Benedict Spence

The New York Times’ cowardly decision to ditch cartoons

The New York Times has said it will stop publishing political cartoons, six weeks after an image of a blind, kippah-wearing Donald Trump being led by a dog with the head of Bibi Netanyahu appeared in the paper. The cartoon was rightly condemned and an apology swiftly issued. But scrapping cartoons for good – and parting ways

EU elections could be a golden opportunity for Brexiters

A Brexit delayed until Halloween will be regarded as a nightmare for many. It must seem to the people who voted to leave the EU that escaping the bloc is slipping further and further away. The extension confirms their fears that the government and Brussels are prepared to re-write the rules in order to avoid

How advertisers are capitalising on the culture wars

It’s still only January but already we’re on our third advert-related outrage of the year. To the Army’s ‘Snowflakes’ poster campaign and HSBC’s bold assertion that Britain is not an island, we can now add Gillette’s ‘the best a man can be’. We’ve come a long way since the greatest affront to British audiences was

How Italy’s populists stepped up their war with Macron

The war of words between the governments of Italy and France escalated last week, after Italy’s deputy Prime Ministers, Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini, gave their support for the gilets jaunes movement against French President Emmanuel Macron. The two sides have repeatedly come to blows over all manner of issues, from immigration to economics,

The Stepford students’ latest target is a step too far

Stepford students have been busy in recent years picking off targets from the past to vent their fury at. Cecil Rhodes in Oxford and Edward Colston in Bristol are the most high-profile victims of this attempt to wipe parts of posterity from the face of university campuses. Now, there is a new target: William Gladstone,