Society

Sunday

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Has Britain really entered its ‘first atheist age’?

Some sociology academics have, after a three-year research project called ‘Exploring Atheism’, unveiled a startling discovery: there are a lot of people in Britain who don’t believe in God. I know, it’s quite a gut-punch. They do not quite claim to have found that most Britons are atheists. But they do claim that there are now more atheists than religious believers. By collating various social attitudes surveys from 2008 to 2018 they found a strong upward trend in those saying that they did not believe in God, from 35 per cent to 43 per cent. During this time, believers in God dropped from 42 per cent to 37 per cent.

Jawad Iqbal

Why India’s super-rich are snapping up Rolexes

Here’s a question: what do crazy rich Indians want more than anything? The answer appears to be luxury watches, and the more the merrier. From January to July of this year, Swiss watch exports to India were up 20 per cent compared with the same period in 2023, and up more than 41 per cent compared with the same period in 2022, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry. The growing demand from the super-rich is set to soon make India one of the international watch industry’s top export markets.  The luxury watch market is very much about the exclusivity and social cachet it brings India’s economy is

Saturday

Michael Gove

Michael Gove, Max Jeffery, Christopher Howse, Robert Jackman and Mark Mason

31 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: new Editor Michael Gove discusses his plans for The Spectator (1:08); Max Jeffery heads to Crawley to meet some of the Chagossians based there (5:44); Christopher Howse reads his ode to lamp lighting (12:35); Robert Jackman declares the Las Vegas Sphere to be the future of live arts (19:10); and Mark Mason provides his notes on the joy of swearing (26:50).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Keir Starmer’s fortunes are about to change

Those of us who voted Labour with pleasure on 4 July could never have imagined the new government’s first 100 days. We thought that the grown-ups would take charge after the chaos of the Tory years. Labour would be the adults in the room, as the cliché goes: sensible, professional people like Sir Keir Starmer, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, and Rachel Reeves, a former analyst at the Bank of England. Conservative readers are fooling themselves if they believe that Labour’s troubles will continue Angela Rayner once described Keir Starmer as ‘the least political person in politics I know,’ and many found his apolitical nature endearing – mature, even.

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Germany and the fuss over the ‘idiot’s apostrophe’

‘Now it’s official,’ the German press lamented, ‘the idiot’s apostrophe is correct.’ The Council for German Orthography, the body that regulates German spelling and grammar, has relaxed the rules on when and how apostrophes can be used to show possession. What seems like a matter for grammar pedants has fuelled angst for the very future of the German language. The issue itself isn’t new. Unlike English, German doesn’t traditionally use apostrophes to show possession. So Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example, becomes Onkel Toms Hütte in the German translation. But this rule has long been eroded. It’s common to find places like ‘Tina’s Wolllädchen’ – ‘Tina’s Little Wool Shop’ – which

Michael Taube

Canada’s DEI doctors

Canada, like other countries, has had a long-standing problem with doctor shortages. Rural and northern communities struggle to find doctors who want to stay in remote regions after their mandatory medical placements have ended. Finding a family doctor or paediatrician has become a massive struggle, too. ‘Fewer medical students [are] choosing to specialise in family medicine,’ the Canadian Medical Association noted in March, with ‘younger physicians not wanting to take over traditional clinical practices.’    ‘It is expected that 25 per cent of students will be admitted through the General Admissions Stream and 75 per cent collectively through the Indigenous, Black, and Equity-Deserving admissions pathways’ That’s why there was a great deal of

Patrick West

The trouble with protest mask chic

We in Britain have become used to the hallmarks of anti-Israeli protests. There are the slogans decrying ‘genocide’. There are chants in sympathy of terrorist organisations. There’s the explicit or insinuated anti-semitism. But one sinister feature making its transition across the Atlantic is the appearance of the face mask. Wearing a mask at a demo is the perfect expression of radical chic Footage widely circulated online this week showed an Israeli supporter in New York being attacked by a pro-Palestine activist, who proceeded to stamp and spit on the Israeli flag while shouting profanities. Nothing new here, you might say. It’s all part of the vitriol we expect these days,

Friday

Damian Reilly Damian Reilly

There’ll never be another tennis hunk like Rafael Nadal

In the pantheon of all-time tennis hunks, Rafael Nadal sits at the apex. The hunkiest ever to do it. In his prime, which remarkably lasted close to two decades, he seemed to conceal within the archetypal Mediterranean love god physique a kind of tennis supercomputer, capable almost always of finding impossible-seeming angles from which to smash winners. Adonis with a magic racket, in other words. He was thrilling to watch. Do we all die a little when sport stars retire? This status, hunkmeister-in-chief, was apparently not lost on the Spaniard. In 2018, he shut down a journalist’s whining about the gender pay gap in tennis with the same disdain he

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

France is finally opting for austerity

After the binge, the bill? The new French government of Michel Barnier presented the main lines of its proposed 2025 budget on Thursday evening, promising to cut public spending by £50 billion while raising taxes across the board. It’s belated austerity for a state with a fiscal policy that has previously resembled dine and dash.  The intention is to reduce the deficit to 5 per cent of GDP next year, before trying to go below 3 per cent in 2029. Meanwhile, France’s debt of 3.3 trillion Euros will increase.   This is a punishment beating for the most successful and productive companies and individuals in France Like one of those

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Does the Guardian need reminding that Hamas are the bad guys?

The Guardian has found a new minority it wants to shield from offence. A new oppressed group it might shed some virtuous tears over. A put-upon section of society that urgently requires the warm, loving hug of Guardianista pity. And you won’t believe who it is. It’s the mad militants who invaded Israel on 7 October last year. I probably shouldn’t call Hamas gunmen ‘mad’ – the Guardian might accuse me of ‘demonising’ them. In possibly the most crackpot piece it has published this year – and that’s saying something – the Guardian has slammed a new documentary about the 7 October attacks for ‘demonis[ing] Gazans as either killers or

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Princess Kate has shown why she is so vital to the royal family  

The news that the Princess of Wales has been able to return to public-facing duties is both hugely welcome and, after a lengthy period out of the limelight due to her cancer diagnosis, a reminder that she remains the most dutiful and committed of all the members of the royal family.  Yet her first official engagement after her cancer diagnosis was no soft or easy commitment. Instead, she took on a challenging and emotionally demanding responsibility, namely heading to Southport to meet the families of those who were injured or killed in July’s atrocity in the town.  The Princess has often been regarded as the Firm’s most obviously empathetic and

Henry Jeffreys

It’s time to stop the war on Malbec

The German historian Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz wrote about British tastes in alcohol in the eighteenth century: ‘In London they liked everything that is powerful and heady.’ Not much has changed since then. Blame it on the weather, blame it on the food or blame it on the good times, the British have always liked their drink strong.  But for how much longer will we be able to cheerfully knock back the Malbec when a new duty system is implemented in February? Wines between 11.5 per cent and 14.5 per cent ABV will have their own bands per 0.1 increment of alcohol. Which means the tax on your favourite 14.5 per cent

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Wimbledon won’t be the same without line judges

It will soon be the end of an era at Wimbledon. From 2025, the All England Club has announced that the services of line judges, who ringed the court and were responsible for crying ‘out’ and ‘fault’ on serves, will be dispensed with. From then on, all line calls will be decided entirely by the Hawkeye electronic line calling system (ELC). The move comes in the wake of the Association of Tennis Professionals’ (ATP’s) decision to adopt ELC across the men’s tour from 2025, and is thus perfectly logical. But it is not without controversy, and it will not please everybody. There is something slightly sinister about this takeover by Hawkeye

The Spectator

Who works as a bouncer or security guard?

Farewell, Chagos The government announced that it would hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. There are 13 other British Overseas Territories, only ten of which have a permanent population. The most populated are: Cayman Islands 78,554 Bermuda  62,506 Turks and Caicos 38,191 Gibraltar  33,701 British Virgin Islands 31,758 – Pitcairn Island is the only British Overseas Territory in the Pacific Ocean, which has been integral to the claims that, even now, the sun never sets on the British Empire – even if there is an overlap of just 20 minutes between sunrise in Diego Garcia and Pitcairn Island in June. – With the Chagos Islands gone, the sun

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Meeting the Chagos islanders of Crawley

Departing Gatwick train station, with nine minutes till Crawley, I tried to get in the head of a Chagossian. In 2002, Tony Blair gave everyone from the Chagos Islands British citizenship, permitting 10,000 Chagossians to live wherever they liked in the UK. About 3,500 have chosen Crawley. And what a weird thing to do. They took a 6,000-mile Air Mauritius flight to Gatwick airport to start a new life, then settled just a mile from the runway. Why so close? I was visiting Crawley to meet these people I didn’t understand, to find out what they made of our government handing over their islands to Mauritius. On the train I

Luke McShane

Rushed finish

There’s a piece of chess clickbait which occurs with tiresome regularity. The players are deep in the endgame, but have so little time remaining that the game cannot be concluded with dignity. Pieces land in between squares, or get dropped and clatter across the board. In their final seconds, players will attempt to move before their opponent has completed their own move, which is just as farcical as it sounds. One should not blame the players: against a well-matched opponent, such situations are inevitable from time to time. The arbiters sometimes get flak for not intervening, but in the heat of the moment, nobody knows if a rook landed cleanly

Luke McShane

No. 822

Black to play. Mamedyarov-Maghsoodloo, Global Chess League, October 2024. Maghsoodloo chose wrongly here. Out of 1…Kd3, 1…b2+ and 1…c2, which one is the best? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 14 October. 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 Qxh7+ Kxh7 2 Rh3# Last week’s winner Roger Holdsworth, Marlborough, Wilts

Victoria Lane

Spectator Competition: Space to think

Competition 3370 invited poems about the predicament of the Nasa astronauts stranded on the ISS – thanks to Paul Freeman for this suggestion. There was a wide range of ideas about how they could use their time, from self–improvement to… other things. Due to a different space issue, many good entries had to be jettisoned, but those below win £25. Five miles a second, travelling at speed,Recycling the water we’ve formerly weed,Dusk follows dawn every hour and thirty,There’s too much to do to be shouty or shirty – We came for a week, but our taxi was iffy;No need to be uppity, none to be sniffy –The wires need testing,

Marcus Walker

Why C of E bishops are so bland

Nolo episcopari. These were the words a person was expected to say on being offered an episcopal see. It basically translates as ‘Don’t bishop me!’ and goes back to at least St Ambrose, who so wanted to avoid being made a bishop that he skipped town. The Church of England has worked itself into a new position, Nemo episcopari: nobody will be bishoped. In the past year, the process for appointing new bishops to Ely and Carlisle fell apart as the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) decided not to appoint any of the shortlisted candidates. This has created a sense of crisis in the Church, and an emergency meeting of the

Douglas Murray

Does Keir Starmer have a soul?

One of the main arguments against hereditary peerages is that talent and ability are not always passed down across generations. There is much to this. Students of history will know that all the great dynasties see some kind of falloff in capability. Whether the Habsburgs, the Plantagenets or the Kinnocks, the families produce a man – or occasionally a couple of men – of quality, only to see their heirs and successors squander everything. The same rule exists in a meritocratic age. Someone in a family makes a fortune. The next generation spends it. A generation after that, the family is back to square one. Give or take a generation,