I’ve never had much time for Chris Patten, generally disliking the Tory Europhile and late Roy Jenkins impersonator. But the whirligig of time brings in strange revenges and none is odder than Chris Patten emerging as the only adult in the room. In the great Cecil Rhodes debate at Oxford – a debate which like
On Tuesday, Isis’s strategy in Turkey changed. Nabil Fadli, a 28-year-old Saudi national linked to Isis, blew himself up in the heart of Sultanahmet, a tourist district of Istanbul. 11 tourists were killed, including ten Germans. In some ways, it was familiar: this was Isis’s fourth successful attack on Turkish soil since June. Previous bombs,
Would you bet against Donald Trump becoming president? Lots of us have. British gamblers have reportedly put more than £1 million on Trump not reaching the White House. Put this down to the general loathing of ‘the Donald’, plus a common sense instinct that, while Americans may be mad and/or stupid, they can’t be that
Pity the poor correspondents who set up a reshuffle ‘live’ blog to cover Jeremy Corbyn moving around his frontbench team last Monday. The Labour leader has, a week and a half in to the slowest shuffle ever, just made a few more appointments. Imran Hussain, Kate Osamor and Thangam Debbonaire are all new MPs, and
The Swedish and German authorities say they have never encountered anything like it: groups of men encircling then molesting women in large public gatherings. It happened in Cologne and Stockholm, but is it really unprecedented? Ivar Arpi argues in the new Spectator that it may well be connected to a phenomenon called ‘taharrush gamea’, a form of group harassment
In this week’s diary, Tristram Hunt puts his money behind Jerusalem as a new English National Anthem. ‘God Save the Queen’ isn’t going anywhere as the United Kingdom’s theme, but there’s room for a local melody when Team England take to the field (as the MP Toby Perkins pointed out, it’s hard to square English
So farewell, Shami Chakrabarti. The woman is stepping down as boss of Liberty, for whom – whatever your political views – she has been a hugely effective campaigner. And, further credit: for a comprehensive school girl from an ethnic minority to have achieved so much is pretty laudable, I would argue. I don’t suppose we’ll
Few think tanks have been as associated with the Cameron project as Policy Exchange. Its alumni are dotted in various positions around government, with a particularly strong presence in Downing Street. So, it is interesting that Policy Exchange’s director Dean Godson has today announced that he has hired David Goodhart, the former editor of Prospect
A number of Labour MPs have become increasingly riled with Jeremy Corbyn this week over the much-delayed Beckett report on Labour’s General Election loss. Despite calls from Dan Jarvis and Caroline Flint for Margaret Beckett’s investigation into the reasons Labour lost the election to be published, Corbyn has so far refused even though he has
One of the things that repeatedly comes up with David Bowie fans talking about their hero is how much he meant to people living in small towns or suburbs. For adolescents who felt confined by stuffy suburban mores and maybe felt themselves a bit different, Bowie must have felt like a lifeline. Personally I grew
In this week’s issue, James Forsyth reveals the strategy that David Cameron will use to campaign for Britain to stay in the EU. He’ll campaign not just on the economics, but on security – arguing that Britain is safer as part of the EU collective: safer from the Russians, safer from terrorism. Isabel Hardman, the new
Stockholm It took days for police to acknowledge the extent of the mass attacks on women celebrating New Year’s Eve in Cologne. The Germans were lucky; in Sweden, similar attacks have been taking place for more than a year and the authorities are still playing catch up. Only now is the truth emerging, both
The negotiations may be ongoing, but David Cameron has given up waiting for the outcome of his talks with the European Union. The Prime Minister has made up his mind: he wants Britain to vote to stay in the EU — and the campaigning has already begun. His closest allies have been assigned to the
On New Year’s Day I took the family out for an evening walk on the ranch. Along the verges, lush after rains, I urged our children, Eve and Rider, to help me collect specimens of different plants, or identify wildlife spoor or scat. I wore shorts and flip-flops. As usual I was talking too much
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/projectfear/media.mp3″ title=”Rod Liddle and Kaite Welsh discuss David Bowie’s legacy” startat=678] Listen [/audioplayer]I was desperately worried that you hadn’t read or heard enough platitudinous drivel about David Bowie — and therefore felt compelled to weigh in with my own observations. In all honesty I haven’t heard so much repetitive, imbecilic guff since Mandela shuffled
If you’ve never heard of Lake Iseo, you’re not alone. Nestling shyly between chocolate-box Como and glamorous Garda, the smallest of Lombardy’s four major lakes has quietly resisted the limelight over the centuries. Fashionistas may frolic on photo shoots in Garda’s ritzy spas, while excursion boats patrol Como’s west bank in the hope of spotting
Wild Lone is one of the most violent books I’ve ever read. It was published just before the last war and it doesn’t pull its punches: mothers are slaughtered with their babies; brothers and sisters are eaten alive; callous parents look on indifferently as their sick children die slowly beneath them; the few survivors almost
One evening last autumn, four experts in the field of artificial intelligence arrived in Westminster with an urgent message for our government. There’s a robot revolution on the way, they said, and unless we prepare for it we’re in trouble. The briefing was a quiet affair — I was one of only a few journalists
My friends divide into three groups. There are those who are determined to anticipate Lent. There is a larger number whose January diet barely made it until Twelfth Night. There is a third group, whose dietary plans are indeed based on Twelfth Night: the characters of Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek. To which set do
A few months ago I received a call from someone running a small private school near New York. They believed their school was objectively better than a larger, more famous establishment nearby, but had more difficulty attracting pupils. What should they do? This is not easy. You see, however skilled your teachers are, what really
