Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.

My phone call with God

Got slightly wrecked over the bank holiday weekend and had hoped to kind of glide through the early part of the week without too much requirement for that bane of the columnist, research – looking stuff up, talking to people, etc. But I crawled downstairs on Tuesday, switched on the laptop and there was a

Durham’s maths problem

More exciting news arrives from Britain’s dimmest university, Durham, which is embarking on a programme to ‘decolonise’ mathematics. About time. For too long the subject has been dominated by racist stuff like adding things up or multiplying etc. Hopefully soon there will be room for students, when faced with a question such as ‘what is

Can I convert you to my opinion?

I see that on the issue of gay conversion therapy, the Prime Minister has been floating around all over the place, like a giant albino blimp which has suddenly come adrift from its moorings. I believe Boris is now of a mind to ban conversion therapy for gay people but not for trans-gendered people, having

I’m taking in a Ukrainian

Delighted though we all are that Benedict Cumberbatch has decided to allow a Ukrainian family to live in one of his houses, did he have to trumpet this to the entire population of the country? Surely these sorts of decision are best kept to oneself, no? But then, they’re always doing it, the luvvies –

Rod Liddle

What schools should be teaching

The state of Florida recently passed a piece of legislation making it illegal for teachers to hold discussions with pupils under the age of eight about gender orientation. It seemed a very reasonable idea to me and I would guess that a largeish proportion of parents in this country, perhaps even a majority, would concur.

The Western Front

45 min listen

In this week’s episode: Has Putin’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the West’s weakness – or its strength?For this week, Sergey Radchenko, a Cold War historian writes about the draconian anti-war measures that Putin has imposed in Russia. He joins the podcast along with Dr Jade Glynn, a specialist in Russian memory and foreign policy at

Rod Liddle

The invasion of Ukraine has exposed the West’s impotence

When the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, addressed the House of Commons recently, he was afforded two standing ovations from MPs, both lasting about 40 seconds, before and after he spoke. He was probably used to it, having received a similar reception when addressing the European Parliament a week before. On both occasions, then, he was

Has Putin saved Boris?

It was with some relief that I heard that Labour’s Diane Abbott was opposed to the Russian invasion of Croatia, because you cannot always tell with the far left what way they are going to swing. The Stop the War mob, along with 11 serving Labour MPs, have been anxious to exonerate Vladimir Putin and,

Rod Liddle

Too neat but it has hooks aplenty: Avril Lavigne’s Love Sux reviewed

Grade: B Yay, life just gets better and better. World War Three and now this. More petulant popcorn pre-school punk in which Avril spells words stupidly and tells ‘bois’ how much she weally, weally hates them but acksherly weally loves them. This was momentarily captivating on the magnificently catty glam-rock thrash of ‘Girlfriend’ 15 years

Will Holly Willoughby stop the war in Ukraine?

I assume that Vladimir Putin will now rapidly withdraw his forces from Ukraine given the recent interventions of Holly Willoughby, Peter Andre and – perhaps most tellingly of all – Kerry Katona.  Still more pressure has been brought to bear on the beleaguered President as Sean Penn has arrived in Ukraine to film a no-doubt

In defence of Shakespeare

My most important new year’s resolution was cast aside this week. I had vowed that in 2022 I would eschew writing about the infinite idiocies of the woke and concentrate instead on bringing to light important, worthy causes. In other words, it was a pledge to make the world a better place, instead of just

We blew our chance to befriend Putin

You have the advantage over me. It may be that you are reading this now in your makeshift fallout shelter, hair falling out and bleeding from the gums as the nuclear winter descends. More likely you are saying, rather smugly, to your neighbour: ‘I knew he was taking the piss. He’s a right one, that

Nicola Sturgeon’s last laugh

I was delighted to discover that the University of Bristol has been advising students how to address those who identify as ‘catgender’. These are people who ‘strongly identify with cats’ or may have ‘delusions relating to being a cat’. Apparently these individuals ‘may use nya/nyan pronouns’. Nya is the Japanese word for ‘miaow’. I am

Boris will never recover from partygate

When a political party is hit by a crisis, the tendency these days is for both the politicians and their supporters to pretend that there isn’t a crisis at all, hunker down inside a comfortable state of denial and blame it all on a hostile media. To a degree, this has always happened — but