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.
Listen to Douglas Murray and James Forsyth debating Ken Livingstone’s non-expulsion: We never loved each other, Ken Livingstone and I. We first clashed in public more than a decade ago, and have enjoyed castigating each other ever since. But, now that he has been suspended from the Labour party for a second year in a
As a type of (Platonic) gerontophile, I never expected to say this, but can the dinosaurs not shut up? In recent weeks the nation has had to suffer repeat appearances on the television by Lord Heseltine. In each interview the Remain-supporting peer appears ever more viciously angry – brimming over, indeed with a sort of concentrated,
Since last week’s attack in Westminster, various readers have asked whether my list of ‘standard responses to terrorism’ has held true in the aftermath of this attack as in the aftermath of so many attacks before. And since it appears that good news must now immediately be seized from any tragedy – even within minutes
The hashtag ‘PrayForLondon’ is trending on social media. But so is ‘Antwerp’. Because no sooner were we invited to pray for London than a man of ‘North African descent’ was narrowly prevented from doing something similar in the Belgian city. This is life as usual in Europe now, of course. But among the endless replays
Well the obituaries for Martin McGuinness are in. And many are as morally illiterate as the man himself could have wished for. For instance, various obituarists have noted that the young McGuinness’s failure as a young man to get an apprenticeship as a mechanic started him off on the road to terror. Few of these
So Martin McGuinness has died. Already this is giving vent to the sort of ‘How McGuinness became a man of peace’ stories. Personally I have always thought the salient point about the man is not that he became a man of peace but that he was ever a man of violence. Over recent years a
Douglas Murray and Melle Garschagen, UK and Ireland correspondent for NRC, discuss the Dutch election: The Dutch public go to the polls tomorrow, and the question of Turkey is on the menu. This past weekend the Dutch government forbade a plane containing the Turkish Foreign minister from landing in the country. The Turkish minister had been
Poor Paul Nuttall. He seemed to have everything a cheeky by-election victor needed: the outsider vim, the accent, the cap. Then it emerged he had made stuff up about Hillsborough. That was that. He moved from admirable Scouser to tragedy-crasher. In interviews over the years, Nuttall has referred to being at the stadium in Sheffield
Several months ago, after his election victory, I asked for any proof that Donald Trump is – as some of his most mainstream critics were claiming – a vile homophobe. I thought it a perfectly reasonable question to ask, and the only evidence I was given in reply was one gay man in America who
Poor Paul Nuttall. He seemed to have everything a cheeky by-election victor needed: the outsider vim, the accent, the cap. Then it emerged he had made stuff up about Hillsborough. That was that. He moved from admirable Scouser to tragedy-crasher. In interviews over the years, Nuttall has referred to being at the stadium in Sheffield
There’s almost as much talk about ‘virtue-signalling’ these days as there is about ‘fake news’. But one thing that doesn’t get said often enough is why virtue-signalling isn’t just irritating, but destructive. Like Brendan, Will and others here, I also take a slightly dim view of the anti-Trump protests that took place in Britain last
The row about ‘fake news’ and the ‘crooked media’ appears to be ongoing. And every time the BBC and other mainstream media mention it they present themselves solely as the victims of such phenomena. So let us turn to just one edition of the BBC’s Newsnight. On Wednesday of this week the programme was presented
A couple of weeks ago I named the Labour MP Tulip Siddiq as my pious political hypocrite of the week, mainly for being silent on her bigoted aunty while strikingly vocal about a total stranger. I’m afraid that I was so overwhelmed by applicants for last week’s award that I have only just emerged from the
What would you do if naked pictures emerged of a celebrity you liked? Or one you didn’t? What about a slew of emails that were meant to be private that were hacked and then leaked into the public domain? Would you turn away from them, tutting. Or might you be tempted to read them? Would
I have noted before in this place that the people who seem most fascist these days are self-described ‘anti-fascists’. The inaugural weeks of Donald Trump’s Presidency are – whatever else you think of them – doing a fine job in smoking these people out. The principal cause of ‘anti-fascist’ ire today would appear to come
Another day in northern Nigeria, another Christian village reeling from an attack by the Muslim Fulani herdsmen who used to be their neighbours — and who are now cleansing them from the area. The locals daren’t collect the freshest bodies. Some who tried earlier have already been killed, spotted by the waiting militia and hacked
I would like to propose Labour MP Tulip Siddiq as the winner of the pious political hypocrite of the week badge for her response to President Trump’s temporary immigration halt. From today’s Guardian we learn that Ms Siddiq is one of a number of Labour MPs who have warned that the UK Prime Minister’s allegedly ‘feeble’ response to
I wonder whether there might be any long-term effects from shouting ‘racist’, ‘fascist’, ‘misogynist’ all the time? It is possible that it is hard to think while your fingers are in your ears and you are shouting names at everybody. I just put the thought out there. Certainly the consequences of not thinking much seem
It looks like the people might do it again. After the British electorate misled themselves so badly and American voters failed to rotate the Clinton and Bush families for another presidential cycle, the latest fear is that democracy might occur in Holland. Polls currently show Geert Wilders’s Freedom party almost at level pegging with the
Being against empathy sounds like being against flowers or sparrows. Surely empathy is a good thing? Isn’t one of the main problems with the world that there isn’t enough of the stuff going around? Paul Bloom of Yale University is here to argue otherwise. As he explains, while empathy can be a good thing in