Society

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Weinstein’s former assistant comes to the defence of Peter Hain

When Peter Hain used his parliamentary privilege to name Philip Green as the businessman accused of harassing and bullying several women, it’s fair to say he received a mixed reception. While initially praised for breaking the court ordered injunction, criticism began to mount that he had abused his parliamentary powers. Hain will be glad to know then that there are still some people fighting his corner. At a drinks reception on Tuesday, Mr S spoke to Zelda Perkins, Harvey Weinstein’s former assistant. Perkins herself signed an NDA when she left Miramax, promising not to speak about Weinstein’s alleged (and denied) attempted rape of her colleague. She told Mr S though

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

What the rise of the Poppy refusenik tells us about Britain

Is there anyone smugger than the poppy refusenik? I don’t mean people who don’t wear poppies. That’s absolutely fine. Knock yourselves out. I mean people who don’t wear a poppy and who tell everyone they don’t wear a poppy. At every opportunity. ‘It’s poppy-fascism time of year again but I won’t be falling for it because I actually have a brain, unlike you idiots’, they don’t quite say but definitely mean. Poppy refuseniks have replaced poppy fascists (Jon Snow’s uncouth phrase) as the most irritating people of the Remembrance Day season. Sure, the poppy police who take to internet discussion boards the second they spy a newsreader or celeb sans

Stephen Robinson

Life after No. 10 is not what David Cameron was hoping for

It can be cruel, the way politics plays out. At the very moment George Osborne was telling the bemused staff of the London Evening Standard that his working life in politics had obscured a passionate desire to become a newspaper editor, a familiar figure could be seen in the fresh meat department of the Whole Foods supermarket almost directly underneath the paper’s Kensington newsroom. That man was David Cameron, and inevitably someone with journalistic instincts spotted him, snapped him on her phone, and tweeted it. We congratulate ourselves on the ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ nature of British politics. So it is a healthy sign that there is an informality about

Qanta Ahmed Qanta Ahmed

The ECHR’s ruling on defaming Mohammed is bad news for Muslims

In a monumental irony, the ECHR’s agreement with an Austrian court that offensive comments about the Prophet Mohammed were ‘beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate’ has handed a big victory to both Islamists and Islamophobes – while infantilising believing Muslims everywhere. The case concerns an unnamed Austrian woman who held a number of seminars during which she portrayed the Prophet as a paedophile. After she was convicted by an Austrian court of ‘disparaging religion’ (and fined nearly €500), she appealed to the ECHR claiming the punishment breached her right to free expression. The court disagreed. As a practising Muslim, I find this notion – that the Prophet was

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Creating inequality by degrees

Imagine a world where employers judged applicants solely on their dress. Anyone in frayed clothes or scuffed shoes would never get a job. This would be unfair to poorer applicants so, in the name of equality, the government might offer favourable loans up to £1,000 to buy interview clothing. At first glance this would seem a wonderful way to promote fairness. Yet if the number of jobs remained constant, such a policy would have the opposite effect: it would merely ratchet up the level of wasteful, zero-sum competition for what limited chances exist. Soon, anyone not sporting Savile Row tailoring and handmade shoes would be written off. Rather than widening

Tom Holland

Decline and fall | 8 November 2018

For a millennium and a half now, one of the great pleasures of being a commentator on current affairs has been comparing a political crisis to the fall of the Roman Empire. Nothing recently has quite so turbo-charged this perennial trend like the presidency of Donald Trump. The flamboyant egotism, the patent amorality, the porn stars: all seem conjured up from the reign of a peculiarly depraved Caesar. The vague sense that Rome fell because its rulers were decadent — no matter how divorced from historical reality such a myth may be — still lurks in the public imagination. Bill Kristol, one of the most prominent Republicans to have joined

Bruce Anderson

Birth of a dynasty

Darkness, but not the blanket of the dark. This was a sinister darkness, beset by smoke and flames, by the clash of steel, by screams, by terror, by horror. The victims were Huguenots on the quayside at La Rochelle in 1688. They had heard the good news. James II had been overthrown, so it was safe for French Protestants to seek refuge in England. Others wished to violate their safety. For the previous three years, since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (which had helped to cost King James his throne), the Huguenots had been persecuted. Swaggering, bullying dragoons had been billeted in their homes. Now, as the oppressed

Deborah Ross

A cut above

Wildlife is an adaptation of the 1990 novel by Richard Ford about a family coming apart at the seams, and while cinema is full of families coming apart at the seams this one is a cut above. It is exquisite and riveting. It pays proper attention to its characters. And it is brilliantly acted. According to recent figures, the chances of Carey Mulligan ever turning in a duff performance are 0.0 per cent but she still wholly outdoes herself here. This is the directorial debut of actor Paul Dano, who worked on the script with his partner, Zoe Kazan, for several years. He initially chanced upon the novel in a

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Tough choices and worthy winners in a dazzling field

Mail Rail — the venue for the grand finale of The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor Awards, sponsored by Julius Baer — is the former terminus of the driverless underground London Post Office Railway that shuttled mail between London’s major sorting offices from 1927 until 2003. A fine example of the disruptive technology of its era, it had a Doctor Who ambience that made it the perfect setting to celebrate the entrepreneurial creativity showcased in this first year of our Disruptor Awards. The range of innovative business ideas presented to us from all over the country was dazzling: everything short of a better model of sonic screwdriver for the Doctor, you might

David Butterfield

No satisfaction

Should university students really feel ‘satisfied’? Or would we rather they felt challenged? For the honchos of higher education, the answer is clear — and alarming. The National Student Survey (NSS), which was introduced in 2005, collects data that allows crude comparisons to be made between universities. The survey asks 300,000 final-year undergraduates to answer 27 questions about their experience of teaching, academic support, assessment and feedback. Some of these are entirely unproblematic: all universities should want students to find that ‘staff are good at explaining things’, or that feedback on work has been ‘timely’. But others are double-edged. Imagine a course where 90 per cent of students agree that

Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

The Insta pilgrims

On Sunday morning, in Puy-en-Velay, I climbed the 275 volcanic steps to the tiny chapel of Rocher Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe. There, in the gloaming, among the silent stones that have stood on this site for 11 centuries, it was almost possible to imagine the awe of those very first Christian pilgrims who in the 10th century… CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! Ah yes, the sacred selfie, now as much a part of the modern Camino de Santiago de Compostela as the rosary, the walking stick and the scallop shell. A Catholic grandmother taking photographs of her penitent grandson, devoutly picking his nose. A teenager snapping Insta-incense shots. A honeymooning couple in walking boots

Liz Hunt

We will remember him

The story is part of family lore. How, during the Battle of Mons, on 23 August 1914, two long columns of men from the Royal Field Artillery passed each other. One column was withdrawing from the frontline, the other heading into what was the first action between the British Expeditionary Force and the German army in the first world war. A shout went up: ‘Is Mulholland there?’ A reply in the affirmative from somewhere along the lines; a swift exchange of greetings between two brothers, Danny and Patrick; a mutual exhortation to ‘look out for yourself’ — and then they moved on. In opposite directions. It was the last time

The Spectator

Giving thanks

From ‘Thanks be to God’, 16 November 1918: The thought that filled the mind of the nation on Monday, and has possessed it ever since, is the thought, Thanks be to God. Under a thousand names and forms, consciously and unconsciously, realized fully or only half realized, this has given unity to the nation and made the moment mighty. Not to have recorded this fact, and to have left unsaid what we have just said, would have been impossible. But it is equally impossible to say more. If it is true that the greatest truths demand the greatest care in their statement, it is also true that the greatest and most

Rod Mbunga Liddle

I am black – get over it

As someone who has recently discovered he is black, I have watched with incredulity the treatment doled out by the white liberal media to the theatre director Anthony Ekundayo Lennon. Like me, Anthony has shoved a name which sounds a bit exotic between his Christian name and his surname in order to convince people he is black. He has also said that while he does not have any African genes whatsoever, he feels black. That’s good enough for me, and it has proved good enough for organisations which bung people large sums of money on account of their skin colour — or what the individuals, on a whim, deem their

Lucy Vickery

Neo-gothic

In Competition No. 3073 you were invited to submit a short story in the Gothic style with a topical twist.   The seed of this challenge was the recent reopening of Strawberry Hill House and Garden, the neo-Gothic creation of Horace Walpole, whose 1764 chiller The Castle of Otranto is regarded as the first Gothic novel.   Russell Clifton deployed the framing device, updated for contemporary sensibilities: ‘Gathered about the campfire that October evening in Lark Wood, someone suggested we tell horror stories. Trigger warnings were issued, several group members adjourning to the designated safe space of a distant clearing…’ And Sally Fiery imagined the genesis of a 21st-century Frankenstein-like

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Is there a moral difference between blackmail and an NDA?

Reader, may I call you John? Now imagine, John, that you are my employer and I know (or claim) that you made an inappropriate sexual advance towards me in the workplace. So I approach you. ‘John,’ I say, ‘you groped me in the lift. Give me £5,000 or I’ll make this public.’ That is blackmail. It’s blackmail whether or not the allegation is true. You can go straight to the police and I will very likely be charged with a serious criminal offence. Now imagine a different scene. You, John, aware that I have been saying this about you, approach me first. ‘Matthew,’ you say, ‘I know what you’re saying

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 10 November

Esme Johnstone, that crafty old fox at the helm of From Vineyards Direct, has been at it again. He slipped into Bordeaux in early October just as the harvest was finishing (the whisper being that 2018 is a cracking vintage, BTW) and found himself pretty much the only Brit in town. Producers and suppliers all had wine to sell and — apparently — only one person to sell to: Monsieur Johnstone de Londres. As a result, Esme came back to Blighty with bucketloads of tasty tipples. He was astonished to be offered such fine vintages at such decent prices since wines of this age and of this quality have all

Wednesday

Linden Kemkaran

What’s the problem with Anthony Ekundayo Lennon identifying as black?

Anthony Ekundayo Lennon, the white director who has identified as black, is on the receiving end of a backlash from black and ethnic minority actors. They are aggrieved that Lennon has taken a black person’s place on an Arts Council England-funded programme. The Independent’s Paula Akpan lambasted Lennon, “you don’t get to pick and discard which signifiers of blackness you’re going to wear. Choosing when to don a cape of blackness is a luxury that black people do not have”. Yet substitute the word ‘black’ for ‘woman’, and you suddenly see why it was possible that Lennon felt he could simply become whatever it was he felt inside. Self-identification is everything, sensible debate

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Even Oxford University can’t save Jenni Murray from the transgender activist mob

Here we go again. Perhaps there should be a template for journalists writing about transgender issues and the treatment of women with the “wrong” opinions. The template would look something like this: A small group of noisy, angry people, many of them male, have demanded that [Insert woman’s name] not be allowed to speak/ appear/ have a job/ do anything because [woman] once said things the small group of people didn’t like or agree with. Really, we could use it for so many cases and so many women: Germaine Greer, Julie Bindel, Janice Turner, Posy Parker, Linda Bellos… Quite a diverse list that: makes you wonder what it is they have

Toby Young Toby Young

In defence of Roger Scruton

Once identified as right-wing you are beyond the pale of argument,’ wrote Sir Roger Scruton. ‘Your views are irrelevant, your character discredited, your presence in the world a mistake. You are not an opponent to be argued with, but a disease to be shunned. This has been my experience.’ Unfortunately, that experience is due to intensify for the 74-year-old conservative philosopher. Last weekend, the government announced it had set up a commission to try and make new housing developments ‘beautiful’ and appointed Sir Roger as its chair. It’s one of the few sensible things the present government has done; so, of course, it’s caused a scandal. Within minutes of Sir