Society

Thursday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

My charter of fundamental rights

I was chatting to a young medical student, a very bright chap from West Africa, who was nonetheless perplexed by a certain element of his course. The puzzle, for him, was the point of offering cervical smear tests to men who had transitioned to become women. The course module was very clear, he said, that these people must not be left out, despite not possessing a cervix. I hope a later part of the course teaches him how to behave while carrying out a cervical smear test on a non-existent cervix, so as not to cause offence. Poke around a bit with that spatula thing in whatever has recently been

Roger Alton Roger Alton

England’s rugby team are embarrassingly sore losers

Sports events come and go, but good manners, as William of Wykeham might have put it, last for ever. Or the lack of them. Which is why the surly, petulant behaviour of most of England’s rugby players after losing the World Cup final was so disgraceful. Refusing to wear the medals presented to them (by Sir Bill Beaumont, for heaven’s sake, a man who knows a bit about losing as well as winning), or hastily discarding them, standing around scowling, and then failing to bow in unison to the Japanese people who had created such a marvellous tournament. It was all pretty shameful. The rugby fraternity loftily dismisses this as

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Sordid confessions of a Centrist Dad

I have a shameful secret. I’ve been watching these… videos online. Amazing what you can get in a couple of clicks these days. Being what the Corbynistas deride as a Centrist Dad, I have taken to seeking out short films of taboo figures like Tony Blair and Barack Obama, talking about current affairs and being pained, maturely -analytical, and thrillingly reasonable. If Brexit is your problem, Mr Blair asks, if parliament can’t decide between two or more -different flavours of Brexit and lots of people think the flavours on offer are worse than no Brexit at all, doesn’t it make sense to ask the question directly in a referendum rather

James Delingpole James Delingpole

The joy of a day spent bagging almost no birds

The highlight of my country calendar is when I’m lucky enough to be invited to what even the host describes as ‘the world’s best worst shoot’. It’s the worst shoot because the bag is often truly atrocious. This year, for example, in the course of six or possibly seven drives — the details are hazy — we managed a total of nine birds between us. That works out at an average of one and one eighth of a bird per gun over an entire day. But still, disappointingly, we were well short of the all-time record low of three. I’d love to be able to blame this shaming tally on

Lucy Vickery

It’s a date!

In Competition No. 3124 you were invited to compose clerihews about any date in the calendar. I was very grateful recently to eagle-eyed John O’Byrne, who drew my attention to the fact that the closing date for Competition No. 3125 was not 20 November, as printed in the magazine, but 13 November. Even better, he did it in clerihew form:   The 20 November, Now that I remember, Is the closing date not for 3125 but 3126 — So herewith my quick fix!   Clerihews always go down well and this challenge netted a whopping entry. New Year’s Day, Shakespeare’s birthday, 9/11, the Fourth of July, Black Friday, April Fool’s

Sunday

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Dear Nigel: Don’t become the man who reversed the referendum result | 10 November 2019

Dear Nigel Believe it or not, I’ve been your defender. I’ve often told Americans,  ‘Sure, he comes across as a fop. But listen to what he actually says. He’s smarter than you think.’ OK, you have an affect problem. I’ve seen through the clowning. I bet you’ve never been that camp off-camera, and lately you’ve cut the buffoonery well back. It’s thanks to you that the 2016 referendum ever happened. Those who style themselves as your betters dismiss David Cameron’s electoral stunt as a cynical bid to end Tory infighting over Europe. Yet the vote revealed a profound division in the country itself far more deserving of resolution than internecine

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: ‘By Waterloo Station I sat down and…’

The latest challenge called for a poem that begins ‘By Waterloo Station I sat down and…’. Some of you begged, some swore, others slept. But most, in a pleasingly sizable entry, took their lead from weeping Elizabeth Smart. There was a welcome influx of newcomers this week, alongside the familiar names, and the tone ranged from the comic to the poignant. Honourable mentions go to Paul Freeman, Gloria Brown, Ian Barker, Tim Raikes and Alan Mil-lard. The winners below pocket £30 each and include George Simmers’s natty twist on Matthew Arnold’s friend Arthur Hugh Clough’s ‘Dipsychus’ (‘How Pleasant It Is to Have Money…’). Nick MacKinnon By Waterloo Station I sat

Saturday

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Winning the online war after the fall of Isis

Home Secretary Priti Patel downgraded our national terrorism threat assessment last week from ‘severe’, where it has sat for the last four years to ‘substantial’. Attacks have now been reduced from ‘highly likely’ to ‘likely’. We’re never given the full analysis of the reasons for the changes in alert levels, which is independently assessed by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC).  But it’s fair to say from what we know, it’s more an art than a science. And there are plenty of reasons to remain pessimistic. The threat of violent extremists across the ideological spectrum to cause us severe harm continues. It’s undoubtedly true that in terms of numbers, attacks

Kristian Niemietz

Have we learned anything from the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Thirty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, socialism is back in fashion. The anniversary is a good occasion to reflect on some of the lessons that we have collectively un-learned, or perhaps never learned properly in the first place from the fall of Communism. The division of Germany into a broadly capitalist West, and a broadly socialist East, represented a natural experiment, and did so in two ways. It was, first of all, a gigantic economic experiment about the viability of socialism, and it produced conclusive results. Around the time of Reunification, West Germany’s GDP per capita was about three times that of East Germany’s. There was also

Thursday

The Spectator

Do ‘Workington Man’ and ‘Worcester Woman’ decide elections?

National characters How useful is it to characterise an election with a single anthropological specimen such as ‘Workington Man’? ‘Worcester Woman’ was identified by Tory strategists ahead of the 1997 election as a key voter who had helped John Major win, against expectations, in 1992. Worcester was then a Conservative seat. Has the city followed the national trend since? 1992: Con 46% of Worcester vote, Lab 36% (Nationwide, Tory majority of 21) 1997: Lab 50%, Con 36% (Labour majority of 178 seats nationwide) 2001: Lab 49%, Con 36% (Labour majority of 166) 2005: Lab 42%, Con 35% (Labour majority of 65) 2010: Con 40%, Lab 33% (Hung parliament: Con/Lib Dem

Taki

My present abode is one of the great deco houses left intact in the Bagel

New York   What follows will bore the pants off you, but at least it beats another piece on Brexit. Perhaps some of you are interested in old Bagel buildings, as I am, but if Boris doesn’t make a deal with Nigel and the vote is split, I will never forgive those responsible for easing an old Marxist fool into 10 Downing Street. Boris, Nigel, I love you both, call each other. Thank you, Taki. So, about those buildings. The prewar aesthetic of the Bagel’s storied past was one of grandeur, beauty and power. The buildings still stand out as a bygone romance with elegance, as opposed to the ugly

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: how can I stop my dad treating my mum like a slave?

Q. Dad takes an old-fashioned approach to marriage: I have never seen him clear his plate and he does not know what’s in the kitchen cupboards. He also enjoys the benefits of a modern wife: my mother has worked (much) harder than him in their business for a long time and takes a lot of responsibility off him, although his name is on everything. There is no question of their love for each other but today, in the middle of discussing an important and stressful matter, he cut her off with ‘I’ll have my lunch when you’re ready’. Anything he doesn’t want to discuss is curtailed with ‘Can I have

Jeremy Clarke

My image of the young Jeremy Corbyn is not a flattering one

I found the stone and the key underneath and let myself into the cottage — brr! I immediately made a fire in the wood-burning stove and put the kettle on. Could I imagine myself living here under this deep thatch, within these Babylonian walls, under these adze-scarred beams, in this 17th-century silence? This is what I had come to find out over two days and nights. The silence was a bit unnerving. I switched on the CD player and let it play whichever CD was loaded. It was Bryan Ferry. Simple, plain, tasteful furnishings emphasised the cottage’s interior spaciousness. Oh, but cold, colder than outside. I made a pot of

Melissa Kite

Who will take the threat to horses from fireworks seriously?

Remember remember the 5th of November, when Britain’s most controversial pub chain stages a massive firework display in the middle of fields full of horses. I get the feeling that if my local were any other pub owned by any other chain, the fact that dozens of horse owners have been ringing up to plead with them not to go ahead would result in us being listened to. But Greene King is not just any pub chain. Google it and you will find that the comments on both TripAdvisor and employment websites like Glassdoor — in which former workers swap stories — are quite extraordinary. What should we expect, therefore,

Robin Oakley

The best thing about autumn is the return of jumping

Never mind Keats’s mists and mellow fruitfulness, or even that glorious autumnal odour of wet dog — a regular accompaniment to my life thanks to our flatcoat retriever puppy’s arrival. The best thing about autumn is the return of the jumping scene proper with the big yards finally taking the rugs off their hotshot hurdlers and Cheltenham Gold Cup aspirants. The most fascinating question this season is how the mighty Altior, unbeaten in his 19 races so far, will fare now trainer Nicky Henderson and stable jockey Nico de Boinville agree that he should be tried over longer distances, with his first major target the King George on Boxing Day.

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Labour thinks that its trump card is Trump

On Wednesday morning, I was hoisted into the air of Whitehall on a cherry-picker. A century ago the proto-Cenotaph appeared in time for the London Peace Parade in July 1919, which followed the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. In that first year, the Cenotaph was only a timber and canvas structure, built to last a week; but Edwin Lutyens’s design seemed so right that the present structure, more precisely designed, was built in Portland stone for Remembrance Day 1920. English Heritage, now a charity rather than a government body, cares for the monument — as it does for 400 monuments in England, including 46 in London. The chairman, Vice-Admiral

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Bercow steps down, Hoyle steps up and an election begins

Home Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Labour MP for Chorley and deputy Speaker since 2010, was elected Speaker by the Commons. His first words were: ‘No clapping.’ Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit party, proposed an electoral pact with the Conservatives, but only if Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, repudiated the agreement on Brexit that he had made with the European Union. When this was not forthcoming, he said: ‘We will contest every single seat in England, Scotland and Wales.’ But he declined to stand for parliament himself (which he had done seven times before, without success). Philip Hammond, the former chancellor of the Exchequer, decided against standing as an

Anthony Horowitz

If parliament were more modern, might it become less aggressive?

I’m writing this in Crete where a late summer has seen brilliant sunshine and temperatures reaching 25°C — but can I enjoy it? The unrelenting diet of gloom coming at me from every direction leads me to question even the dazzling blue Aegean and the cloudless sky. It’s surely a sign of global warming and the possibility that we are, quite possibly, doomed. I worry about Jeremy Corbyn. Will he be in Downing Street by Christmas Day? Will Trump have started world war three? Will Orfordness lighthouse, which has stood valiantly on its little shingle spit since 1792, have finally fallen into the sea? Everywhere I look, the tide is

Luke McShane

no. 579

Black to play. Erwin l’Ami–Luke McShane, Batumi, 2019. The pawn on e6 looks powerful, but White’s king is more vulnerable than it looks. What blow did I land? Answers should be sent to ‘Chess’ at The Spectator by Tuesday 12 November or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 f4!! as 1… Nxf4 2 Qxe5+ Kxe5 3 Qh8+ wins the queen Last week’s winner Phillip Gardner, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 07 November 2019

Erikas Vainikonis and his father Vytas are terrific bridge players and have supported the game very generously. Their brilliant new website, BridgeScanner, gives us all a fuss-free location to get the information we need on tournaments around the world, including live running scores. Their other gift is a five-day mini festival, starting with the Grand Prix of Poland Teams and Pairs and finishing with two days playing the highly prestigious Vilnius Cup. Impeccably organised, super friendly and with a world-class field,  it is held in Vilnius, the beautiful capital of Lithuania. This year’s final saw the two Vainikonis teams facing each other with Erikas’s squad emerging the winner. Many congrats.