Society

Saturday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

The Traitors finale was a cruel spectacle

Blame Covid. That’s the origin of the BBC’s hit game-show, The Traitors. Workplaces are still deserted as people sit in their kitchens tapping away at their laptops but they crave the drama of office politics. This show lays on conspiracies and intrigues galore. The setting is a quaint old Scottish castle where a random group of players compete to win a pile of cash. Each contestant is ordered to tell the truth but a small number are given permission to cheat. These roles are assigned in secret, which fosters an atmosphere of fraud and mistrust. It’s a paradise for crooks and cut-throats. The castle is sprawling with side-parlours and shadowy

Laurence Dauti

Oxford has had enough of its Gaza protests

The ceasefire in Gaza may be holding, but student activists aren’t happy. Yesterday, ten students from the Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) protest group stormed the Radcliffe Camera, the eighteenth century library, ‘occupied’ it and founded the ‘Khalida Jarrar Library’ named after a Palestinian activist and one of the 90 freed as part of the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel. The rationale, one member told me, was that the building was the centre and ‘heart’ of the city, would ‘make it Palestinian’ and would ‘attract the most attention’. The university, having tried to talk with the group, had by lunchtime told them that it was over to the police Just as the

Students from the Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) protest group occupying the Radcliffe Camera on Friday.
James Tidmarsh

Why the French left are in uproar about the census

France’s 2025 census has ignited a predictable but exhausting row. The controversy centres on a seemingly innocuous question: ‘Where were your parents born?’ Cue outrage from the French left, who have called for a boycott of the question, declaring it racist and a dangerous gateway to discrimination.  The fact is that many on the left in France don’t want any data on immigration The government has for the first time included the question in this year’s national census. Left wing NGOs and unions say that ‘recording this information is a step toward potential inequality of treatment by the state’ and that ‘no public policy justifies the collection of our parents’

Zoe Strimpel

Shoppers like me will pay the price for Waitrose’s free coffee perk

Freeloaders rejoice: Waitrose is bringing back free coffee for customers even if they don’t buy anything. This is a bad idea that will make shopping in what was once a nice supermarket even more miserable. The reintroduction of free coffee means more people through the door, and therein lies the problem Before the pandemic, the coffee perk for members of the My Waitrose scheme could mean big queues. Originally introduced in 2013, the giveaway turned Waitrose into the second largest purveyor of coffee in the country, but the hordes it attracted irritated other shoppers. The perk was rescinded in 2020 during the pandemic and reintroduced in 2022, so long as a

Friday

Ian O’Doherty

How Ireland came crawling back to Trump

Before the US election in November, there was unanimity among the Irish political classes that Kamala Harris would comfortably win. This support for Harris was matched by a casual disdain for Donald Trump. Before becoming Taoiseach, Simon Harris had dismissed Trump as nothing but ‘an awful gowl’, which essentially means someone is a moron. Ahead of the election, he posted a picture of a baseball cap from the Kamala Harris campaign, with the caption ‘If the cap fits…’ The future seemed rosy for Ireland: the Democrats would win, the Fine Gael/Fianna Fail coalition would continue as before, and the natural order would be maintained. Well, we all know what happened next.

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The fight against gender madness isn’t over

Too many conservatives are behaving as if Donald Trump’s inauguration has somehow done to wokery what garlic does to a vampire; as if they can now sit back and watch the orange mist vaporise ideological insanity across the West. A study released today by the University of York shows just how crazy this sort of complacency is. Academics analysed GP records and discovered what looks like a 50-fold increase in diagnoses of gender dysphoria in children between 2011 and 2021. They estimate that there were 10,000 diagnoses made in 2021, up from just 200 in 2011. It’s horrifying, especially when you consider all the countless others who currently self-identify as trans and

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Could Trump 2.0. herald a new era of religious liberty in America?

36 min listen

Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, director of the US-based Conscience Project and a friend of Holy Smoke, joins Damian to talk about what the incoming second Trump administration could mean for religious freedoms in America. Andrea argues that the Biden administration waged an unprecedented assault on such freedoms during his term. What could happen over the next four years on issues like gender, abortion, adoption and religious discrimination? And what are the nuances between federal and state laws? (2:06) Also on the podcast, Damian speaks to The Spectator’s Will Moore, Lara Prendergast and Freddy Gray about the nomination of Cardinal Robert McElroy to be the new Archbishop of Washington. Far from being a routine

Leon Mangasarian

Germany is running out of time to reform

Germany’s government after the election on 23 February will likely be led by pro-business Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz. His coalition partner, probably the Social Democrats of failed Chancellor Olaf Scholz, or else the Greens of economy minister Robert Habeck, will torpedo any serious economic reforms. Equally worrying: Merz’s own reform blueprint is far too timid. A new wild card in the vote – up to now dominated by the economy – is spiralling migrant violence and failures of German authorities to lock up people known to pose acute threats. A horrifying knife attack on a nursery school group in a park in Aschaffenburg, in Bavaria, on Wednesday, allegedly by an Afghan

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray, Tanya Gold, Rose George, Toby Young and Rory Sutherland

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Freddy Gray reads his letter from Washington D.C., and reveals what Liz Truss, Eric Zemmour and Steve Bannon made of Trump’s inauguration (1:22); Tanya Gold writes about the sad truth behind the gypsies facing eviction in Cornwall (7:15); Rose George reviews The Forgotten Sense: The New Science of Smell, by Jonas Olofsson, and explains the surprising link between odour disgust and political attitudes (13:07); Toby Young provides his favourite anecdotes about President Trump, having crossed paths with him in New York City in the 1990s (18:39); and, Rory Sutherland proposes a unique way to solve Britain’s building crisis: ‘Areas of Outstanding Natural Ugliness’ (23:40).  Produced

Niko Vorobyov

What’s the real reason Trump pardoned Ross Ulbrich?

US president Donald Trump has pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the cybercriminal mastermind who founded Silk Road and pioneered the drug trade’s move into cyberspace. Ulbricht was serving life without parole after he was found guilty in 2015 of conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking. On Wednesday, after over a decade in the dungeons, Ross finally came home. After over a decade in the dungeons, Ross has finally came home “Free Ross” had become a rallying cry for the libertarians and cryptocurrency enthusiasts whose vote Trump had been courting. But his pardon exposes some glaring contradictions in American politics. Ross launched the Silk Road, named after the ancient trade route

Eliot Wilson

Did Axel Rudakubana deserve a harsher sentence?

The murder of three young girls in Southport last July by Axel Rudakubana was an act of extreme savagery and calculated evil. Six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar were victims not only of a brutal killer but also of a system of policing, intelligence and criminal justice which failed at several points: they did not need to die. Rudakubana pleaded guilty at the beginning of his trial this week to all sixteen charges against him: three counts of murder, ten of attempted murder, one count of possession of a knife, one of ricin production and one terror-related charge. But he showed no remorse,

Thursday

David Shipley

Southport killer Axel Rudakubana deserves to die behind bars

Southport killer Axel Rudakubana will serve a minimum of 52 years in prison for the horrific murder of three young girls. But despite the lengthy sentence handed to the teenager at Liverpool Crown Court today, it’s hard to say that justice has been served. Rudakubana should die behind bars, yet the law prevented the judge, Mr Justice Goose, from handing Rudakubana a whole-life sentence. It is possible that Rudakabana will be a free man at the age of 70. This is abhorrent. To see why the possibility that Rudakubana may ever be released is such a grave injustice, it’s worth revisiting the horrific details of the case. It is possible

Matthew Lynn

Industry tragedy, Trump vs the Pope & the depressing reality of sex parties

42 min listen

This week: the death of British industry In the cover piece for the magazine, Matthew Lynn argues that Britain is in danger of entering a ‘zero-industrial society’. The country that gave the world the Industrial Revolution has presided over a steep decline in British manufacturing. He argues there are serious consequences: foreign ownership, poorer societies, a lack of innovation, and even national security concerns. Why has this happened? Who is to blame? And could Labour turn it around? Matthew joined the podcast, alongside the head of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Paul Nowak. (1:05) Next: the Pope takes on President Trump The Pope has nominated Cardinal Robert McElroy to be

Dalibor Rohac

The EU’s decarbonisation plan can’t survive Donald Trump

As in a more delirious version of Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day, Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord on his first day in office, again. In a thinly-veiled attempt to mend Beijing’s relations with Europe, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman commented: “Climate change is a common challenge facing all of humanity. No country can stay out of it, and no country can be immune to it.” Whatever their views on climate change, Europeans and British would do well to realise that decades-long effort to reduce emissions through multilateral deals is over. Continuing on one’s own – after America’s explicit repudiation of the COP framework, and in light of the track record

Hardeep Singh

Why are masked men shouting ‘down with India’ in cinemas?

On Sunday night a screening of the controversial Bollywood film Emergency was disrupted in Vue cinema in Harrow, West London, when a group of 30 masked men barged in and started shouting ‘down with India’. Most viewers left the screening, with one eyewitness describing the behaviour as a ‘frightening and intimidating experience’. Censorship of Emergency has extended to other parts of the country too, with screenings cancelled in places like Wolverhampton and Birmingham. A video of the unruly behaviour Harrow shows the group shouting ‘Khalistan zindabad’, or ‘long live Khalistan’ (Khalistan is the would-be name for a conceptual Sikh homeland). A woman confronting the group responds with ‘Bharat Mata Ki

Jawad Iqbal

The reinvention of Rishi Sunak

Rishi Sunak (remember him?) is back in the public eye. The former prime minister has landed new jobs at Oxford and Stanford universities. The roles are his first since returning to the backbenches last year following the crushing Tory defeat at the general election in July. His time in Downing Street doesn’t look as bad as it once did Sunak is joining Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government as a member of its world leaders circle. He will also be taking up a visiting fellowship at Stanford’s Hoover Institution in California. Both universities are Sunak’s alma maters. He studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford before completing a masters of business

Nicholas Farrell

Elon Musk’s ‘Nazi salute’ – an expert’s view

As a biographer of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and thus possessed of a certain expertise in the matter I want to add my thoughts about Elon Musk’s bizarre raised right arm salute. Many on the left, including historians who ought to know better, say that the gesture delivered with such passion at the rally in Washington for the party faithful after Trump’s inauguration was a fascist or Nazi salute.  If Musk had made such a gesture in front of the Duce, he would have been instantly banished to the beautiful Tremiti Islands off the coast of Puglia along with the gays But not just on the left. Even alt-right Steve

The Spectator

Letters: Were we deceived by Labour?

Forced Labour Sir: Matthew Parris wonders ‘Why was everyone fooled by Rachel Reeves?’(18 January) and goes on to include Sir Keir Starmer in this question. The former he concludes is ‘an empty vessel’ and the latter ‘bereft of ideas’. By ‘everyone’ he chiefly means the commentariat, although he claims he was not himself misled. They and many others were fed up with the failure of successive Conservative governments, and wanted so badly to believe in Labour’s ability to form an effective administration that they never seriously applied due diligence by questioning its credibility or competences. At no stage were any stones lifted to determine what ‘nasties’ lay underneath. As a

Merlin Hanbury-Tenison

My neighbour has kidnapped my beavers

My beavers have been kidnapped. A few months ago there were five of them living on my family’s farm on Bodmin Moor. Now there are none. I know where they are and I have received proof of life from their kidnapper, but he will not release them back to me or allow me to collect them and bring them home. I miss them and often walk along their stretch of river and past their dams with a tear in my eye. I miss them and often walk along their stretch of river and past their dams with a tear in my eye I was quite early to the beaver game.

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Cornwall’s gypsies face eviction

‘Don’t use our real names,’ says the teenage gypsy. ‘Other gypsies will laugh at us.’ Even in a tracksuit, the girl is crazy beautiful, and strangely remote. She is talking to me because her mother, whom I call Susan, has been ordered to remove her caravans from a council site in the West Country. If Susan, mother of five, and carer to two grandchildren, is evicted by Cornwall council, her family will be scattered to the winds. It’s a peculiarly awful fate for gypsies. They are tribal, and family is everything to them. It is the first eviction of a gypsy from a council site in this county. The site