Society

Friday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The leaders debate was revealing, but hasn’t turned the tide

In Friday night’s final TV debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson, neither leader landed a sucker punch on the other. Your verdict, as James Forsyth says in our Coffee House Shots podcast, will depend on what you believe the polls to be saying. If you already believe that the polls suggest a Tory majority, then Corbyn didn’t do well enough to turn that tide. But if you are cautious about the polls, then a hung parliament is still eminently possible because he just might have got enough ‘undecided’s on side. The New Statesman’s political editor Stephen Bush also joins the podcast, breaking the devastating news that a Pret Christmas

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Corbynomics won’t help the poor

Here’s a curiosity of the 2019 general election: given that both the big parties agree that austerity is over and Britain wants a more generous state, why is no one doing much to help the poor? And why is no one talking about that failure? These questions start with Labour. Jeremy Corbyn’s fans see him as a radical crusader for economic justice, an almost ascetic figure utterly devoted to the disadvantaged. In the mad ‘story’ about Corbyn and the Queen’s speech this week, the Labour leader had a perfectly good tale to tell: he spends part of his Christmas Day in a shelter for the homeless. According to the Social

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The Edition podcast: what would the Corbyn nightmare look like?

Though the Tories are consistently and comfortably leading in the polls, nothing can be taken for granted in politics, if recent years are anything to go by. So what would happen if Corbyn really does get into No. 10? In this week’s cover piece, economist and Telegraph columnist Liam Halligan breaks down the consequences of Corbyn’s domestic agenda, calling it a Nightmare on Downing Street. So is Liam right? He speaks to Katy Balls and Michael Jacobs, Professor of Political Economy at Sheffield University and former adviser to Gordon Brown. Plus, why is tree planting all the hype these days? From Elton John carbon offsetting private jet journeys for his

Steerpike Steerpike

Channel 4 apologises for Boris ‘people of colour’ video

Oh dear. Channel 4 News is in hot water this morning after posting a video clip of Boris Johnson speaking at a campaign rally. In the clip, the broadcaster added subtitles claiming Boris Johnson said: ‘I’m in favour of having people of colour come to this country, but I think we should have it democratically controlled’ Predictably, the subtitled video spread like wildfire on social media, with various left-wing pundits piling in to say it was incontrovertible evidence that Boris Johnson was beyond the pale. But when you listen to the clip, it is clear Boris says ‘people of talent’ not ‘people of colour’. Which explains why Channel 4 pulled

Thursday

Laura Gascoigne

How capitalism killed sleep

What can you make a joke about these days? All the old butts of humour are off limits. No wonder the top ten jokes at the Edinburgh Fringe are starting to sound as though they were banged out in a cracker factory. But this one, from Ross Smith, did make me laugh: ‘Sleep is my favourite thing in the world. It’s the reason I get up in the morning.’ If laughter is an escape valve for our fears, then sleep, or the lack of it, is now comic material. When 10 per cent of the population pops sleeping pills at least three times a week, self-help books about sleep —

Stephen Bayley

A museum-quality car-boot sale: V&A’s Cars reviewed

We were looking at a 1956 Fiat Multipla, a charming ergonomic marvel that predicted today’s popular MPVs. Rather grandly, I said to my guide: ‘I think you’ll find the source of the Multipla in an unrealised 1930s design of Mario Revelli di Beaumont.’ He looked a bit blank. This exhibition is a rare attempt to explain the car, perhaps the most dramatic since the Museum of Modern Art’s 1951 New York show where Philip Johnson coined the term ‘rolling sculpture’. It is both occasionally brilliant and continuously exasperating. Rather as if in a crowded restaurant you are overhearing snatches of fascinating conversation coming from different tables. The context is significant.

The Spectator

What weather records were broken in 2019?

Keeping it in the family A study by the Middle East Technical University claimed to prove that the pronounced chin of Charles II of Spain and many of his Habsburg relatives was the result of marriage between cousins. Some royals who went even further: — Tutankhamun’s wife Ankhesenamun is believed to have been his half-sister. She bore two daughters who both died in infancy. — King Rama V of Siam (1868-1910), also known as Chulalongkorn, is reputed to have had 77 children with 92 different consorts, four of whom were his half-sisters. — Princess Nahienaena of Hawaii (1815-1836) bore a daughter with her brother, Prince Kauikeaouli. The baby died. Ultra

The Spectator

Letters: Governments should be promoting marriage, not discouraging it for the sake of equality

Look closer to home Sir: In your interview with Boris Johnson (‘Austerity was not the way forward’, 30 November) he attributes the EU referendum result to ‘regional inequality… parts of the UK were simply being ignored… leaving people behind’. Yet he says his remedy for this is ‘infrastructure and education and technology’. In other words, people voted Leave for reasons that had nothing to do with the EU: they were ‘left behind’ because of the austerity policies of the British government. The remedy he identifies is also entirely within the power of our own government. David Woodhead Leatherhead, Surrey Brexit without sovereignty Sir: Your leading article ‘Out and into the world’

Taki

The TV show that rots young minds

How can I phrase it without sounding pompous? When very talented people dine together, it sometimes turns into a contest of wills and wits. Polite conversation, a French speciality whereby you say nothing in very many words, takes a back seat. When talent’s around, look for withering responses and brain-jolting verbal virtuosity. I recently spent such an evening with the actor Harvey Keitel and his wife, the director of Bugsy, Barry Levinson, and the birthday boy James Toback and his wife Stephanie. Daphna Keitel, an outspoken Israeli-born lady, set off the fireworks when she announced that Levinson’s son Sam, who created a TV series called Euphoria, was doing for young

Jeremy Clarke

Hell is an expat dinner party

I just don’t understand it. Emigrating from Britain to France is a big step. Shifting from one culture to another takes courage and enterprise. Especially if you are of maturer years. But let’s assume it’s now or never and you follow through with it. You look for a house in France, buy one, go through all the bureaucracy, the rigmarole. You put all your worldly goods into a high-top van and get someone to drive it down. You move in. You go through the further circle of French bureaucratic hell and get your family saloon reregistered. At first you don’t know your way around. When you are driving, young and

Melissa Kite

I’ve practically solved the crime myself but still the police won’t help

‘Thank you for calling Surrey Police. We want to help you with your inquiry as quickly as possible. Did you know you can go online…’ That is probably the most depressing sentence in the English language. It is not only preposterous to suggest crime will be better dealt with by a website, it is insulting. I was ringing 101 to persevere with the police after trying to solve the burglaries in the barn myself, and after almost catching the thieves red-handed. After putting up game cameras, I captured images of them when they came back a second time. But I needed help with the grainy footage, and if the registration

Robin Oakley

The election won’t bring any joy to the racing community – whatever the outcome

Whatever the outcome of the election on 12 December, it is unlikely to bring joy to the racing community. Conservatives and Labour are planning to review or replace the Gambling Act and they won’t be doing so intending to increase the amounts trousered by the bookmakers. Sadly, the way things have long been organised means it is the size of the gambling industry’s takings that determine how much filters down to finance the sport. Labour and the Liberal Democrats plan, too, to review jockeys’ use of the whip for ‘encouragement’. It is no surprise that the puritans have long had it in for racing: the sport’s biggest sponsors used to

Dot Wordsworth

What exactly is a narwhal?

A point that many people mentioned amid the horror and heroism of the attack at London Bridge was the enterprising use of a narwhal tusk taken from the wall of Fishmongers’ Hall to belabour the murderous knifeman. I am surprised to find that the first person known to use narwhal in English was good old Sir Thomas Browne, in the discussion of unicorns’ horns in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Vulgar Erroures, where he correctly declares that ‘those long Horns preserved as pretious rarities in many places, are but the teeth of Narhwales’. Narwhal tusks are spirally grooved, and Browne observed that the long horn preserved in his day at St

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Why does my feminist friend always expect me to pay for dinner?

Q. One of my very best female friends has got into the habit of lecturing me on gender equality, in a manner that sometimes borders on aggressive. Now, I identify as a feminist man, and understand the need for healthy debate. However, her hypocrisy is irksome and hard to overlook (I’m still expected to buy drinks, dinner etc, even in a platonic relationship). This is coupled with the fact that she consistently reports back to having not offered to pay when out with male suitors. Any advice on how to breach the topic? Not least to save my wallet… — E.C., London A. Confide your confusion to another female (not known to

Peter Jones

We could certainly do with a Tacitus now

As a contemporary John Clapham reported, Queen Elizabeth I ‘had pleasure in reading the best and wisest histories’, and translated the Roman historian Tacitus as a ‘private exercise’. This has been confirmed by a manuscript of a translation of Tacitus corrected by her, recently discovered in Lambeth Palace. But what on earth was she doing that for? It was nothing as juvenile as showing that she was the equal of any man in the education stakes. The point is that, up till the 16th century, Tacitus had enjoyed little reputation. This was because renaissance ‘humanism’, forged in city-state republics such as Florence and Venice, had found its origins in the

Toby Young Toby Young

Must try harder: Labour wants to reverse a decade of progress in education

If education rather than Brexit or the NHS was the biggest issue in this election campaign, the Tories would be coasting to victory. On Tuesday, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) published its latest rankings, based on tests taken by 15-year-olds in 79 countries, and they show the UK climbing the international league tables. In reading, we’re now 14th (up eight places from 2015); in science, 14th (up a place); and in maths, 18th (up nine places). In other words, British schoolchildren are making huge strides compared to those in other countries. And over a period where money has been pretty tight. Why, then, would you want to

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Six weeks is too long for an election campaign

The number of parties represented in national election debate multiplies. There are now seven crowding on to television podiums and local hustings. Yet this impression of diversity is, like the current public policy use of that word, misleading. Five of the parties — Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru — are essentially the same. They see achieving Remain, growing the state and destroying the Tories as the most important causes. The Brexit party is merely an epiphenomenon of Tory Brexit weakness and is therefore passing into history. So it is the Conservatives vs the rest, and ‘the rest’ includes all the broadcast media. This was particularly apparent in

The Spectator

This is the most important election in modern history – so vote, and vote Tory

Next week, voters will decide the future of the government, of Brexit, and perhaps of the Union. Jeremy Corbyn has been admirably clear on what he offers: a radical experiment in far-left economics, going after the wealthy to fund the biggest expansion of government ever attempted in this country. Boris Johnson proposes to complete Brexit and restore much-needed stability to government. But given that about half of voters still oppose Brexit, the race is close. Corbyn offers a new referendum on Brexit. It is easy to snigger at his declaration that he would be neutral during this campaign. But his pledge to be an ‘honest broker’ conceals the deceit that

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Remembering the genius of Clive James

‘Clive James Stirs.’ That was the standard subject line for the emails I used to get from the great Australian polymath. I liked it. It cast him, I thought, as a sort of barnacled kraken — still hanging in there, occasionally roused to action. He was usually submitting a new poem. For a while, after he first announced his illness and his poem ‘Japanese Maple’ had gone viral thanks to a tweet from Mia Farrow (Clive found this funny, and was pleased), there was a faintly ghoulish cachet in the thought that we might be the publishers of Clive’s last poem. But of course, he didn’t die — and the