If you walked down the Strand in London on Tuesday this week you would have been greeted by hundreds of people outside King’s College London. The gathering was organised by students from KCL, the London School of Economics and University College London. They chanted ‘Intifada, intifada’ and ‘Long live the intifada’. They had chosen the
This is West Cornwall, land of fishing, jam first and Trotskyite crafters. There is a sizeable community of nutters yearning for a Cornish intifada: the freedom within, and the freedom without. The old joke is: the duchy is shaped like a Christmas stocking and all the nuts are in the toe. Extinction Rebellion (XR) used
Failing institutions don’t like challenge, let alone being shown up. Few institutions are failing more tragically than our prisons – and the situation is getting worse. This is because the officials who preside over this debacle are purging the few people who have actually been making a positive difference. The latest organisation to be banned
For the past decade I’ve been in a toxic relationship. Sure, there were red flags – most of them on the dashboard – but it was love, or at least lust, on my part. My Land Rover seduced me with its size and strength, its rugged interior, how safe it made me feel when I
The antics of Keir Starmer and his top security adviser over the collapsed China espionage case bring to mind the slapstick British movie Carry On Spying – which is precisely the message it will have conveyed to Beijing. Instead of Bernard Cribbins, Kenneth Williams and their team of fictional incompetents, the real-life Whitehall farce has
Whatever you think of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, there can be no doubt about this: she firmly backs the Church of England’s current official teaching on sex and marriage. Indeed, as the bishop who was recently in charge of updating that teaching, it might be the case that she upholds it more
It is party time in New York as we toast the launch of The Spectator’s swish new office on Fifth Avenue. The building, an art deco number originally designed by George F. Pelham, thrusts skywards, just a few blocks from the Empire State Building – and we’re right at the top. The Spectator State of
Hamburg What would happen if Russia was planning an attack on Estonia, Lithuania or Latvia – and the threat was sufficiently great that Nato felt the need to send troops east across Europe to face off against Moscow? This was the scenario the German Bundeswehr spent several days rehearsing last month, working out how the
Jilly Cooper, the last great Englishwoman of my lifetime – after Queen Elizabeth II and Debo – has died. The lights are going out all over Rutshire. During her life, Jilly shone as an author, a friend and a person – the definition of effervescent. You had to meet her only once to become a
A poll has confirmed what most people know already – personalised number plates are vulgar, divisive and a complete waste of money. As my friend William Sitwell wrote in the Telegraph: ‘Having a personalised number plate is a self-proclaimed label of rich, smug self-satisfaction and bad taste.’ I could not agree more. The only problem
