Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.

Libya suggests that Cameron has a bad case of the Blairs

These are heady days for the proponents of liberal evangelism. Saif Gaddafi had to leave a telephone call because, he explained, ‘There is shooting inside my house’ and a little further away there are people whooping loudly in Tripoli. The news of the rebels’ victory may be a shade premature at time of writing —

Polish questions

On one of those phone-in quiz shows, as reported by Private Eye, a contestant, when asked to name the capital of Poland, replied with great confidence: “Auschwitz”. I don’t know exactly what proportion of the British public would subscribe to this notion, but I would guess that it is largish. The ignorance compounded, of course,

A great victory

Things are looking a little ticklish for Muammar Gaddafi. It would seem that the maniacal and disorganised coalition of rebels, which occasionally breaks off from fighting the tyrant to murder its own leaders, is poised for a famous victory. A consequence, one supposes, of the heavy ordinance expended by the various western allies. Had ol’

Our children urgently need less self-esteem

I had a sort of Tottenham High Street moment just after lunch on Tuesday. I was passing a sandwich shop near the Spectator offices and happened to see the slogan beneath its name: ‘Live your life, love our food.’ The urge came, right there and then, to torch the place and maybe rough up the

The failure of ideology

When I was ten years old my junior school decamped from its old site and moved to a brand new building which, surprisingly for us, had no classrooms. I remember a bunch of us talking to the headmaster about it. “Where do we have lessons?” “Ah, you won’t be having ‘lessons’, as such.” “What!” “No,

Is David Starkey a racist?

Should David Starkey be made homeless by his local council for his recent “inflammatory” comments about the riots which have so entertained us recently? I do not know who runs Mr Starkey’s local council and I suppose that he is an owner-occupier, rather than living in accommodation subsidised by the rest of us. But clearly,

How did I get it right on the euro? Easy. I was racist

Do you remember the vicious debates back in the middle of the 1990s about whether or not we should join the single European currency? We don’t have that argument much any more; even the Liberal Democrats keep their traps shut about it these days and try to change the subject when any one mentions it.

The Glasto smug-fest

I realise that in most cases, the following is not something which concerns you terribly. Further, the point I’m making has been made over and over again this last decade or so. But this year it’s a sort of parody of a parody itself. Consider; top of the bill the witless showbiz caterwauling of Beyonce,

The Daily Mail is not so uniquely British after all

I am thinking of starting up a free internet site called ‘Cancer and House Prices’. I am thinking of starting up a free internet site called ‘Cancer and House Prices’. Every day, a new piece of information, which I will make up, about tumours and property values and perhaps how these two phenomena are unexpectedly

Bad hair day

It is henceforth illegal for schools to ban certain haircuts because they believe them to be evidence of gang membership. A High Court Judge, Justice Collins, has deemed it to be a form of indirect racial discrimination. A school in Harrow had banned the braided “cornrow” hairstyle because they feared it was worn as a

D***er

This post is primarily for the nigger-obsessed idiot Mike99, who kindly contributed to a previous thread and bandied the offensive word around like George Wallace on amphetamines. But hopefully others will join in the debate too. Dambusters, then, and Stephen Fry’s remake of the famous film in which Guy Gibson’s dog will be renamed “Digger”,

How long have the coalition and Ed got?

The received wisdom seems to be that while the government is, as Charles Clarke put it, utterly incoherent and inept, devoid of strategy and consistency of policy, Cameron is getting away with it because he has held office for only a year, ie he is still “new”. However, the same magnanimity of received wisdom has

Rich students and media darlings

The problem with AC Grayling’s new super university is that stigma will attach to it similar to that which has attached itself to, say, the University of Central Neasden. In that it is possessed of pretensions which its graduate body will not be able to match. Its clients will be drawn from the ranks of