Rod Liddle | The Spectator columnists & writers

God, it’s slight: Lindsey Buckingham’s new album reviewed

Grade: B– The first time Lindsey Buckingham had a big falling out with Stevie Nicks we at least got some half-decent, if occasionally soporific, music out of it. That was Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, a soft-limbed, coked-up AOR colossus that for many defines mid-1970s music. It contained Buckingham’s finest moment, ‘Go Your Own Way’ — the weird, awkward, staggered rhythm of the verse somehow enhancing the howl of rage in the chorus. A howl of rage directed at the ethereal and slightly irritating Nicks, of course. Nearly 50 years later, they’re still at it. Nicks reportedly had him fired from the band’s latest tour because she couldn’t bear to be anywhere near him. Buckingham sued, they settled out of court and he went back to doing what he likes best, messing around in the studio by himself.

The war against intelligence

In defence of Jess Brammar

I noticed with interest that Gigalum island — off the Kintyre peninsula in Argyll — was up for sale for half a million quid or so. Nineteen rather barren acres, slightly warmed by the Gulf Stream. These little parcels of desolation quite often become available for purchase and I do wonder if Gigalum should be purchased by the state for the dumping of toxic waste. Gruinard island, further north, was used by the government during the second world war as a site for testing militarised anthrax, for example. My proposal for Gigalum is that it should be a repository for everyone in the country with the word ‘diversity’ anywhere in their job title. The taxpayer would provide tents and low-quality food and the new inhabitants would be invited to employ their professional skills on the many colonies of seabirds which abound.

A defence of Jess Brammar

The political power of Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown

There is a rather sweet moment in the middle of each Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown show where, after some magnificently obscene one-liner, he addresses the howling audience. ‘I love you people,’ he says. ‘Just like me, you’re rough.’ The audience laughs and applauds at this observation of itself. The wall is broken and the performer and audience are as one. This is ‘rough’ used primarily in its north-east of England context, meaning not so much violent or abrasive (although both are also possible), but cheap and low-down and a little bit ugly. Roy’s now 76 and has been knocking them dead for 40 years, packed houses wherever he goes. But you won’t see him on television. Nor is he about to be presenting The News Quiz on Radio 4, not least because they’d have to rename it ‘The Fucking News Quiz’ and it would be a lot funnier than it is now.

Repetitive, spiritless, god-bothering music: Kanye West’s Donda reviewed

Grade: C– The nicest thing one can say is that this is a marginally better album than we would have got from either of the other two presidential candidates. Just about. But sheesh, it’s still nearly two hours of the most repetitive, spiritless, god-bothering music you will ever hear, full of portentousness and self-pity and utterly devoid of any insight or humour. Rap, trap, snap, all the tiresome bases covered. Decent tunes and memorable rhythms are few and far between. I like West, the man, for his stoic refusal to kowtow to the stupid liberal orthodoxies demanded by the music business. But his self-importance is now so bloated he resembles Mr Creosote from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, in those terrible few seconds before he eats a final wafer-thin mint.

The Nobel truth

The neocolonialist legacy of Tony Blair

The Americans may have pulled out, but luckily the Afghans have the world’s vibrant community of witches intervening to save them. A website for these practitioners of the black arts has devoted its entire attention to the Taliban. One witch commented: ‘It seems like the Taliban gets most of their power from Allah. If we hex Allah it should affect all of the Taliban. Can we hex Allah?’ Another witch, under the user name ‘i-follow-tiny-people’, reports she has made a voodoo doll of the Taliban leader and asks: ‘Any witches want to help me with curses?’ The new Afghan rulers’ days are surely numbered. Whatever magick the witches conjure up, it cannot possibly be less productive than an intervention by Tony Blair. The former prime minister described the US withdrawal as ‘tragic, dangerous, unnecessary’: strong words indeed, devalued only a little by the fact that for many people, myself included, he is a war criminal.

Lily Cole, the burka and why we were right to leave Afghanistan

I have the feeling that Joe Biden will have to wait a while before he receives his Nobel Peace Prize, the traditional gift bestowed upon an American president if he’s a Democrat and before he’s actually done anything. The civilised world — by which I mean the mass of deluded lefties and liberals who understand nothing but firmly believe that they are the civilised world — is aghast at the man right now. There is no doubt in my mind that the pullout of US troops from Afghanistan was atrociously handled by a doddering halfwit and based upon magnificently flawed intelligence. But there is even less doubt in my mind that, one way or another, the West was right to extricate itself from that dusty, arid, stone-age hellhole and should never have become involved in the first place.

Hugely unmemorable: Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever reviewed

Grade: C+ Time to get the razor out again — Billie’s back. The slurred and affected can’t-be-arsed-to-get-out-of-bed vocals. The relentless, catatonic introspection, self-pity and boilerplate psychological insights. The queen of sadgurls has a new album — and yes, of course, the title is the closest Billie has ever come to making a joke. Of course she’s not happy — that would be her schtick sold down the river. If Billie ever professed herself really happy her fans would quickly go elsewhere to slake their misery jones. Eilish has talent, along with the over-weening narcissism that comes with affording your every feeling a sense of great, dramatic import. But it is spread very thin here. There are too many boring monotone monologues set to boring minimalist one-note electronics.

Will anyone publish my rabbit tale?

Putting the commie in committee

Last month an epidemiologist called Professor Michael Baker described the UK government’s decision to free its people from Covid restrictions on 19 July as ‘barbaric’ and an ‘experiment’. Professor Baker lives in the little-known hermit kingdom of New Zealand — a country which, under the guidance of people like himself, has banned almost all foreign travel and imposed long domestic lockdowns. Such is the grip Baker and his friends have on the country that the appearance of just two Covid infections in the entire population caused the nation to go into a hysterical spasm, with much bed-wetting, shrieking and governmental resignations. You are allowed to die of anything in New Zealand, but not Covid. It would be interesting to know if Baker still thinks Boris Johnson is ‘barbaric’, given that our infection rate continues to decrease daily — as the consequence, one assumes, of our swift vaccination policy.

The sorry state of the modern apology

I think I would like to apologise for this article in case someone who reads it takes offence. I will not mean the apology, of course — it will simply be an attempt to get me out of the mess occasioned by own words. It will not get me out of the mess, however, but make things worse, because an apology is an admission of guilt. This is Type One of the Modern Apology — meaningless and counter-productive, usually something enforced by employers or party bosses, people in charge. A desperate attempt to save one’s skin which always, always, does the reverse. It is usually accompanied by a painful explanation, along the lines of: ‘I deeply apologise for any offence I may have caused. In my tweet last night I had meant to say that Chinese people were “lovely”.

Will England pull out of the World Cup?

I wonder if the moral guardians of our country — the England football team — intend to participate in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar? Most of the players are currently kicking their heels (and presumably missing) in such places as the Turks and Caicos Islands, so they have plenty of time for rumination. Having become, in the words of their manager, a ‘beacon of light’ within a country of savages and bigots, it will be interesting to see if their moral stance extends to boycotting a tournament which is to be held in a totalitarian slave state that outlaws homosexuality and isn’t entirely up to speed on the issue of women. Further — graft, corruption and greed were among the reasons why Qatar was chosen in the first place.

What did the Romans ever do for us?

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is planning to install a statue of John Chilembwe in Trafalgar Square. Mr Chilembwe was a Malawian Baptist famous for, among other things, leading an uprising where the head of a Scottish farmer was chopped off and put on a pole. He is much revered in his home country for all this and his face has appeared on banknotes. In truth, Mr Chilembwe didn’t incite the murder of many people, in the great scheme of things. If the mayor is searching for a murderer who did punch his weight, he could do worse than hoist up a statue of Francisco Macías Nguema, the former dictator of Equatorial Guinea. I do not have the exact figures of how many people he murdered, but it is impossible not to be impressed by his ambition to have everybody who wore spectacles killed.

England had it and they threw it away

England: 1 (Shaw) Italy: 1 (Swarthy cheat) England had it and threw it away. Much the better side in the first half, finding acres of space along the right flank. But the Italian manager, Roberto Mancini, recognised the problem and changed the game. As Italy swarmed forward in the second half, Gareth Southgate had no answer: it was almost a re-run of the 2018 semi final in Russia against Croatia – he cannot grasp when a game is going against him and has no comprehension of what to do to change it. His substitutions were appalling: Henderson horribly off the pace, Saka horribly out of his depth. Two very bad changes indeed. The godforsakenly late introduction of Grealish gave England a new cutting edge: too little, too late, Gareth.

Euro 2020: This game is tailor-made for Southgate’s England

Is there anyone more irritating and stupid than Bobby Gillespie?

Grade: B– Is there anyone in rock music more irritating and stupid than Bobby Gillespie? The rawk’n’roll leather-jacketed self-mythologiser. The affected drawl. The shameless pillaging of every hard rock album made between 1969 and 1972, but especially the Faces and the Rolling Stones. The moronic lyrics. The hard-left radical chic posturing and condemnations of Israel from a man with all the geopolitical understanding of a nipple-clamp. The desperate, pathetic, yearning to be cool. Trawl back through those Primal Scream albums and show me a moment of true originality. There isn’t one, is there? Which isn’t to say that — annoyingly — they’re devoid of fun and the occasional good tune. Occasionally a pleasing song surfaces: ‘Country Girl’, ‘Cry Myself Blind’ (which sounds more like the Faces than even the Faces ever did), ‘Call Me’ and his very brief dalliance with real hipdom, ‘Loaded’, for example.

Why the mangling of language matters

Euro 2020: Don’t underestimate the Danes

Italy: 1 (moped riding infant) Spain: 1 (swarthy bull-taunting thug) Spain are not terribly good at penalty shoot-outs. Hell, even England beat them in 1996. And so they lost a match they had dominated pretty much from start to finish. If you remember, I tipped Italy to win this tournament right at the outset — but there are flaws to this side. What you need to do — to state the obvious — is take the chances you create, because with Italy there will be chances. They are a counter-attacking side and invite pressure. If that pressure amounts to playing neat triangles outside the penalty area, then forget it. You need to get behind their backline, missus. You need to frighten them. And so Denmark vs England.

Euro 2020: Another night of terror beckons

The excellent manager of Ukraine, Andriy Shevchenko, is a member of the SDP. The Ukrainian version, of course, but very similar to our own, given that they never win anything. Andriy himself stood for parliament but lost – remarkable as he is the most famous footballer in his country’s history. This makes me like him. We are also four-square behind his country when it comes to their overBearing, criminal neighbour, no? I will buy the notion that the Crimea belongs historically to Russia only if they accept that going back still further, Russia belongs to Ukraine: Kievan Rus! Another night of terror beckons. Clawed wrists and choking on Doritos. Our record against Ukraine is patchy; we find them difficult opponents.

Whiny, polite and beautiful: Kings of Convenience’s Peace or Love reviewed

Grade: A– The problem with Norwegians is that they are so relentlessly, mind-numbingly pleasant. Well, OK, not Knut Hamsun or Vidkun Quisling. And probably not the deranged fascist murderer Anders Breivik either. But then maybe that’s what unrestrained, suffocating niceness does to a certain kind of person: they end up strapping on a machine gun, or yearning for Hitler. Or both. Kings of Convenience are two earnest and very pleasant youngish men who often wear nice jumpers. They come from Bergen, which is as pristine and congenial a city as you could wish for: sharp, clear northern air and wooden-framed houses filled with agreeably plain furniture. Oh, and fish everywhere. Erlend Oye and Eirik Boe were part of the limp-wristed ‘nu-folk' stuff which came out in the first decade of this century.

The political baggage of moving house

Euro 2020: I love Raheem Sterling

England: 2 (Sterling, Kane) Germany: 0 (nobody at all) Well, that lifted the spirits a bit. And coming after the French being evicted by their alpine neighbours, it has meant quite a lot of alcoholic celebration in Liddle Towers. A deserved victory over Germany — who, contrary to popular belief, we do beat quite often. But not often when it really matters. Credit to Southgate. I am no fan of the man, although he seems a decent and likeable chap. But he got it kind of right here. He is still determined to restrict the number of truly creative players (Sterling aside) in the England team to one. In the first half, Saka. In the second, Grealish. Saka faded badly after 30 minutes, at which point England devolved to the pass-it-back thing and we looked wanting.

Euro 2020: Why I hate VAR

Austria 1 (Arnautovic) Italy 0 The laws in my universe differ from those imposed by Fifa. Austria go through, having weathered a difficult first half and then taken control of the game and in the 64th minute won it through a beautiful header from their querulous star, Marko Arnautovic. It was a deserved victory. This is why I hate VAR and all of those other inventions the pencil necks have come up with in order to make football pristine, free of chance and human error and misjudgement, which of course it never can be. They cannot see the wood for the trees. VAR has not eliminated controversy, it has heightened it. In this particular case the video carabinieri pronounced Arnautovic offside. And so he was. By a Planck Length, at best.

Euro 2020: Why I hate VAR

Euro 2020: Wales out-pluckied by Denmark

Wales 0 Denmark 4 (blonde self-satisfied young men 4) The battle between the neutrals’ favourites. Brave Denmark, with their stricken player and heroic travails against the evil Russkies. Wales – a small nation, although not so small as several others in this contest – magnificent conquerors of the Erdogan Caliphate. Here, though, in Amsterdam, they were hammered senseless and the score could and should have been more: Wales are out – iechyd da. Basically a Championship side – Luton Town, Swansea, Cardiff, Bornmuff – gilded by Aaron Ramsey and the gently dwindling brilliance of Gareth Bale. Oh – and Dan James, one of the world’s more overrated players. A winger of the week who glimmers so occasionally that it doesn’t matter.

Keir Starmer’s days are numbered

I think Keir’s had it. This may not discomfort you terribly, I know. Still less the fact that Labour will rummage around in its idiot box and find someone even more un-electable to lead the party. Cheeky Nandos perhaps, or Angela No-Brayner. Someone mental for whom patriotism is an anathema and who finds it difficult to rise up for a moment off their knee, all the while banging together saucepans for the NHS, Cuba and transgender rights. Starmer’s days are numbered because of what just happened in Chesham and Amersham and what is about to happen in Batley and Spen. Sacking his closest ally and election edgelord supremo, Baroness Chapman of Darlington, and then giving her a job to be useless in somewhere else will not stave off the crisis.

Euro 2020: England shouldn’t get too excited

Ingerlund: 1 (Sterling) Czechia: 0 — Croatia: 3 (people with name ending in 'itch') Scotland 1 (Jimmy) A little better, solely because of changes in the team largely enforced upon old Horseface. Jack Grealish started because the hitherto largely ineffective Phil Foden is carrying a booking. Arsenal’s starlet Bukayo Saka was in the team largely because Mason Mount was in quarantine for having hugged a Scotsman (Never do it. Like handling a hedgehog, you never know what you might catch). These two players transformed England and between them created the game’s only goal, for Raheem Sterling. In that first 45 minutes, England looked quite competent, but then sat back on their lead and became the England with which we are more familiar.

Today

Thursday

Wednesday

Thursday

Thursday

Thursday

Thursday

Thursday

Thursday

Thursday

Thursday

Thursday

Sunday

Thursday

Wednesday

Saturday

Thursday

Tuesday

Sunday

Saturday

Thursday

Wednesday