Society

Thursday

14 Mar 2019

Dear Mary | 14 March 2019

Q. When my mother was widowed ten years ago she decided to take in lodgers to pay the gardener’s bills and other outgoings of the large family house she had lived in for nearly 40 years. This was a great success, not least because it provided company at what was initially a very difficult time. My mother is charming, and some of these lodgers became rather attached to her. Now her financial situation has changed and she no longer takes lodgers but many of the former incumbents like to keep in regular contact and are in the habit of turning up unannounced, often with large families in tow. I suppose

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 14 March 2019

Home The government was defeated by 149 votes — 391 to 242 — on the EU withdrawal agreement presented by Theresa May, the Prime Minister. In a croaking voice she announced a free vote on leaving without a deal. Mrs May had come back from Strasbourg with two documents: a ‘joint instrument’, or interpretive tool agreed by Britain and the EU on the effect of the Irish backstop, and a 365-word ‘unilateral declaration’ by Britain, not agreed by the EU, asserting the right to take the persistence of the backstop to arbitration. The joint instrument said that the EU shared the UK’s aspirations for ‘alternative arrangements’ concerning the Irish border

Dot Wordsworth

Coloured

‘The term coloured, is an outdated, offensive and revealing choice of words,’ tweeted Diane Abbott last week in response to Amber Rudd having remarked on the radio with regard to verbal abuse: ‘And it’s worst of all if you’re a coloured woman. I know that Diane Abbott gets a huge amount of abuse, and I think that’s something we need to continue to call out.’ Rudd rapidly apologised: ‘Mortified at my clumsy language and sorry to Diane Abbott.’ It is funny to think that if Rudd had said woman of colour she’d have been immune to criticism. But she tripped over a shibboleth. The Oxford English Dictionary abides by strict neutrality

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 14 March 2019

I had forgotten, until I checked this week, that Mrs May timed the general election of June 2017 in order to have a mandate for the Brexit negotiations. They began ten days after the nation voted. She conveyed no sense, at the time, of how the election result had changed her situation. In her beginning is her end. Political leadership requires imagination. She has never displayed any. Why, for example, did she fly to Strasbourg on Monday night? She made the same mistake in December 2017 when she took a dawn flight to Brussels after making a hash of the Irish problem. The point of dramatically winging your way out of the

George Osborne

Diary – 14 March 2019

The best thing about the Evening Standard going to print at lunchtime is that we can be first to a story. The worst thing is that we can get that story wrong. On Monday, our splash headline about the Prime Minister and her Brexit deal was ‘Outnumbered. Outflanked. Out of time’. I thought we’d called it right. On Tuesday, I woke up to the headlines ‘May claims victory’ and wondered. Then Geoffrey Cox spoke and sank her premiership. Later that day he told the Commons it was highly unlikely David Cameron would ever have made him his attorney general. Geoffrey, you’re right. As this is The Spectator, we should talk

Mr Magoo

2399: Lines of work

Eight unclued entries (two of two words, one hyphened) form a folk rhyme used as the basis for the first lines of a work whose title is the other unclued entry (hyphened). Its author (5 cells) must be highlighted. Elsewhere, ignore two or three apostrophes and an accent. Across 1 Needing complex course, my job’s on the line (12, hyphened) 10 Seaman jailed by extremely benign officer (4) 12 Suspect fresh angle will show solar phenomenon (10, two words) 14 Quadruped found in centre of cowboy’s rope (3) 15 More than one ancient stole prayer books (8) 17 Is consecrating old priest leaving marks? (5) 19 Pirate chief in

Spectator Money

Best Buys: Variable cash ISAs

If you don’t want your money to be locked away for a set amount of time, or to make additional deposits, then a variable rate easy access ISA is probably your best bet. Here are some of the best on the market right now, from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.

Samuel Leach

Top tips for when you’re learning to trade

Trading the stock or forex markets can seem like a panacea for all your problems; you can set your own hours, work from wherever you like and theoretically make as much money as you want. However, it’s important that you understand the reality of the risks involved, have realistic and attainable goals in mind, and develop a clear plan of action for when you’re starting out. By following these tips, you can avoid unnecessary financial risk and let your money work for you. Start with achievable goals There is a steep learning curve involved and new traders often underestimate how difficult it is to be successful. Don’t leave your job

Fiona Lensvelt

A modern mysticism

I first met a tarot reader in a hotel lobby in central London on my birthday four years ago. I was a book critic at the time and was aware that the cards had inspired writers from W.B. Yeats to T.S. Eliot and Italo Calvino — perhaps there’s a novel in this, I thought. This was serious research. I was less interested in my destiny than I was in the way tarot worked. That was just as well because no sooner had I sat down than my reader piped up: ‘This has been an especially trying time for you and I’m afraid that it isn’t going to get easier.’ She

Sophia Waugh

Out in the cold

Children have a right to an education. This has been written into English law since the Forster Education Act of 1870, which began the process of making education compulsory for children aged between five and 13, and no one in their right mind would oppose that statement. So when the number of permanent exclusions from schools is on the rise, the reasons behind this should be examined carefully. A child excluded from school is not accessing education, and therefore their rights have been violated. But is it really that simple? A breakdown of the groups most often excluded does not bring up many surprises. In nearly half the cases, exclusions

Michael Heath

The Battle for Britain – 14 March 2019

The Spectator

to 2396: Reader …,

Unclued lights were husbands (40A) of Jane Austen’s heroines. First prize Alison Hinder, Sholing, Southampton Runners-up Janet Dibley, Polegate, East Sussex; C.G. Millin, Ramleaze, Wiltshire

Isabel Hardman

A dose of understanding

What a baffling group of people anti-vaxxers are. They rail against one of the miracles of modern medicine, peddling scare stories about vaccines which had nearly eradicated many deadly childhood illnesses in the developed world. Baffling, of course, is too soft a word for many: they’re dangerous, because their anti-science views don’t just put their own children at risk, but wider society. The uptake of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in Britain is at 87.5 per cent. This sounds a lot, but isn’t close to the 95 per cent threshold that the World Health Organisation (WHO) says will ensure ‘herd immunity’ — which is when a disease cannot spread

Freddy Gray

The Democrats’ anti-Semitism problem

Washington, DC Republican strategists have long complained about how, every election, the Democrats mobilise minority groups against them. Now they’re trying to turn the tables. Right-wing social media warriors, encouraged by @realDonaldTrump, have spent months talking about ‘Blexit’: a black voter exit from the Democratic party. This week, the President and others have begun calling for a ‘Jexodus’ — a Jewish exodus — too. How Trump must delight in those clunky portmanteaus. He knows that, while black voters usually vote Democrat, they are not altogether anti-Trump. He also senses that Jewish voters, traditionally the most left–liberal people in America, are alarmed at a new Democrat tendency to bash Israel. Suddenly,

Bruce Anderson

A perfect Sunday in Lent

Life is far too important to be taken seriously. At least, that was the conclusion which we meandered towards as a Sunday lunch party eased into a symposium. Chaps had opinions to draft, articles to write, books to review. But no one was minded to defer to conscientiousness — especially as we had all made a solemn pledge not to discuss Brexit. Our host had consulted me about the bill of fare. Should it be lamb and Burgundy or beef and claret? I declared myself ready to settle for either, though both might be inadvisable. Beef it was, and grass-fed Aberdeen Angus at that. As I often remind vegetarians (too

Rory Sutherland

IQ tests: the controversy that won’t go away

I have a dim memory from 1970 of a primly dressed distant relative visiting in a Baby Austin. This, I later learned, was the anthropologist Beatrice Blackwood. I googled her 45 years later and was astonished to find she had spent several years in the 1920s and 1930s living alone among Stone Age tribes in New Guinea. Her pet kitten so enchanted the normally fierce Kukukuku that they even built her a temporary house. Aside from her travels, what also surprised me was how close-knit the world of anthropology then was. Just a few hundred people gave rise to debates which are still alive today. Nature vs nurture, for instance.

Melanie McDonagh

The death of Shamima Begum’s baby is a tragedy – but not Sajid Javid’s fault

It would take a heart of stone – and occasionally I possess just such an organ – not to feel sympathy for Shamima Begum after she lost a third baby, her son Jarrah, barely three weeks old, in a Syrian refugee camp. But should we feel guilt as well as compassion for leaving the child – all unbeknown to him, a British citizen and possibly Dutch too – to fester in the camp occupied by IS refugees? More precisely, how responsible should the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, feel, having deprived Miss Begum of her British citizenship? The BBC news all day long has linked him to the death: criticism of

Douglas Murray

The false equivalence between ‘Islamophobia’ and anti-Semitism

I have been travelling in the Middle East for the last few weeks and slightly regret returning to the maelstrom of ancient animosities and unbridgeable sectarianism that is modern Britain. But in my absence I see that one of the worst tropes of our time has been stalking unhindered across the land. That is, of course, the latest push to make an equivalence between anti-Semitism and the crock term ‘Islamophobia’. It is not just in the UK that this play has been made. In America over recent days people have been able to follow the progress of the new Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar, with her supporters deciding to deflect attention

Alex Massie

The Brexiteers have blown it

If, as Rod Liddle says, Brexit has been killed there is no shortage of suspects. 75 of them, in fact. That’s the number of Conservative MPs who voted against the Government in last night’s second – but not necessarily final – meaningful vote. They wanted Brexit and then, when they were given it, they decided it wasn’t the kind of Brexit they wanted after all. Fanaticism invariably devours its adherents and so it is with Brexit. The Brexiteers wanted the ball but once they had it they decided they did not actually want it after all. They had their chance and they blew it. All they had to do was

Matthew Parris

The view from a street corner in Beirut

A pale sun had emerged from wintry clouds and the hillsides were topped snowy white. But all around me was the workaday bustle of Beirut streets still wet from overnight winter rain. This was the Armenian quarter, near the docks, at morning coffee time. I was standing on the Rue Qobaiyat, opposite a downtown petrol station and outside a corner barber’s shop, Salon Anto. My partner and his mother wanted to go to a museum and I’m not a great one for museums, and needed a haircut. ‘There’s a barber just around the corner,’ said the helpful owner of the little Baffa House lodge where we were staying. ‘A bit