, the grey areas. It is difficult to say whether a bishop or archbishop should resign for failing to ensure that there are no dodgy priests operating in his or her diocese. On paper, a bishop should ensure that none of the priests whom he or she oversees are dodgy, and remove any who are. But bishops cannot simply fire priests, even if they have severe doubts

Tuesday

Nicholas Farrell

What Labour can learn from Giorgia Meloni

What else can you do but laugh? Former human rights supremo Sir Keir Starmer has done a deal to tackle illegal migrants with Giorgia Meloni – who is called ‘the heir to Mussolini’ by many on the left and in the media. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was in Rome at the weekend with a team of civil servants and police chiefs to put the finishing touches on the deal with Italy’s Interior Minister, Matteo Piantedosi. The deal will create what the Home Office grandiosely describes as ‘a new taskforce with Mafia-busting style tactics to seize the ill-gotten gains of criminal people smuggling gangs’. Cooper also took part in a half-hour chat

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

What’s the truth about the New Jersey drone sightings?

What is going on with the drones buzzing over New Jersey in the United States? Reportedly ‘the size of cars’, sometimes flying low in formation, these mysterious semi-identified flying objects have been sighted in their thousands every night – and only at night – for weeks. They might not even be drones. Are they alien spaceships? Are they from Russia or China? Are they just planes? Are they even anything at all? I’ve watched a number of videos purporting to show these invaders. ‘What is that thing? It’s freaking huge!’ one awestruck observer can be heard over footage of what looks like a commercial passenger jet.  It’s increasingly hard to

Monday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Israel is right to cut ties with Ireland

Everything that has gone wrong in modern Ireland is summed up in the fact that it is winning praise from Hamas and criticism from Israel. Last week Ireland was gushed over by that army of anti-Semites that carried out the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, while being spurned by the Jewish homeland that was the target of that barbarous assault. Listen, if you’re getting love from racist terrorists, and rejection from their victims, it’s time for some self-reflection. Israel cited Ireland’s ‘extreme anti-Israeli policies’ for its decision It was the Irish government’s decision to join South Africa’s ‘genocide’ case against Israel at the International Court of Justice that

Alexander Larman

The Royals should ban Andrew from Christmas

Sixty years ago, in the aftermath of one of the twentieth century’s most salacious scandals, the former MP John Profumo took on a role as a volunteer at the East End charity Toynbee Hall. The unpaid and distinctly unglamorous job, which saw Profumo serving meals to the homeless and cleaning toilets, became a kind of penance for the former secretary of state for war. In many people’s eyes, the gruelling charitable work eventually redeemed him for his tawdry affair with Christine Keeler. The penal reformer Lord Longford subsequently said that he felt more admiration for Profumo than anyone else he had known in his lifetime. Andrew has shown little awareness

Robin Ashenden

The attack on Ben Judah is nothing to celebrate

Readers of The Spectator may remember the 2021 defenestration of author and teacher Kate Clanchy, which saw her part company with her publisher Pan Macmillan. This was after whole extracts of her award-winning book Some Children I Taught and What They Taught Me were slated for rewriting, more or less at the behest of a Twitter mob. Clanchy, in her book, had described one student’s ‘almond eyes’, another’s ‘chocolate skin’ and a third’s ‘fine Ashkenazi nose’. For this she was viciously lambasted by three fellow writers and – barely believably – compared by one of them to Nazi eugenicists. Recalling the episode soon afterwards, Clanchy, who lost both parents that