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.
There should be a term in anthropology for what happens to a certain type of Tory male in middle age. The type who after decades of espousing often unpopular causes suddenly attempts to ingratiate himself with the masses. Ordinarily this breakdown expresses itself in a desire to legalise drugs, but it can take other forms.
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On the podcast this week: In his cover piece for the magazine, The Spectator’s deputy editor Freddy Gray says that he was hardly surprised that Donald Trump chose not to participate in last night’s Republican candidates debate. He argues that Trump no longer needs the TV networks and joins the podcast alongside Douglas Murray, who profiles the
Who is Perry Johnson? It is a question not many American voters can answer. He has a grand total of 16,000 followers on Twitter and recently pulled in precisely zero votes in a poll in Des Moines, Iowa. He describes himself as a ‘self-made businessman, problem-solver and quality expert from Michigan’. Nevertheless, this slightly cadaverous-looking
The only strikes I really enjoy are actors’ strikes. Teachers’ strikes leave me cold. Train strikes get me into a cold fury. But there are few more enjoyable spectacles in life than members of the acting profession making demands which – if left unmet – will see them refuse to work. Why should girls dream
‘Only boring people get bored’ is what we were all told as children. What we were not warned about was that boring things can also make you boring. Boringness is infectious. Or so I have come to believe. Due to the backlash against the extension of Ulez, the Mayor has come up with a fresh
I don’t always watch ‘Strongest Viking’ competitions on cable. But the other day I was channel-hopping and became mesmerised by one. Firstly because I wasn’t previously aware that such banality was possible on television. People really watch men trying to push a stone or pull a rope? This was new data to me. But I
Back in March there was a glut of pieces about the 2003 Iraq war. The 20th anniversary seemed to much of the political and pundit class to be the perfect time to return to this scorched landscape. A number of people asked me to throw in my views and I failed, for two reasons. Firstly
My favourite Martin Amis novel was his 1991 book Time’s Arrow. It is a pyrotechnically brilliant work in which all time goes backwards. On publication it was criticised in some quarters because the novel includes a reverse version of the Holocaust and some thought Amis was using the Holocaust as a literary device. As so
The news has been coming so thick and fast of late that every week there are dozens of stories we don’t have time to linger over. Major scandals take up all our attention, only to fizzle out or be replaced by new ones. All the while there are little bits of roadkill that are at
36 min listen
This week: In the magazine we look at the recent protests in France. The Spectator’s Douglas Murray argues that racism is not the problem but that a significant chunk of the unintegrated immigrant population is. He is joined by Dr Rakib Ehsan, author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, to investigate why Europe
Last week we learned that a woman in a park in Skegness was dragged into the bushes and raped by a 33-year-old male. The man had arrived in the UK illegally on a small boat just 40 days earlier. If you have open borders and no checks on who is arriving, an uptick in crime
One of the most reliable standards in international comedy has long been the outstanding ineloquence of American politicians. In this place I recently summoned up the golden memory of Dan Quayle. But if you look at the record, there was similar – far less justified – tittering at Ronald Reagan. Closer to our own time
If anyone reading this ever bought shares in the diversity racket, then I would suggest you start dumping them now. Not that I would blame you for having bought them in the first place. ‘Diversity’ has been the great mantra of our age. Like ‘equality’, it is one of those words set up to be
The week of the three downfalls has been an interesting one. Boris Johnson resigning from parliament, Donald Trump going to court to face serious charges, Nicola Sturgeon arrested as part of a probe into SNP finances. I wouldn’t like to prejudge any of these cases, for I am – secretly – a fair-minded person. Of
It is 18 years since the last Colditz drama on British television, which apparently means we need a new one. And the times being what they are, it appears that the drama will have to reflect the values of our little cultural-revolutionary period. There is an effort to rip up our own myths while inventing
As I have noted before, there is always another circle. I thought that last week’s scandal (originally entitled ‘Suellagate’ or ‘speedgate’ by the papers) could not be surpassed for its sheer vacuousness and pointlessness. But then I did not foresee that the next week would be one in which every newspaper and news bulletin would
Some people seem to make a career of being ashamed (or at least claiming to be ashamed) of their country. Personally I don’t feel it – apart from when I see journalists from the BBC, ITV or Sky questioning our political leaders while they are abroad. Then a great wave of revulsion and national shame
Not to sound too much like Kamala Harris during one of her peregrinations on the nature of time, but the thing about the future is that it catches up with you awfully fast. For a while we have been warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence and the special hazards of ‘deepfakes’. It seemed so
I have always liked the phrase ‘have-a-go hero’. It sums up a certain type of person who can emerge from nowhere and coat their name with honour. One thinks, for instance, of John Smeaton, the baggage handler who was having a fag outside Glasgow airport in 2007 when two jihadis tried to blow the place
Way back in the long distant 1990s, net migration into this country used to be in the tens of thousands each year. There was no lack of discussion about that, but we were not yet in the ‘dependency’ period of migration: that is, when people routinely said we had to have migration because otherwise who
