All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It’s easier to oppose than propose war. The conflict between Israel and Hamas inspired #NotInMyName on Twitter, and opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was spearheaded by the ‘Stop The War’ Coalition. It is easy for ‘anti-interventionists’ to cite negative consequences of action already documented, for example in post-invasion Iraq, than for ‘interventionists’
Mr S was interested to read that Mark Carney has sounded the alarm on low wage growth. In light of yesterday’s announcements, the Times’s business commentator Andrew Clark calls for bosses to ‘display a modicum of largesse’ to sustain the economic recovery. Mr S hears on the grapevine that business leaders are planning to open
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_14_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Iraq War III, the cult of Richard Dawkins and the moaning middle class” fullwidth=”yes”] The View from 22 podcast [/audioplayer]The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has extended its hold from eastern Syria into western and northern Iraq, massacring Shi’ites, Christians and Yazidis wherever it can. But can we afford to let Isis
From ‘Rifle clubs and village guards’, The Spectator, 15 August 1914. John St Loe Strachey, in addition to being High Sheriff of Surrey, was the editor and owner of The Spectator: We understand that the High Sherriff of Surrey, Mr. St. Loe Strachey, is this afternoon holding a Conference of the Surrey Rifle Clubs at
If, like me, you missed Andrew Neil’s BBC programme exploring What the Hell Happens to the United Kingdom if Scotland Votes for Independence Next Month you might be interested to know that it remains available on the BBC iPlayer here. Prudently, dear reader, I liked it. It’s a film best viewed as a companion piece to James Forsyth’s Spectator cover
I’m delighted to announce another strong set of figures for The Spectator. It’s still a pretty tough market out there for magazines but today, we’re reporting a headline print ABC that’s actually up on last year: 62,684 in the first half of this year. Add digital subscriptions, which rose by 24 per cent, over the year,
For the last five years, politicians of all shades have been banging on about how we should adopt this or that aspect of German economic policy. George Osborne argued in 2011: ‘We want to learn the lessons of the successful Mittelstand model, which has operated in Germany for many decades.’ Only a few weeks ago, Vince
When Robin Williams killed himself, his spokesman revealed that he’d been suffering from depression. Cue well-meaning advice about this mysterious and deadly condition – the need to seek help, etc. Then the media caught up with his addiction: he was a recovering alcoholic and cocaine addict who’d been with John Belushi on the night Belushi
Regular readers will have noticed that I don’t like Islamic fundamentalists. Nor — though this is perhaps less often on display — do I much like Scottish Nationalists. Not just because their primary cause is to break up one of the two most successful political unions in history, but because so many of their secondary
So Nigel, where’s your flood? You know, the one involving Bulgarians and Romanians that you predicted last year. That deluge? You got it wrong, didn’t you? Ner-ner-di-ner-ner. It must be very tempting for people who don’t like Nigel Farage to spend today chuckling, scrolling through the ONS website and waving their mouse with a satisfied
Now that David Cameron has returned from his Portuguese fish-shopping exploits, the game of recall tennis that Westminster has been playing for the past few days has stepped up a few notches. Now it’s not just Philip Hammond, Michael Fallon and other Cabinet members leaving COBR meetings who can be asked whether or not they
This is a preview from this week’s Spectator, available tomorrow: Peering down from the Olympian heights of the New York Times, the columnist David Brooks writes that “We are now living in what we might as well admit is the Age of Iraq.” There, in the Land of the Two Rivers, he continues, a succession of American
Today is International Left Handers Day, ‘the 22nd annual celebration of lefthanders’ superiority’. It’s an opportunity for ‘Lefties’ and their Right-handed supporters to highlight the discrimination they face from the Dextrous majority. ‘Getting right handers to do everything left-handed for the day is a great way to make the point!’ suggests its website. Some Righties
This feature is a preview from this week’s Spectator, out tomorrow: I am sure we’re all in agreement that watching videos of adults abusing children is wrong. At least outside the halls of BBC light entertainment (historically speaking) such a consensus must exist. So how has it become not just right, but seemingly virtuous, to
Today’s labour market figures have enough in them for both sides of the political debate to feel they’ve got something to run with. First, the jobs: the overall unemployment rate fell to 6.4% in the second quarter of this year, the lowest since the end of 2008. There are 820,000 more people in work than
‘A pacifist protest’, a letter from the 15 August 1914 Spectator in response to a piece in the 8 August edition: SIR, – One is willing to believe that your article in last week’s issue called “Keep Your Temper” was not intentionally provocative, but it shows some lack of justice and of courtesy towards the
A letter from the 15 August 1914 Spectator: SIR,- As an American, I venture to point out that England’s decision to live up to her implied promises to France, as put forward for so many years, nearly concerns the self-respect of one hundred million Americans and British Colonials, as well as Englishmen. For no English-speaking
John McTernan’s column in today’s Telegraph about Kurdistan – and our, that is the West’s, debt of honour to the Kurds – is a piece of which, I think, the late Christopher Hitchens would have been proud. The Kurds had no greater western defender than Christopher and he would, I believe, have been appalled by
The collapse of some of the Sykes-Picot states in 2014 will spur people to ask which way the world is heading and what it all tells us, just as with the fall of Communism in 1989. After Communism we had at first Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History,which foresaw the triumph of western-style liberal democracy,
Mr S was saddened to hear of the death of Robin Williams — a man who contributed to the gaiety of nations. People wax lyrical about Williams’s ability to inhabit character; but Mr S is more impressed by his turn of phrase. Here are some Mr S’s favourite one liners: ‘Cricket is basically baseball on
Well, well, well. What’s all this then? Uncle Vince has announced the suspension of 12 export licenses to Israel. Here’s what he said: ‘We welcome the current ceasefire in Gaza and hope that it will lead to a peaceful resolution. However the UK Government has not been able to clarify if the export licence criteria
Downing Street remains resolute that there will not be a recall of Parliament over the situation in Iraq. But Conor Burns, a Tory backbencher who resigned as a ministerial aide over Lords reform, has just joined calls for a recall by writing to David Cameron warning that helping to evacuate the religious minorities at risk
Tristram Hunt announces today that he wants to put a stop to the policy of overhauling A-levels. That means that Labour isn’t going to do something that the Coalition says it is going to do. If the party wins next year’s General Election, it will not abolish AS-levels and will delay the overall reforms to
Today, the Glorious Twelfth, is the one day of the year most anticipated by game shooters – the start of the grouse season. But, as the first grouse make their way to restaurants and butchers across the country, a battle is being fought on the moors. The entire sport of grouse shooting is under attack because there
It’s 50 years since the death of Ian Fleming and The Spectator has always taken James Bond seriously. The writer of the Spectator’s Notebook in 1962 went along eagerly to see Bond’s first screen appearance. It hasn’t seemed to matter but it seemed odd that the director hadn’t explained some key parts of the plot.
Let us say once more what we said as emphatically as we could last week – that the first thing to do is to get Lord Kitchener the five hundred thousand men who he must have to make the country safe. Till that is done, till we have got the men for the firing line,
Owen Jones’s column in the Guardian is headlined ‘Anti-Jewish hatred is rising – we must see it for what it is.’ Sadly the article falls well short of that headline’s aspiration. At one point in the piece Owen singles me out for criticism: ‘Take Douglas Murray, a writer with a particular obsession with Islam.’ (I
What is the extent of British involvement in Iraq? Philip Hammond today said it was simply to provide humanitarian assistance, but the suggestion that ministers could send Tornado jets to help with the relief operation has confused some. Even though sources have told the BBC that the jets will not be involved in air strikes, Jack
After Obama sanctioned attacks on ISIS over the weekend, a new hashtag began to trend on Twitter – #AmessagefromISIStoUS. Via social media, militants from the Islamic State began to threaten anyone who dared to get involved in the Middle East. Before long, the backlash began, with Americans sending messages back to jihadis under the hashtag #AmessagefromUStoISIS.
The Shadow Environment Secretary Maria Eagle headed off to Woking today, where she addressed an audience of environmentalists at WWF’s swanky new headquarters. Her speech, which was widely trailed, was full of silly season fare, and her superficial understanding of the climate debate shines through. Take this for example: ‘The Met Office, the Committee on
It was news to me that there exists an All Party Commons Committee on Alcohol Misuse, but when you think about it, the notion makes complete sense; for evidence, all they need do is nip down the nearest corridor to talk to colleagues hanging out in any of the several bars in parliament. The members of
Number 10 has today announced that Mark Simmonds, the Conservative MP for Boston and Skegness, is stepping down as a Foreign Office minister – and will not stand as an MP at the next election. A Downing Street spokeswoman said that ‘the decision was made before the situation in Gaza and Israel had developed’ and that
There was a revealing moment on the Today programme this morning when Lord Dannatt was asked whether he accepted that the response from the British public to any further military involvement in Iraq would be uproar. His reply came quite gently, but the former Chief of the General Staff made quite clear that what should
Today we are witnessing the extraordinary – and long overdue – spectacle of an American president intervening in Iraq to protect religious minorities from ISIS death squads motivated by their own extreme religious beliefs. The minorities are Christians, whose looming extinction the West has ignored for years, and the Yazidis, members of an ancient faith