Society

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Why were these Afghan rapists even in Britain?

Everything about that rape of a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa is horrifying. First and foremost, the barbaric act itself. It took place on 10 May. Just after 9pm the girl was separated from her friends and abducted by Jan Jahanzeb, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker. He frogmarched her to a darkened park with the intention of sexually assaulting her. If officialdom had done what voters have begged it to, and properly policed our borders, these young men might not have made it here Then there was Jahanzeb’s sickening phone call to his friend, Israr Niazal. ‘Come quick’, he said. Come and help me rape this girl – that’s what

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Piers Morgan fell into Nick Fuentes’s trap

When Michael Gove introduced me to Piers Morgan last week at the Spectator Christmas reception, Morgan seized my hand and beamed, ‘I know Jonathan. We’re old friends.’ This was generous of him, not least because it isn’t true. We’d met once before, briefly. But some months earlier I had written a critique of his YouTube show for the Spectator which, to judge by his response, he did not enjoy. He called me a ‘disingenuous twerp’ on X and blocked me there. He then wrote a piece in the magazine entitled, ‘In defence of Piers Morgan, by Piers Morgan’. I mention this not to litigate any grievance, but in the interest of full

David Shipley

The open borders crime scandal

On 10 May this year a 15-year-old girl was with friends near parkland on the outskirts of Leamington Spa. Shortly after 9 p.m. she was separated from those friends and abducted by Jan Jahanzeb, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who arrived in the UK in January. The victim had the quick thinking to record the start and aftermath on her phone, so footage of the incident exists. As a result we know that while she was being taken away from her friends, the girl screamed for help, but Jahanzeb placed his hand over her mouth. Every single one of these horrific crimes is not just a tragedy. Every single one

Alexander Larman

Harry could be about to spend a lot more time in Britain

For lovers of self-destructive hubris – a quality that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex surely possess in spades – the saga of Prince Harry’s security is surely the gift that keeps on giving. Not since Jeremy Thorpe ensured that his former lover Norman Scott was deprived of his National Insurance card has anyone publicly expressed a grievance with so much fervour and repetitiveness as Harry’s attempts to obtain taxpayer-funded armed protection whenever he brings his family back to Britain. But now, in this season of miracles, it looks as if he might have got his wish, after all.  It seemed certain, after various expensive and amusingly humiliating courtroom defeats,

Yesterday

Eliot Wilson

Is the navy prepared to fend off Russia's underwater threat?

The Royal Navy has traditionally been the mainstay of Britain’s military power on the global stage. It is approaching its 500th anniversary, when Henry VIII established the ‘Navy Royal’ in 1546, a standing maritime force with its own dockyards and secretariat, the Navy Board. As this year’s Strategic Defence Review made clear, it remains vital for the protection of the United Kingdom, the defence of the wider Euro-Atlantic area and Britain’s ability to project power across the globe. To do that, the Royal Navy has to be strengthened and modernised. On Monday, the First Sea Lord, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins – the first Royal Marines officer to serve as professional

Lucy Dunn

Will Starmer take up Badenoch's grooming gangs advice?

Plans for a national inquiry into grooming gangs are underway, but will the inquiry actually happen? The Labour-led probe has not yet started and has almost been derailed by survivors on the victim liaison panel dropping out, complaints about transparency and concerns about the scope of the inquiry. Today, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch set out her party’s preferred terms of reference for the inquiry – a move she insisted was not party political, but one that she hopes Labour will act on. Labour needs to show it has listened – even if that means taking recommendations from its political opponents The Tories want a judge-led inquiry which has a hard

Stephen Pollard

Jewish fans deserve the truth about Maccabi Tel Aviv's Villa Park ban

Everyone is familiar with the old insult that you can tell when a politician is not telling the truth because his lips move. Be that as it may, a variation of this has emerged, but this time when someone from West Midlands Police is giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee. Did West Midlands Police simply make stuff up? It’s difficult to avoid that conclusion It emerged on Sunday that when the chief constable, Craig Guildford and the assistant chief constable, Mike O’Hara, gave evidence last Monday on why they decided to ban Jews – sorry, Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv – from last month’s Europa League game at

Andy Jones

How Europe can turn the tide on Russia's underwater warfare

Europe is right now fighting an enemy it cannot see and protecting a vulnerability it has not mapped. Undersea drones are taking the conflict between Russia and the West below water. But these sea drones are not looking for soldiers or civilian targets: they are patrolling infrastructure thousands of metres below sea level, aiming to prevent vital communications cables from being severed. In a silent, deep-sea war, Europe and its allies are already counting the cost of Russian damage to its vital undersea cables In a silent, deep-sea war, Europe and its allies are already counting the cost of Russian damage to its vital undersea cables – the spinal cords that

Terry Barnes

Aussies are enjoying England's Ashes meltdown

What a letdown for lovers of Test cricket in both England and Australia. After just six playing days, the Ashes series between the two old enemies is all but decided. England needs to win all three remaining Tests to regain the Ashes, a feat that only one side has ever achieved: the 1936 Australians, who had a young batsman named Don Bradman. The Australian media has relished the unexpected chance to put the boot into the beleaguered England side Having lost the first Test in Perth in record time, and in the second in Brisbane showed little of the patience and ball-by-ball judgment vital to Test success, the England team

Debbie Hayton

Why this trans person is troubled by a conversion therapy ban

Conversion practices are in the news again, at least if you listen to the BBC. We woke up to the Today programme on Friday recounting appalling stories of Electric Shock Aversion Therapy (ESAT) from years past. Further instalments were delivered on the corporation’s Six O’Clock News. Gay and lesbian people were subjected to those horrors in a futile attempt to change their sexual orientation. Outrageously, this happened within the beloved NHS. Following a BBC investigation, the government will now investigate the historical use of ESAT in NHS hospitals. Good, but this horse has already bolted. ESAT is not supported by professional bodies, and it is no longer used by NHS

Alex Klaushofer

Britain's water crisis is getting worse

When the taps run dry in Tunbridge Wells you know something has gone very wrong in the heart of Albion. Some 24,000 residents had their water supply cut off for almost a week after South East Water found that water at the local treatment plant was contaminated with chemicals. Schools closed, businesses lost money and, although supplies have resumed, residents have been told to boil water. The fiasco is illustrative of our national water crisis. In my part of south London, the streets literally course with water flowing from burst pipes. As I predicted in a piece for The Spectator eighteen months ago, the situation for Thames Water customers has worsened. One recent

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The BBC's anti-Semitism training is an offensive parody

The BBC has unveiled its compulsory training course for all staff on how not to be racist to Jews. I completed the online module and found it laughable, feeble and entirely beside the point. This isn’t education. It’s parody. A cartoonish exercise in HR-driven pseudo-virtue, dressed up as moral instruction. I have written before that if one were writing a sitcom about the modern BBC, and wanted to script a scene satirising its institutional absurdities, one might invent a plotline in which a woke producer commissions a documentary about the children of Gaza and secretly casts the 13-year-old son of a Hamas minister as its narrator. As we know, that’s

Sunday

Alexander Larman

The Andrew debacle has blown open the royal coffers for all to see

If you’ve ever dramatically broken up with an ex, only to find, to your miserable disbelief, that they keep popping up in the most inconvenient circumstances, you may feel a degree of sympathy with the royals as regards Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. A few weeks after he was stripped of his titles and ordered to leave Royal Lodge, he may now be the Andrew formerly known as Prince, but he shows no signs of wishing to leave his Windsor grace-and-favour home. By the terms of his (remarkably generous) lease, he is entitled to twelve months’ notice before departing. As one of his few remaining friends told the Times, ‘It’s really rather sad,

Druin Burch

The joy of receiving Christmas cards – even from people I loathe

These days I barely know what my own handwriting looks like; about my friends, the knowledge is all but lost. Seeing their pen strokes has grown rare. But, for a brief period each winter, that odd intimacy returns as Christmas cards – some with messages, most with just a scribbled name – land on my mat. I adore receiving cards. Even ones from people I cordially dislike, or frankly loathe, are welcome There used to be something exciting about the sound of the postman’s footsteps, of letters being pushed through the door, of their thump as they landed within. That was during the days when there was a great deal

Saturday

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Tommy Robinson wants to put 'Christ back into Christmas'? No, thanks

So Tommy Robinson is inviting us all to have Christmas with him. The far-right activist has announced that there will be a huge open air carol concert in central London on 13 December, a seasonal Unite the Kingdom rally. The aim, he says, ‘is to put Christ back into Christmas.’ Hmm, isn’t that what thousands of church services already do? Robinson is saying: we should be proud of our national religion. Is he wrong? Yes and no So what is Robinson’s motivation for wanting to stage a very large and very public Christmas event? Well, he makes it pretty clear. ‘We shouldn’t have to put this on’, he says. ‘There

Arabella Byrne

How to live gracefully in a ‘granny annexe’

There comes a time in every Boomer Granny’s life when she must consider the ‘granny annexe’ as a viable demesne. For Sarah Ferguson, that time has come. Disgraced, broke and soon to be booted out of Royal Lodge, Fergie is reportedly considering her daughter Princess Beatrice’s Cotswold ‘cowshed’ as her next billet. And while this is not the monstrous wedding-cake mansion that is Royal Lodge, it is still apparently a des res, with neighbours in the unnamed Cotswold village claiming that the property has recently had a refurb. Fergie can no doubt expect an open-plan kitchenette in Edward Bulmer hues, a fair few Pooky lampshades and a Loaf bed in the lead-on bedroom. Perfectly suitable for a woman who once flaunted her ability to adapt to any circumstances, declaring herself ‘a chameleon

Patrick Kidd

The strange history of one-armed vs one-legged cricket

A sheet metal worker from Shropshire who lost a leg below the knee in a tractor accident when he was a child has been told to pay back £36,000 in disability benefits after he was filmed playing cricket twice a week for a village team.  Shaun Rigby, 37, had received personal independence payments since 2016 and acquired a car under the Motability scheme three years ago but the Department for Work and Pensions has judged that his daily needs do not require such assistance.  Mr Rigby called the decision ‘unfair’, observing that people with less debilitating conditions get Motability cars. He remarked: ‘Just because I play cricket doesn’t mean my

Friday

Angela Epstein

Boycotting Israel could kill Eurovision

What exactly is the point of Eurovision? It can’t be about the music. Britain, the nation that gifted the world the Beatles, David Bowie and the Spice Girls, has been scraping the bottom of the scoreboard for years – thanks to a string of forgettable, frankly embarrassing entries that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a boozy holiday camp open-mic night. The UK hasn’t been alone in putting forward dire entries, but perhaps that then has always been the point. Much to the delight of the millions who watch and feast on Eurovision’s glorious banquet of kitsch and camp – a ding-a-dong smorgasbord where spectacle is compulsory and, for many countries,

David Shipley

The evil of the grooming gangs is finally being exposed

It has now been six weeks since the inquiry into ‘Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse’ fell into chaos. Over the course of several days, numerous survivors quit – claiming that the civil servants running the process were seeking to dilute the inquiry – and the man being considered as chair stood down. Since then there has been silence from the government. There is still no chair nor terms of reference. It is important that we all understand the sheer evil of what has been done and what has been hidden from us by the state This is despite Louise Casey’s damning report in June, which revealed the sheer scale of these

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

David Lammy is wrong about Brexit and the EU

David Lammy believes Britain should rejoin the EU customs union to boost economic growth. In an interview on Thursday, the Deputy Prime Minister argued that leaving the EU had ‘badly damaged’ Britain’s economy. A reversal of Brexit would be good for business he suggested. It was ‘self-evident’ that other countries had ‘seen growth’ after joining the customs union, Lammy told the News Agents podcast. The deputy PM avoided the question of whether Britain should rejoin the euro, as did Health Secretary Wes Streeting earlier in the week. Having declared that Britain was worse off out of the EU, Streeting was asked if the government was planning to take Britain back

Druin Burch

Why GPs are reluctant about online booking

‘Moaning Minnies’ is how the Health Secretary Wes Streeting has described GPs opposing his rollout of online appointment booking. Originally, that moniker referred to German artillery pieces – and it’s pleasant for a doctor like myself to imagine we still possess that sort of firepower. But Streeting meant that the British Medical Association’s GP committee, which he has accused of undermining the attempt to make primary care more accessible, are a bunch of whining complainers, rather than us ordinary doctors. So, is Streeting right? General practice, as everyone is painfully aware, is in trouble. Except in a shrinking minority of places, the old model that made it so valuable is

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Fifa's great World Cup rip-off has gone too far

Today’s World Cup draw in Washington, presided over by Fifa president Gianni Infantino with best buddie president Donald Trump at his side, is intended to whet appetites, set pulses racing and, most importantly, get fingers twitching on booking sites for tickets, flights, and hotels for next summer’s North American extravaganza. The World Cup 2026 is poised to be not just the biggest ever, but the biggest rip-off ever For those giddily contemplating the trip to North America next summer – not least we Scottish fans who have been denied a place at the party for so long – a cold, hard reality is about to bite. For the World Cup

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Benefits Britain, mental health & what’s the greatest artwork of the 21st Century?

23 min listen

‘Labour is now the party of welfare, not work’ argues Michael Simmons in the Spectator’s cover article this week. The question ‘why should I bother with work?’ is becoming harder to answer, following last week’s Budget which could come to define this Labour government. A smaller and smaller cohort of people are being asked to shoulder the burden – what do our Spectator contributors think of this?  For this week’s Edition, host Lara Prendergast is joined by opinion editor Rupert Hawksley, arts editor Igor Toronyi-Lalic and columnist Matthew Parris. Rupert points out the perceived lack of fairness across the Budget, Matthew thinks we shouldn’t be surprised that a Labour government delivered a Labour

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Who knew that King Charles could be funny?

Describing the royal family as ‘funny’ is not, perhaps, the first thing that comes to mind when talking about the Windsors. After all, anyone with a long memory remembers the horrors of It’s A Royal Knockout in 1987. Meanwhile, the performers who tend to get the biggest laughs from them at the Royal Variety Show are usually those offering the broadest, silliest laughs. Just think of the late Queen enraptured by the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of Frank Skinner, Harry Hill and Ed Balls (Ed Balls!) all performing George Formby’s ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’ in 2018. However, King Charles has always been someone with a more developed sense of humour, even if his long-standing love