Society

Friday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Ilhan Omar is a troll

The Democratic Party faces a test of character. Most mainstream institutions have failed such tests in recent years but, in the spirit of Samuel Beckett, let’s try again and fail better this time. The trial confronting the electoral vehicle of American liberalism is whether liberals still have a firm grip on the wheel or the extremists in the back are doing the driving. This week, Donald Trump tweeted that Ilhan Omar, a freshman congresswoman from Minnesota’s fifth district and a Somali-born refugee who became a US citizen in 2000, and three other US-born congresswomen should ‘go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came’.

James Kirkup James Kirkup

It’s time to listen to the NHS gender clinic whistleblowers

Why are increasing numbers of children designated as transgender? Are the resulting medical interventions safe and justified and in the best long-term interests of those children? These are questions of public interest. Some of the answers being offered are troubling, to say the least. One such answer came this week, and deserves attention from politicians and journalists. It’s an open letter from Dr Kirsty Entwistle, formerly a clinical psychologist at the Gender Identity Development Service, the main NHS service for children who might be transgender. It’s a long piece and should be read in full. But here are a few key extracts: “I think it is a problem that GIDS

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Spectator Winemaker’s Lunch with Pol Roger review

Jonathan Ray reviews our recent Spectator Winemaker’s lunch with James Simpson MW of Champagne Pol Roger As readers well know, Pol Roger is pretty much the Spectator house pour. Anything of note that happens at 22 Old Queen Street is marked with a bottle or so of Pol. Indeed, the fabled Spectator Summer Party the other week was awash with the stuff. And we did pretty well at our recent Spectator Winemaker’s Lunch too. Our host – Pol Roger UK’s MD, James Simpson MW – was generosity itself and brought some cracking bottles with him. He started by explaining that Pol Roger is one of the few family-owned champagne houses

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Tal story | 18 July 2019

Sixty years ago, the great Mikhail Tal won the Candidates tournament by a massive margin to qualify for a world title match against Botvinnik, which Tal also won, equally convincingly. This week, in homage to Tal, one of his four zero wipeout games against Bobby Fischer, with notes based on those of eyewitness Harry Golombek from his book Fourth Candidates Tournament 1959 in the Hardinge Simpole edition edited by David Regis.   Fischer-Tal: Candidates Tournament Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade 1959; Sicilian Defence   1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6 6 Bc4 e6 7 Bb3 Be7 8 f4 0-0 9 Qf3 Qc7 10 0-0 b5

Raymond Keene

no. 563

White to play. This position is from Tal-Rantanen, Tallinn 1979. This game features a typically brilliant Tal finish. Can you spot his amazing coup? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 23 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 Ng5 Last week’s winner Lily Geidelberg, London W6

The Spectator

Letters | 18 July 2019

Leave we must Sir: It is interesting that as the Brexit process drags, people become more distanced from what was a simple decision made at the referendum. The question was stay or leave, and the decision was leave. In last week’s letters, Mark Pender writes that it is a mystery to him why MPs continue to support the decision to leave despite knowing it is against the country’s interests. I would venture to say that it is most certainly not ‘known’ to be against the country’s best interests. Pender goes on to say that this decision flies in the face of advice ‘from the civil service and others who have

The Spectator

Barometer | 18 July 2019

Mars missions When will there be a manned Mars mission? — As early as 1962, Nasa studied the practicalities of a mission to Mars, as part of its Project EMPIRE (Early Manned Planetary-Interplanetary Roundtrip Expeditions). The initial plan was to put a man on Mars by the early 1970s. However, budgetary restraints meant that the programme was limited to a flyby of Venus before being axed. — The prospect of a manned mission to Mars has been revived several times since. However, two years ago Nasa announced that it is unlikely to happen before the 2030s. Counting cups England won the cricket world cup. Which country holds the greatest number

Toby Young Toby Young

I’m starting a trade union for intellectuals

I have just returned from Minneapolis after attending the annual conference of the International Society for Intelligence Research. That’s ‘intelligence’ in the sense of general cognitive ability rather than spooks. It’s the third time I’ve gone, having been asked by the society to give a lecture in 2017 (a different journalist is invited each year to talk about how to improve the public understanding of the field). There are a lot of myths floating around about intelligence, such as the belief that IQ isn’t real. In fact, it is possible to measure intelligence using standardised tests, people’s scores don’t change much after childhood and they help to predict a huge

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 18 July 2019

Q. Further to your advice about how to refuse invitations, I had a friend, who sadly died young, who disliked many social events and conventions. At dinner parties he dreaded hearing the words: ‘Shall we move to somewhere more comfortable?’ He devised a universal response to unspecified invitations. It was: ‘I am taking a suitcase to Highgate that night’. He found this would prompt the host to give more details — for example: ‘Oh, what a shame because the So-and-Sos are coming and we thought we’d take a picnic on the heath.’ If he liked the sound of the event he could say: ‘I’ll be back by then.’ — P.M., Lewes,

Dot Wordsworth

Essentialise

‘Ha, ha,’ said my husband, as though he’d made a joke. ‘Here’s one for you.’ He waved a page of the Guardian. A piece by Afua Hirsch about Archie Mountbatten-Windsor called him ‘a child who will have to navigate for themselves the madness of all the ways in which we have been taught to essentialise and fetishise race’. The plural pronoun as a gender-neutral device, ‘navigate for themselves’, makes Mountbatten-Windsor sound more like a firm of solicitors than a single baby. But what I want to focus on is essentialise. When Justin Webb asked Rachel Shabi on Today last week whether it was fair to call her a Jewish supporter

Taki

High life | 18 July 2019

Athens Standing right below the Acropolis, where pure democracy began because public officials were elected by lot, I try to imagine if random political selection would be a good thing today. The answer is a resounding yes. Both Socrates and Aristotle questioned fundamental norms and values, and if they were alive today they would certainly question our acceptance of career politicians who have never had any other profession. (Corbyn, Biden… I could go on.) Socrates was sceptical about many things, especially the arts, because he believed they led us away from the truth. Yet nowadays so-called ‘artists’ influence public opinion as never before. The fact that even numbskull rappers have

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 18 July 2019

The train standing at platform 1A had no air-conditioning and the heat was stupefying. Latecomers pressing into the carriage reacted to it as to a slap in the face. Those with nothing better to hand fanned themselves with their tickets. The lady seated opposite me mistook my theatrical languor for conviviality. ‘I’ve been in Florence for a week and I’ve never been so hot in my life,’ she said. ‘But I’ve had such a wonderful time in school here learning Italian. Such a beautiful language. You sort of roll it around in your mouth as if you are tasting something delicious, like olive oil or something. And I made such

Melissa Kite

Real life | 18 July 2019

For a while, it seemed as if the only words my beloved would ever say again were ‘chicken Kievs’. Two hours of operating a strimmer to clear the undergrowth from the electric fencing around my field had left the builder boyfriend either deaf or so hungry he could only think about his favourite meal. Every question I asked elicited the same two words, until I thought the best thing was to get him home and feed him chicken Kievs. So I hurried to the One Stop and swept every pack they had off the shelves. He sat down at the table looking peculiar and ate his way through four breaded

Robin Oakley

The turf | 18 July 2019

Newmarket’s wisest trainer, Sir Mark Prescott, once noted: ‘The greyhound is propelled through the pain barrier by its desire to sink its teeth into the tantalising white bunny tail ahead of it. Humans are driven through it by the desire for riches and stardom. But what’s in it for the racehorse?’ His words came to mind after Beat The Bank, owned by King Power Racing, the operation founded by the late Leicester City chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, and trained by Andrew Balding, won the Group 2 Summer Mile at Ascot on Saturday for a second year. It was a ninth victory in 18 races for one of the most popular horses

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 18 July 2019

I have always thought the term ‘bridge holiday’ was an oxymoron. When I travel with my team to various events, we play highly competitively for about eight hours every day — a holiday it ain’t. Concentrating all the time is exhausting and (for me) impossible. Then there is the inevitable insomnia and the resulting ridiculous howlers in the bidding and play. And defence? Tragic. The only tournament I play that feels like a real holiday is the International Bridge Festival of Biarritz, held every year in July, from which I have just returned. Can there be anything better than falling asleep to the sound of the sea, eating delicious food

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 18 July 2019

Home In a televised debate between the rivals for election by members of the Conservative party as their new leader (and hence prime minister), Boris Johnson said of the Irish backstop, ‘It needs to come out,’ and Jeremy Hunt said that it was ‘dead’. This was described as ‘significant’ by Dominic Grieve, who said he was ready to bring the government down rather than see a Brexit without any agreement. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said that she would continue to sit as an MP after her resignation on 24 July. Ffordd Pen Llech in Harlech was recognised as the steepest street in the world, at 37.45 per cent beating

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 18 July 2019

Seventy-five years ago on Saturday, the July plot failed. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg placed a bomb in a briefcase next to Hitler in the conference room of the Wolf’s Lair, but someone moved the briefcase a little. When the bomb detonated, the heavy conference table shielded Hitler from the blast. Stauffenberg and many other conspirators were caught. He was executed early the next morning. This Friday, in Christ Church, Oxford, a special service will commemorate the plot and all those who resisted Nazism in Germany. It will centre on the altar dedicated to George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, and the main external supporter of German Christian resistance to Hitler.

Mr Magoo

2417: Six Nations

One of the unclued entries (two words) can be followed by each of the others (two of three words, one of two words), according to Brewer.   Across 1    Clean turns into crashes – rash? (8) 8    What goes up, to go down like a lead balloon? (4) 14    Sinn Fein resisted revolutionary drinks (7) 16    Herbivore finally starts to like killing some deer (4) 17    Feminine to back out of awfully shameful dances (5) 18    Spot, catching cat in retreat, is being too dramatic (6) 22    Victory in closely fought double-header may be so (8, hyphened) 23    Moslem keeps avoiding alcohol in Biblical tree (7) 24    Extremely silent before

Ben Sixsmith

Poles apart | 18 July 2019

Have you ever seen a Pole on British television? Poles are the biggest immigrant group in Britain, numbering between 900,000 and one million, so you might think they would be all over the TV. But no, there are hardly any. There is a Polish character on Coronation Street, who might turn out to be a sex-trafficker. There was also a Polish character on EastEnders, although the actor who played him left the show to become the Pole on Coronation Street. As a British person living in Poland, I have spoken to many Poles who have lived in the UK. They have told me eye-widening stories about exploitation, crime, poverty and