Society

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The great Tory health splurge

A fortnight before Philip Hammond delivered his last Budget, the chief executive of the NHS gave a speech making the case for more funding. Simon Stevens had brought with him picture of a Vote Leave poster, promising £350 million a week for the health service, which he showed to his audience. What a good idea, he said. He wasn’t coming out as a Brexiteer, but he did think the Leavers had a point about giving an extra £350 million a week to the National Health Service. In fact, he went so far as to say that the ‘public want to see’ this promise honoured. And if politicians don’t cough up?

Ed Husain

The real special relationship

In all the agonising about Islamism, and what to do about it, it would be a mistake to forget a very useful fact: that Britain has a special relationship with Islam and has done for centuries. The friendship with Islam is unique. Spain was home to Andalusia, a Muslim empire for 700 years. The Germans, Poles and Austrians saw off Turkish Muslim invaders in the Siege of Vienna in 1529 and then again at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. The French lived in the shadow of 732 and the Battle of Poitiers. Britain alone, cut off from Catholic Europe, forged a relationship with Muslims built on trade, the rule

The Spectator

Brothers-in-arms

From ‘The new crusade’, 25 May 1918: It is curious to think how great must soon have been the spiritual gulf between the new generation in Great Britain and the United States if the latter had remained in prosperous isolation. In five years we should have ceased to understand each other’s jokes, in ten we should scarcely have spoken the same language. But now the tide is setting just as mightily towards a complete and perfect sympathy. A whole generation of Americans will have been our brothers-in-arms… The possibilities of the new brotherhood are almost boundless. If anything could make us welcome the continuance of the war for another year, it

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Netwór Krail has outdone himself yet again

In the shadow of the Shard, not far from Borough Market, is a £1 billion public artwork, an allegorical sculpture entitled ‘What is wrong with the world today’ by the reclusive wunderkind Netwór Krail. It was officially unveiled by the Duke of Cambridge earlier this month. The reason you may not have read about this monumental piece is that most of the press coverage failed to notice this structure was a landmark in experiential art. They mostly used its banal official name: the new London Bridge station. Next time you visit this ‘station’, I urge you to appreciate this installation for what it really is — a brilliant, scathing commentary

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 26 May

A great selection from Messrs Corney & Barrow this week and a ridiculously well-priced one too, especially if you take advantage of the Brett-Smith Indulgence whereby C&B’s MD, Adam Brett-Smith, knocks six quid off a case for anyone buying two dozen bottles or more. Never in a thousand years did I think that I would find myself recommending a Romanian Pinot Grigio in these pages, nor indeed anywhere else. But the 2017 Sanziana Pinot Grigio (1) is blooming lovely and my summer quaffing wine is now sorted. The wines of Romania are being taken very seriously these days and merchants the calibre of Corney & Barrow wouldn’t be sniffing round

Bruce Anderson

Turning wine into words

Words, words, words. Over a couple of sessions, we drank a selection of serious wines, starting with a Cantemerle ’05. As everyone else thought it was delicious, it would have been curmudgeonly of me to say that although it had been open for a couple of hours, it would have benefited from another five years. So I abstained from curmudgeonliness. Even so, although 2005 is a great vintage, it needs longevity. We moved on to a wine I had never heard of, let alone tasted, but was ready: an ’06 Clos Louie, from Castillion in the Côtes de Bordeaux. Only in business since 2003, it has pre-phylloxera vines: 70 per

Harry Mount

Asterix

A sterix, te amamus! For those not lucky enough to learn their Latin from the dazzling René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo comic books, that means: ‘Asterix, we love you!’ How brilliant the Asterix books are and how very clever in their puns and deep appreciation of Roman history. A new exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Camden shows how much research Goscinny the writer and Uderzo the artist put into the books; and yet, like so much hard-won art, the result looks effortlessly light. The puns work in French and English, thanks to the inspired translations by Anthea Bell and the late Derek Hockridge. Getafix, the village druid, is Panoramix

Molly Watson

The lure of the saddle

When asked to describe in three words what it means to win Badminton, the world’s most challenging and prestigious equestrian event, Jonelle Price — this year’s victor and the first woman to take the title for a decade — knocked back a glass of champagne and answered: ‘Dreams. Come. True.’ For the past 20 years Jonelle has relied on dreams and phenomenal willpower to get to the top of the exclusive and very expensive sport of eventing. Hers has been a different route from the classic one of ‘Daddy bought me a pony’ (or in the case of her fellow competitor, Princess Anne’s daughter Zara Tindall, ‘Mummy’). The child of

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

L’Europe, c’est moi

I meet Bernard-Henri Lévy in a colossally luxurious hotel on a tree-lined avenue just behind the Elysée Palace. The French philosopher is half-reclining on a sofa, with one ankle tucked under his thigh, beneath an ornamental bookcase bearing a bust of Voltaire. He wants to discuss his new play, Last Exit Before Brexit, which will receive its world premiere at Cadogan Hall, London, on 4 June, under the auspices of the Hexagon Society. The play takes the form of a 100-minute monologue. What’s it about? ‘A group of anti-Brexit intellectuals decide to organise a last-chance event in the symbolic city of Sarajevo. They ask me to deliver the keynote speech.

Prue Leith

The waiting game

When my husband, John, was born in 1946, doctors were the chief agents of adoption. His mother was young, single, pregnant and desperate. Her doctor had another patient, a happily married but childless woman in search of a baby. The doctor, knowing the two women, solved both their problems by handing John to his new parents at birth. Thirty years later I adopted my Cambodian daughter, Li-Da, with minimal fuss. We had a visit from a social worker to check us out. Within days a legal guardian was appointed, and we were allowed to foster Li-Da at once. After three months, with the occasional visit from her guardian, we adopted

Henry Jeffreys

In praise of bangers

I was collecting my daughter from school when my path was blocked by an enormous black Range Rover sitting in the middle of the road. As I squeezed past, one tyre on the pavement, I opened my window and asked, as gently as I could: ‘Why don’t you drive on your side of the road?’ The woman looked down from on high and said: ‘Why are you driving a banger?’ I’ve been trying to come up with a clever response ever since. I’d never thought of my car as a banger before. It’s a nearly 20-year-old Ford Focus, in excellent condition for its age with just a touch of rust

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Is ‘woman’ now an offensive word?

I do not know whether the Speaker of the House of Commons called the present Leader of the House a ‘stupid woman’. It certainly wouldn’t have been a nice thing to say, but I’ve found it hard to decide whether MPs should boot him out. Many Tory friends seethe with dislike for the man; there are plenty of allegations of partiality or vindictiveness towards individuals, and one does get the impression he doesn’t much care for the present government. Yet few Speakers in recent decades have stood up to ministers more resolutely, or done as much as Bercow in opening up the building and its institutions to a wider public.

Lucy Vickery

A fine bromance

In Competition No. 3049 you were invited to submit a poem about a bromance.   Pairings including Friedrich and Karl, Laurel and Hardy, Nigel and Donald lit up an entry that was witty, touching and generally pleasingly varied. I liked Chris O’Carroll’s ‘Boris and Donnie’, a twist on Jimmie Rodgers’s ‘Frankie and Johnny’. And Bill Greenwell had the same idea, only with David and Jonathan from the Book of Samuel as the loved-up duo. Commendations also go to Shirley Curran, Jonathan Pettman, A.C. Smith and John Morrison.   Basil Ransome-Davies’s entry transported me back to the 1970s, when real men wore chunky cream-and-brown hand-knit cardigans. He and his fellow winners,

Wednesday

James Innes-Smith

Hope vs hate: is grief manipulated for political purposes?

On the anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing all the talk has been of hugs and hearts; of healing and hope; of handholding and heroism. Newsreaders have spoken in self-consciously faltering tones about the resilience and defiance of those who have suffered so much. A choir sang Somewhere over the Rainbow. A minute’s silence, followed by a mass sing-a-long. Trees were decked with messages of hope as Dr Rev David Walker, the bishop of Manchester observed, somewhat obtusely, that “Part of the horror … is that [the arena] appeared to have been deliberately chosen as a venue full of young people”. On Radio 4’s Today programme, Nick Robinson sounded in almost

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tory MPs brace themselves for EU Withdrawal Bill showdown

The Chief Whip has just told Tory MPs that the EU Withdrawal Bill will be coming back to the Commons in early to mid-June. He told a meeting of the 1922 Committee that all leave was cancelled, and that there would be no slipping as the Government tried to overturn the Lords amendments. He was, I am informed, clear that the Government isn’t changing its mind on either the EEA or a customs union. There had been speculation that the Government would try and hold the withdrawal bill back until the autumn. But I understand that this option was never really a goer because of the number of statutory instruments

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Labour’s obesity crisis

PMQs began with a question about obesity from Labour’s Kerry McCarthy. The crisis has reached breaking-point, she said. Our chubby 11-year-olds are now even chubbier than America’s chubby 11-year-olds. ‘The voluntary approach simply won’t work,’ she said. Her colleagues, crushed and squeezed together, bore out the truth of this statement. ‘The voluntary approach,’ (or ‘turning down that extra Hobnob at teatime’), has certainly failed to stop Labour’s fat-cats from cramming their faces with yummie treats galore. The opposition party is obesity’s A-team. The over-achievers of over-eating. A casual glance across their heaving benches reveals prop-forward after prop-forward, and bouncy-castle after bouncy-castle. And the gods of chocolate do not discriminate between the

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Will the Church’s division over women clergy re-ignite?

Now that London has a female bishop, you might assume that the whole saga is over: surely the liberals have effectively won? Well, yes and no: because the traditionalist rump that opposes women’s ordination is still officially affirmed as authentically Anglican, and has its own episcopal structure, the liberals’ victories have a hollow feel. Of course liberals have grumbled about this odd situation since its origin in 1992. But charitable rhetoric about co-existence has kept such grumbling in check. Might this now change? You might wonder how this rump has survived, and found new recruits. What is its appeal? It’s hard enough for a vicar to keep a congregation going:

Michael Henderson

Philip Roth was a genius

Philip Roth has died at the age of 85. Here Michael Henderson pays tribute to the American author: It became a cliché to call him the finest living American novelist, but that is what he was. Philip Roth stands without embarrassment alongside the major figures of American fiction, going back to Mark Twain, and while few literary reputations are set in stone it is a fair bet that his novels will be read generations from now by book-lovers who want to understand something of Jewish American life in the second half of the 20th century. It is certainly true that only Jewish America could have produced a writer like Roth.

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Will Macron meet his match in Marion Maréchal?

Last summer, a French magazine warned on its front cover that 250,000 migrants were headed their way in 2018. ‘Alarmist’, cried the magazine’s opponents but events in Italy may make it a prescient forecast. The declaration from the incoming Italian coalition government that they intend to deport half a million illegal immigrants from their shores will send a shiver through the Élysée Palace. How many will wait to be rounded up and repatriated? And how many will flee towards France, adding to the already desperate situation in Paris and Calais? As I wrote last July in the Spectator, Emmanuel Macron can grandstand on the global stage as much as he likes.