Society

Monday

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Is universalism the true cause of left-wing anti-Semitism?

Why does the left have a problem with Jews? I don’t think the current analysis goes deep enough. We need to take two or three steps back from recent political events. The key concept is universalism. Socialism is a universalist ideology: it thinks it has a solution to the world’s problems that everyone ought to subscribe to. The right by contrast is semi-universalist: it thinks free markets are good for everyone, but this is more theoretical than heartfelt, and it balances this with some degree of nativism. Socialism has had an anti-Semitic streak from the start: Marx was an anti-Semite as well as a Jew. The seeming contradiction makes a

Saturday

Daniel DePetris

Is Kim Darroch now the most popular man in Washington?

Kim Darroch may no longer be Britain’s top man in Washington DC, but that doesn’t mean he has lost friends in the U.S. capital. Indeed, if anything, the abrupt end of Darroch’s long career has only earned him more goodwill.   The outgoing ambassador is now one of the most popular men in Washington after his high-profile falling-out with Donald Trump. And the U.S. foreign policy establishment has rallied around him like a mother bear rallies around her cub—with love and affection. Ex-diplomats and foreign policy officials, from former U.S. State Department veteran Richard Haass to former French Ambassador Gerard Areud have come out in recent days defending Darroch as

James Brokenshire

Full letter: James Brokenshire apologises to Roger Scruton

James Brokenshire has apologised to Roger Scruton for sacking him as a government housing adviser. Here is the full text of James Brokenshire’s apology: Dear Sir Roger, As you will be aware, the interim report of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission is due to be published today. I wanted to take this moment to thank you for the significant contribution you have made in helping to bring this about and for your leadership in promoting beauty in the built environment. I believe the Interim Report maintains the intellectual underpinning which you set out through your work with the Commission and provides a strong platform from which further work can now

Kenneth R. Rosen

The European fighters who battled Isis – and were abandoned by their governments

Foreign fighters are returning from the battlefield — not Islamists but the Americans, Europeans and South Americans who fought to rid the world of Isis. But for all their bravery, their homecoming is a tricky one because their home countries do not want them back. I have now interviewed more than a dozen volunteers. Many of them share similar stories of arrests and detentions. They have been stripped of their ability to travel, have their movements monitored, their bank accounts closed. One of them, an American, has since committed suicide. One fighter, who wishes to be known as Max, tells me in an email that he has left his home

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: poems with a twist

The latest competition called for poems with an ingenious twist at the end. Though popular, this challenge turned out to be deceptively tricky and while there were many accomplished and enjoyable entries, none of your twists truly blew my socks off. Paul A. Freeman kept it short and topical: Was it things that go bump in the night, or an earthquake’s formidable might?       I have to confess       that it’s anyone’s guess coz Boris’s lips are shut tight. Douglas G. Brown, Max Gutmann and Martin Elster were unlucky runners-up. The six below romp home with £25 each. Derek Robinson The deadly battle is renewed each morning; The enemy, entrenched within the

Qanta Ahmed Qanta Ahmed

What does the Muslim Council of Britain have against Muslims like me?

Have you ever wondered why there are so few moderate Muslim voices in the press? It’s not because they don’t exist. There are over a billion of us in the world. In many cases, it’s because of the way we are treated by hardliners. Once again, they have trained their crosshairs on me, this time charging me with ‘misrepresenting Muslim behaviour and belief’ and ‘negating the belief of some Muslims’. If a Muslim speaks up against political Islam – questioning the legitimacy of these self-appointed spokesmen – this is what we can expect. Just look at this week’s report by a group called the Centre for Media Monitoring, which claims that

Friday

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Tommy Robinson is no martyr. Here’s how to stop him becoming one

We might not care for Stephen Yaxley-Lennon but we should care very much about what happens to him in prison over the next two months or so. Lennon, also known as ‘Tommy Robinson’, was convicted at the Old Bailey yesterday for contempt of court after he live-streamed footage of defendants on trial for sexual exploitation arriving at court. Yaxley-Lennon had previously served time in custody for this but was freed on appeal pending a retrial. Just to make matters more complicated, he was also sentenced yesterday for an earlier contempt committed at Canterbury Crown court in 2017, again at a rape trial that involved four Asian defendants that attracted a

Thursday

Sahil Mahtani

Sue the Normans!

Restorative justice for the victims of colonialism is an idea whose time has come. A few years ago, the Indian diplomat Shashi Tharoor suggested Britain pay India compensation to atone for centuries of colonial rule. ‘I’d be quite happy if it was one pound a year for the next two hundred years,’ he said. In April, Cambridge University announced a two-year study into how buildings and wine cellars might have been constructed on the backs of slaves. ‘There is growing public and academic interest in the links between the older British universities and the slave trade, and it is only right that Cambridge should look into its own exposure to

The Spectator

Letters | 11 July 2019

Crisis in Hong Kong Sir: It was inspiring to see Hong Kong protesters raising the British flag as a symbol of freedom and liberation — a vivid image of the fondness in which it is held, even more than two decades after our surrender of the territory (‘A question of liberty’, 6 July). However, raising the colonial flag in the legislative chamber was no mere nostalgia but also a challenge to our government. Are we going to stand by today and betray that trust? The British government might be wary of criticising Beijing’s overreach in Hong Kong in case China tightens the screws further against ‘foreign interference in internal affairs’.

Raymond Keene

Howard Staunton

Staunton was the most successful British player of all time, winning three matches against European masters in the 1840s which in modern times would certainly have qualified him to be recognised as world champion.   On the social medium of Twitter (@HowardStaunton), an anonymous writer has invented a witty and satirically trenchant imitation of Staunton. The voice is spot on and whoever lurks behind the Twitter handle is clearly extremely erudite and evidently an expert on 19th-century British chess.   I am offering a champagne lunch at Staunton’s old haunt (and the traditional home of British chess), Simpsons-in-the-Strand, to anyone who can reveal the identity of the Staunton tweeter. Given

Raymond Keene

no. 562

White to play. This is from Wassin-Grigorchuk, Izola 2019. Although the game is only just out of the opening, White can engineer a decisive material gain. What is the key move? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 16 July 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 Be8 Last week’s winner Michael Owen, Urmston, Manchester

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Fashion plates

The Prada Café is both a cake shop and a historical inevitability. It sits on Mount Street, almost opposite the Connaught hotel, and between what used to be Nicky Clarke’s hairdressing salon and a luggage shop so expensive it has a queue outside. People are queuing up to explore late capitalism through the prism of luggage but, that aside, they seem quite disinterested in the world around them. Perhaps they are marvelling at their own stupidity in yearning for a £1,000 bag with no zip. The Prada Café is a nickname. Its real name is Patisserie Marchesi 1824 and it travelled from Italy to the silliest part of Mayfair to

Toby Young Toby Young

Boris and The Sextator farce

Fourteen years ago, almost to the day, Lloyd Evans and I received a note from Boris. It was the press night of Who’s The Daddy?, our play about the various sex scandals that had engulfed The Spectator in the previous 12 months, and we were terrified about how he’d react. As the editor of the magazine, he would have been within his rights to sack us, given how disloyal we’d been. We had portrayed him as a sex-mad buffoon with a portrait of Margaret Thatcher on his office wall that turned into a pull-down bed — in constant use throughout, needless to say. Not only that, but we’d sent up

Dot Wordsworth

Ballocks

I agree with James Joyce on the spelling ballocks. The Liberal Democrats made their MEPs wear T-shirts printed with ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ to the European parliament. But ballocks are to balls what hillocks are to hills. An old word, it appears in a manuscript glossary from the early 10th century. To spell it bollocks is like spelling bastard as bastid, to which many walls bear witness. It appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1885 under ballock, as it still does in Jonathon Green’s Dictionary of Slang. The OED notes, unsmilingly, that the spelling bollock ‘shows rounding’. Also without a smile, it remarks that it is found ‘usually in the

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 11 July 2019

Q. It is difficult to know what to do when homeless people ask you for cash as you are leaving a supermarket all laden down, so may I pass on a tip to readers? Instead of claiming not to have any cash or appearing uncaring by refusing to give any (and sometimes feeling intimidated), help out the homeless person by purchasing hot meal vouchers from a local charity. In Bath where I live there is one such called the Genesis Trust — the vouchers cost 50p each.— S.G.B., Bath A. Thank you for submitting this tip. It is useful, but of course you would have to stock up in advance. A voucher

Taki

High life | 11 July 2019

Martina Navratilova has never been shy about telling it like it is. She came out when other athletes were hiding in their lockers, and recently spoke out against men transitioning into women in order to cash in at women’s events. She is brave and refuses to be intimidated. Last week, while the centre court crowd was going wild cheering for Coco Gauff, Martina was the only commentator to question the fairness of it: ‘I wonder how Hercog must feel having 15,000 people hate you and cheer your every mistake to the rafters?’ Mind you, sportsmanship is a thing of the past, and Wimbledon crowds now act like football fans. Coco

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 11 July 2019

The hotel manager had arranged for me to borrow an Alfa Romeo Spider Duetto two-seater convertible (1982) for the afternoon. And now, after lunch, here it was, as promised, parked on the forecourt. ‘You’re familiar with left-hand drive cars I take it, Mr Clarke?’ she said, a touch apprehensively I thought. ‘I’ve had a Spider,’ I said. ‘Similar to this, but a later, fuel-injected model.’ A true statement — although I was as confounded by it as she was. She handed me the key and a map with a suggested scenic route marked in Biro. I climbed in, fired the thing up, and with a cheery wave, 10,000 exploratory revs

Melissa Kite

Real life | 11 July 2019

Not going to the osteopath worked a treat. Walking out of that surgery after hearing the crunching coming from inside the consulting room while another patient was being done proved to be just the cure I needed. Now, I want to make absolutely clear before we go any further that I am not about to insult osteopaths. General Osteopathic Council, stand down. Individual enraged osteopaths, replace your receivers. Do not start dialling the switchboard. Do not begin composing emails beginning: ‘Dear Sir, I wish to express in the strongest possible terms…’ Relax. There is no need to complain. Let me say for the record: I support practitioners of alternative medicine;

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 11 July 2019

Home Sir Kim Darroch resigned as British ambassador to Washington after the Mail on Sunday published disobliging emails he had sent between 2017 and now, which said things like: ‘We don’t really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction-riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.’ In response President Donald Trump said: ‘We’re not big fans of that man.’ Next day, Trump added that he had told Theresa May, the Prime Minister, how to manage Brexit, ‘but she went her own foolish way — was unable to get it done. A disaster!’. As Conservative party members posted their votes, bookmakers put the chance

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 11 July 2019

All high-level bridge tournaments involve playing with screens placed diagonally across the table — and there are numerous rules to remember. For instance, only North or South may slide the bidding tray under the screen, only declarer or dummy may remove the tray after the bidding, only declarer or dummy may lift the screen’s flap… It’s easy to slip up, but until a few years ago people were pretty relaxed about it.   Not any more. Ever since the cheating scandal erupted in 2015, this stuff is taken deadly seriously. It’s hardly surprising: a shocking number of world champions were exposed as cheats, starting with the young Israelis Fisher and