Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
Alastair Campbell can’t write. If that sounds like one of the less significant charges one might level against Tony Blair’s former spin-doctor then stick with me. Because anyone who can spill out thousands of words and still be so unoriginal and lacking in insight or self-perception must have things they are trying to hide. That
It was quite the handover at Kabul airport this week. The last American troops to exit Afghanistan reportedly left facing an ‘elite unit’ of the Taliban. In a season finale that the most dystopian screenwriter would have struggled to invent, the elite Taliban unit was itself bedecked in US military kit. That is, they were
One of the most interesting aspects of President Biden’s speech on the American withdrawal from Afghanistan is that it shows he suffers from faulty memory syndrome. Like many of the rest of us, I suspect. Today Biden says that the mission of the allies in Afghanistan ‘was never supposed to have been nation-building’. But back
In the last decade or so, a sinister group of individuals from a range of organisations have spent their energies trying to rein in the free press. Specifically they try to stop the reporting of stories that might portray any follower of Islam in a negative light. So, for instance, when someone goes full ‘Allahu
Most social occasions now seem to kick off with a wasted hour or two. The time is spent discussing Covid: who’s had it and who hasn’t, who’s had the most nightmarish encounter with a mask fanatic and who the worst lockdown. After that there can be a second course, discussing things like international travel. Remember
40 min listen
Is there a humane solution to Britain’s migrant crisis?(00:52) Also on the podcast: Why is the WHO so down on e-cigarettes?(16:23) and finally… after a year and a half inside how angry will strangers make us?(27:01) With Douglas Murray; award winning film maker and producer for the Trojan Women project Charlotte Eagar; Christopher Snowdon; Clive
In December 2018 the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, cut short his Christmas holidays to go to the Channel and stare at boats. Two hundred illegal migrants had crossed from France in the previous two months and Javid, buckling to public pressure, declared a ‘major incident’. On that basis his successor, Priti Patel, should cancel
22 min listen
This week we’ll hear Katy Balls on the government’s dwindling COVID optimism (00:41), Douglas Murray’s prediction of a dull decade of arrested development (04:26) and finally Nigel Farndale of why we owe so much of what we love about the Olympics to the Nazis (12:50).
Earlier this year, I noted the suggestion (made by an American academic and run with by a swathe of the British press) that we may be about to enter a party decade. The claim was that much as the Great War was followed by the Roaring Twenties, so the Covid era might be followed by
24 min listen
On this week’s episode: Revd Marcus Walker shares his concern and disapproval at being described by the Church of England as an ‘Key Limiting Factor’ (00:26). Then Douglas Murray looks at the tricky subject of transracialism (09:48)And finally Petronella Wyatt gives her two cents on modern day Westminster culture (17:15). Presented by Sam Holmes
Not everyone will have heard of Oli London, a British social media influencer who made news for two reasons last week. The first was that London came out as plural. Which is to say that he came out as a non-binary person. Which is very 2020 and something so un-noteworthy that I’m sure you’ll agree
The case against ‘Soldier F’, a veteran charged with the murders of two men and attempted murders of four others on Bloody Sunday, has today collapsed. In March 2019, Douglas Murray wrote for The Spectator about the 1972 massacre and the subsequent Saville Inquiry into what happened. It is more than 15 years since the
The official review into the Manchester Arena bombing was published this week. Four years after 22 mainly young people were killed at a pop concert, the review by Sir John Saunders reveals a catalogue of failings, as such reviews always do. Yet one failing stood out in particular. On the night in question the bomber,
Regular readers may be aware that in recent months I have been having a running-spat with a Canadian lawyer called Stephen Toope. I am rarely exercised by Canadian lawyers, but this particular one is the current Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, and he seems intent on running that crown jewel of an institution into the ground.
Now that the government has kindly allowed us to go out again, I wonder if anyone has discovered the same social challenge I have encountered? Which is that almost nobody agrees on anything. I should pre-empt a possible line of attack here and acknowledge that I am aware of the case study I am basing
29 min listen
On this week’s episode, Lisa Bjurwald reports on the Swedish monarchy going woke (01:20); Douglas Murray argues that the culture wars fit the UK even less well than the US (07:00); and Stuart Jeffries interviews the world’s first AI artist. Also on the podcast: a complaints letter to the Times after their March 2020 story
It’s a dangerous thing when you import the worst aspects of another culture. And an even worse thing when you import the worst interpretation of that worst aspect of another culture. This week marked a year since the death of George Floyd at the hands of a policeman in Minnesota. Since that time, Derek Chauvin,
There has been a huge amount of comment in recent days on the latest round of exchanges between Israel and the terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. As usual whole slews of celebrities and other important figures on the international stage have lamented the fact that Israel has put so much effort into
31 min listen
In this week’s podcast, we talk to The Spectator‘s editor Fraser Nelson and associate editor Douglas Murray about the challenges facing a freshly re-elected SNP. What next for Nicola Sturgeon – full steam ahead for IndyRef2? Or have neither Scotland or Number 10 the bottle for an all-out battle for independence? [01:02] ‘When you look
I can’t seem to find the Oracle of Delphi’s complete works. The libraries remain shut and when I go to Google I find the search engine inadequate in the matter of the ‘Complete Pythia’. So I throw the following story out there unsourced in the sure and certain knowledge that next week’s letters page looks