All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Have you been microaggressive recently? My guess is that in some way or another, you have, you bastards. If you are not sure that you have been microaggressive, here’s a very good piece indeed by Brendan O’Neill which delineates the sort of thing that might be considered microaggressive by some third-rate academic or the sort
The Evening Standard hosted a hustings for Labour’s mayoral candidacy last night and it appears the contest is being fought more over clichés than anything else. The six candidates opened by extolling their love of London: Diane Abbott (Stoke Newington MP) claimed London has suffered from ‘too much social cleansing’. Tessa Jowell (former Olympics minister the bookies’ favourite to win)
From ‘The End of the First Year‘, The Spectator, 7 August 1915: What of the future? Shall we be able to make as good a show in the second year of the war as we have in the first? We believe we shall make a far better show. The willingness to make sacrifices in order
Yesterday, Miles Goslett revealed on Coffee House how the beleaguered charity Kids Company was dealing with the allegations against it. His cache of emails revealed that it was using the £3 million grant it had received from government to pay staff, a direct violation of the terms of the donation. This evening, the charity has
Last month, in Stanford, California, I had lunch with Robert Conquest, poet, historian, literary editor of this paper in the early 1960s, exposer of Soviet totalitarianism. After Conquest’s book The Great Terror (1968), it became impossible for all but the most crazed fanatic or fool to deny that Stalin had arranged the greatest system of
Labour’s verification process has been under a lot of scrutiny in recent weeks as more and more Tories have claimed they have successfully joined as a supporter of the party in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn and ‘condemn Labour to years in the political wilderness’. Labour insist that they have a crack team successfully
In another blow for freedom and the protection of the vulnerable, Conservative MP Mark Spencer has suggested that anti-terror legislation should be used to punish teachers who hold ‘old-fashioned’ views about homosexuality and perhaps divest themselves of these views to their pupils. I assume this could mean simply reading out bits of the Bible —
Ukip has been especially quiet over the last few months. Following the party’s disappointing result in the general election, Nigel Farage’s ‘unresignation’ and the briefing wars, the party has purposefully kept its head down. With Farage’s return to the spotlight last week, Kippers are gearing up for the fight of their lifetime. This is what has been going on
After David Cameron’s former speechwriter Clare Foges kicked off her new career outside of No.10 with a blistering editorial in the Times criticising her former employer over a range of issues including the bedroom tax, doubts began to surface that she was not a true blue. Still, even Mr S was surprised to read in an interview with
As of 6.30pm this evening, Londoners will (once again) suffer miserably at the hands of the transport unions, which have called another 24-hour strike on the Underground system in support of a demand for higher payments for operating a night-time service on parts of the network. Many commuters – forced onto overcrowded buses – will
As one of a parade of speakers debating the British empire at the Oxford Union, Shashi Tharoor cannot have expected his short speech to be viewed more than three million times. Reparations, he told his audience, ‘are a tool for you to atone for the wrongs that have been done. Let me say with the
Today, London feels on edge. For the second month in a row, militant transport unions will shut down the Underground system at 6:30pm, leaving Londoners to face seemingly endless queues for buses, inflated Uber prices and an army of occasional cyclists bearing down on them. The estimated cost of a 24-hour strike (this time, over the
You know, when gay marriage legislation was going through parliament and Christian campaigners were warning about the possibility that those with a conscientious objection to gay marriage would find themselves at a disadvantage in public life – especially teachers – I honestly thought that it would take some time to happen. You might have some nutty
Ukip’s deputy chairman Suzanne Evans has announced she is seeking the party’s nomination for the 2016 London Mayor election. Speaking to Iain Dale on LBC this morning, Evans said from the off she is very unlikely to become Mayor, but that she hopes to influence the race and offer Londoners a difference: ‘I have thrown my hat
The Labour leadership contest has taken so many odd turns already that a few more might return it to a vague normal track. But with Jeremy Corbyn announcing last night that he thought Tony Blair could be tried for war crimes over Iraq, and Andy Burnham appearing to tack left on rail re-nationalisation, there are
At 6:30pm this evening, London will descend into chaos as the City deals with yet another Tube strike. This time, Transport for London and the RMT trade union are squabbling over the introduction of the Night Tube — services running throughout Fridays and Saturday nights on a few lines. The union isn’t happy about the
From ‘Apology’, The Spectator, 7 August 1915: Does any public body ever apologize to the world? Such a concerted effort has never, we think, been made through any authorized mouthpiece. The effect of such an experiment might be colossal. Suppose, if the supposition be not too absurd, that a Pope should apologize in the name
The charity Kids Company is under so much pressure that some people are starting to worry about its outgoing chief executive, Camila Batmanghelidjh. Recent reports of financial mismanagement published in The Spectator and elsewhere have contributed to Batmanghelidjh being forced to quit her £90,000 post, which she has promised to vacate by October 31, but
Fourteen years is a long stretch. The punishment imposed on former UBS and Citigroup trader Tom Hayes for his role as ‘the hub of the conspiracy’ to rig yen Libor rates is the same as the maximum sentence for burglary with intent to commit GBH. Even though no public attempt has been made to quantify
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership bid has so far managed to inspire a legion of new supporters to join the Labour party. Alas, his unexpected popularity is also causing a problem for some members of the media. After the Guardian launched an in-house investigation into whether their own Corbyn coverage was bias against him, Emily Maitlis, who has
One of Andy Burnham’s problems is his occasional pandering towards populism. In an interview with GQ magazine, the Labour leadership contender tries to talk up his credentials as an ordinary bloke and says he doesn’t intend to spend the rest of his life in politics, arguing there should be a limit on how long MPs should remain the Commons: ‘Not necessarily,
George Osborne is having a good summer. He got in first with wooing the new intake of Tory MPs, to the extent that many of them seem slightly besotted with the warm and friendly Chancellor who welcomes them cheerily to drinks events. He humiliated Boris Johnson with jokes about his ‘dilapidated’ campaign bunker – and
Friends of mine who still call themselves ‘liberals’ or ‘leftists’ occasionally confide in me that they think the left might be screwed. Depending on how I feel on that particular day I tend to reply either that (a) they must stay and fight their political corner and make the left decent again or (b) one
Over the weekend Andy Burnham’s leadership campaign received a much needed boost from the founder of the Milifandom Abby Tomlinson. The 17-year-old declared that after meeting with each of the leadership contenders, it was Burnham rather than Jeremy Corbyn who she would be backing for Labour leader: ‘I have decided that I am going to be
Though it hasn’t been hitting the headlines recently, the situation in Yemen has been rapidly deteriorating and looks set to grow worse in the coming months. The country now seems to have fallen into all-out civil war, with a level of complexity which echoes the catastrophic war occurring 1,500 miles north in Syria. The war in Yemen is part
The Spectator is looking for an assistant production editor, to help us produce our magazine and supplements. The job will be three days a week, ideally Tuesday to Thursday, and initially on a six-month contract. What kind of person are we looking for? You are a careful, rapid and sensitive text sub capable of hitting
It is of course too soon to make any meaningful response to the Ted Heath allegations. However, in reporting the ‘mystery’ surrounding the former Prime Minister’s sexuality, the media and the social media are insinuating something sinister: that Ted Heath’s unwillingnness to out himself as a homosexual is somehow in itself suspicious. Journalists are putting
Last week there was worldwide outrage as news broke that an American dentist had killed a famous lion in Zimbabwe. Rather than a routine procedure gone wrong, the medical worker had actually paid roughly £35,000 to hunt the animal, seemingly unaware of the lion’s popularity. Now, someone has taken the fight for justice for Cecil to Trafalgar Square.
Is the government set to bring bombing Islamic State terrorists in Syria before the Commons soon? The Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has announced that the RAF’s Tornado aircraft will be kept in service until 2017 for air strikes against the Islamic State, to ‘ensure we maintain this crucial operational tempo’. On the Today programme, Fallon explained
For too long, Westminster has overlooked mental health. It has been languishing in funding obscurity for decades as a forgotten arm of the NHS. But thankfully, there was a shift in priorities during the last Parliament as all political parties woke up to the importance of providing good mental health care. The issue rose so
From ‘Warsaw and Russia‘, The Spectator, 7 August 1915: ON Thursday afternoon the German wireless news announced the occupation of Warsaw. Official confirmation is lacking as we go to press, but in any case it is probable that the city will be evacuated very shortly. Earlier news had encouraged the hope that the determination of
Gill Pharaoh was a geriatric care nurse who had spent years caring for the elderly. When she herself began to grow old, she decided that she didn’t want to go through what her patients had suffered, travelled to Switzerland, and passed away at an assisted dying clinic. She was not terminally ill. She didn’t want to
‘Rude, bone idle… and cosseted by the welfare state! Chinese teachers’ damning verdict on British children after spending a month in UK classrooms. Yes – just about right, I reckon. Except, of course, the English head teacher at the school thinks the Chinese are completely wrong and that their teaching methods are boring. And that we
In the early 1960s a satirical combo called the Chad Mitchell Trio sang of the anti-communist paranoia of the John Birch Society (a forerunner of today’s Tea Party, as those among you who study the history of demagogic delusion will know). The reds were so ubiquitous that: There’s no one left but thee and we, (and