Society

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Led By Donkeys’s Trump stunt is their lamest yet

Has there ever been a lamer protest group than Led By Donkeys? I’m old enough to remember when protest was raucous, occasionally even sexy. The young and the angry rising up in fury against their irritant rulers. Now it’s four craft-beer bros from Stoke Newington whose idea of ‘rebellion’ is to titillate the middle classes with a naff projection about how awful Brexit is. Led By Donkeys have never exactly been daring The chattering class’s favourite faux troublemakers are back with another cunning stunt. This time they’re giving Brexit, Nigel Farage and Liz Truss a break and are aiming their macchiato-fuelled spleen at Donald Trump. I bet you’re shocked that

Michael Gove

Weimar Britain, the war on science & are you a competitive reader?

36 min listen

First: a warning from history Politics moving increasingly from the corridors of power into the streets, economic insecurity exacerbating tensions and the centre of politics failing to hold; these are just some of the echoes from Weimar Germany that the Spectator’s editor Michael Gove sees when looking at present-day Britain. But, he says, ‘there are grounds for hope’ – what are they? Michael joined the podcast to discuss.   Next: why did science succumb to the ‘culture wars’? Biologist and peer Matt Ridley bemoans the ‘cultification of science’, arguing that ‘left-wing ideological nonsense’ ended up permeating through all scientific disciplines. Thinking ‘neutral facts’ were safe, Matt admits he – and colleagues

The Spectator

Letters: The shale gas illusion

The shale illusion Sir: Your leading article rightly makes the case for extracting as much of our North Sea resources as we can (‘All at sea’, 6 September). However the enthusiasm for developing shale gas is misplaced. As energy minister, I commissioned work to establish how much of the onshore gas in-place could be recovered. The truth is just a small proportion – maybe 10 per cent. An energy policy based on shale would put our energy security at risk. Economically, at a time when global gas prices are expected to fall, UK shale would simply not be competitive and projects would fail. It is no accident that none of

Matt Ridley

The cultification of science

My, how we all laughed. Thirty years ago the physicist Alan Sokal hoaxed a social science journal into publishing a paper ‘liberally salted with nonsense’ (in his own words) that ‘flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions’. Its title alone gave away the joke: ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.’ Little did we in the truth-seeking enterprise which is real science realise that verbose and vapid social deconstruction was coming for us too. In a new book, The War on Science, edited by the astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss, 31 scientists and scholars lament the corruption of their field by left-wing ideological nonsense. Whereas once a book with this title

Today

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Is Charlie Kirk’s murder really a ‘watershed’?

The Charlie Kirk assassination has triggered a spate of duelling death counts. The usual media suspects on both sides of America’s epic left-right divide have trotted out set lists of the past decade’s politically motivated violence. For once, the faction that chocks up the most fatalities in this warped real-life video game loses – for the competition is over which end of the political spectrum can blame the other end for the frenzied ideological bloodlust we’ve been told for days now characterises the contemporary United States. For the left, the starring evidence that the right’s crazies pose the greater threat to the orderly conduct of civic life is January 6th.

Nick Carter

MDMA should be licensed for veterans with PTSD

‘Stuff starts to get real, real quick,’ recalls former US Marine, Tyler Flanigan. An Iraqi sniper had just shot out the tyres of his truck and a key member of his team had been killed. ‘We were sitting ducks.’ ‘I couldn’t easily name a single day in Iraq that I wasn’t shot at or didn’t have something explode next to me,’ says his fellow US Marine veteran, Nigel McCourry. Combat experience is hard to forget. Civilian life offers daily triggers that throw you back down ‘IED alley’, reliving the flailing feeling of being blown up and the horror of gathering friends’ body parts in bags. These former US Marines discussed

Douglas Murray

The political resurrection of Christianity

There is a passage in Milan Kundera’s novelisitic essay ‘Testaments Betrayed’ where he writes about the nature of history. Man walks in a fog, Kundera observes. He stumbles along a path and creates the path as he walks it. When he looks back, he can see the path, he may see the man, but he cannot see the fog. Everything looks inevitable after it has happened. So we have the ‘sleepwalkers’ explanation of how Europe stumbled into the first world war. We have the ‘inevitability’ of the slide into the second world war. It is perhaps the greatest of all idiotic modern presumptions that so many people imagine while looking

Mark Mason

The joy of guided walks

‘You should be pointing at things with an umbrella for a living,’ said my brother. He’d come to visit me in London and we’d been wandering the West End. The rain never appeared, but my umbrella seemed a natural implement with which to indicate the sights we passed. The Odeon Leicester Square, for instance, where I told Steve the story about Michael Caine (born Maurice Micklewhite) choosing his new surname: the cinema had been showing The Caine Mutiny. Or Piccadilly, so named because it was home to a tailor who’d made his fortune from pickadils, the ruffed collars worn by Elizabeth I, Walter Raleigh and the like. Or 3 Savile

Melissa Kite

A visit from the left-whingers

The Americans wanted an argument and they weren’t going to take no, or indeed yes, for an answer. They arrived late at night and parked their car width-ways across the driveway, blocking it, while ignoring the parking area a few feet further on where there is space for about ten cars around a central fountain. I went out and asked them politely to move and they said they would, when they were ready. But first they wanted to stand on the driveway and complain about the cost of the hire car, the narrowness of the Irish roads, and the fact that their flight had taken nearly two days with three

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

The secrets of a British apple pie

‘As American as apple pie’, or so the saying goes. But what happens if the apple pie in question isn’t actually American? America is the source of many of my most beloved vintage recipes, especially puddings, and particularly pies. But the knock-on effect is that sometimes they can overshadow similar dishes that come from other places. The British apple pie is not quite an underdog in this fight, but it’s certainly less celebrated than its cousin from across the pond. It took a while for apples to take hold in the US. Only crab apples were native to America, and they were small and sour – no good for baking

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 20 September 2025

As the old saying goes, you know you’re getting old when policemen start looking young. But you know what makes you feel really old? It’s when bridge players start looking young. The higher the level, the truer that is.  Whenever I go to international tournaments, I’m struck by the number of players in their twenties and early thirties, many of them already world-class. And while they may make those us over 50 feel a little ancient, it’s also a wonderful sight: the future of the game is alive and well. The recent open World Championship held in Denmark was remarkable for having two exceptionally young stars in the final. Finn

Toby Young Toby Young

You can’t cancel the cancelled

When Theresa May appointed me as a non-executive director of the Office for Students, the Downing Street press office decided to embargo the news until midnight on New Year’s Day 2018. It may be that it hoped to slip it out under the radar, calculating that most journalists would be too drunk to notice. If so, it didn’t work. The Guardian decided it wasn’t going to let the government get away with this sleight of hand and stuck the following headline on its website at 12.01: ‘Toby Young to help lead government’s new universities regulator.’ The offence archaeologists immediately set to work digging through everything I’d said or written, looking

Luke McShane

A new wunderkind

Halfway through the Fide Grand Swiss, held in Samarkand earlier in September, Magnus Carlsen picked out 14-year-old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus as the player who had impressed him the most. The Turkish teenager, a grandmaster since last year and already established in the world’s top 100, looked utterly undaunted by the elite opposition he faced there.     In the second round, under pressure against the world champion, Dommaraju Gukesh, he came under pressure in the endgame but stirred up enough complications to save the game. The diagram shows the critical moment, after 39…Kd7-c6. Dommaraju Gukesh-Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus Fide Grand Swiss, Samarkand, 2025 1 d4 d5 2 c3 Nf6 3 Bg5 c6

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The customer isn’t always far-right

One of Dominic Cummings’s many insights in the run-up to the Brexit referendum was that ‘most people were both more right-wing and more left-wing than politicians ever realise’. Political obsessives naturally frame all questions – indeed shape their own identities – along a left-right spectrum, and so assume everyone else sees the world in similarly clear-cut terms. They really don’t. Indeed one of the most dangerous habits of journalists is their readiness to brand as ‘far-right’ opinions which are held by fairly large swaths of the population, many of whom might be otherwise left-wing in other contexts. What is risky about this is that it may achieve nothing other than

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Help! My neighbour knows I lied about her daughter’s wedding photos 

Q. I have been booked to give my first talk on my field of professional interest. I happen to have found out that a slightly competitive friend, with no interest in the subject, has bought a ticket. I fear she knows full well that her surprise appearance in the (small) specialist audience and the cynical expression on her face will be enough to throw me off my stride completely. Mary, how can I ask her not to come without falling out with her? – Name and address withheld A. Pretend not to know she is coming. Instead outsmart her by requesting the organisers employ a well-known trick of stagecraft. Arrange

Luke McShane

No. 868

Black to play. Szymon Gumularz-Nihal Sarin, Fide Grand Swiss, 2025. Sarin found a tactic which decided the game in his favour immediately. Which move did he play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 22 September. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 f6! Then 1…Kxf6 2 Nd7# or 1…Kd4 2 Nc6# or 1…Kxd6 2 Bf4# Last week’s winner David Marsh, Gurnard, Hampshire

Bruce Anderson

The glory of the Goring

Last weekend, I was in England: among two very diverse aspects of the nation. In recent months, every Saturday, central London has been plagued by demonstrations. I suppose that there must be a right to protest. But what about the right to mosey around Westminster and Whitehall without blocked roads and with any hope of peace and quiet? Last Saturday saw the largest manifestation of all: less of a protest than an English uprising – a flag-waving two-fingered revolt against the liberal intelligentsia. I kept well clear, having no wish to be caught up or kettled, and later there were attacks on the police. This should lead to jail sentences.

Victoria Lane

Spectator Competition: Forget me not

Comp. 3417 invited you to write an elegy to a piece of obsolete technology. This prompted a deluge of very good entries – too many to name all the runners up, though here are some of the lamented objects: mangles, steam engines, oil lamps, floppy discs, the trebuchet, cash registers, radiograms, gramophones, tape recorders, Ceefax, Betamax, proper cameras, the fish slice, the pipe knife and – most of all – the VHS and the typewriter. A special mention to Tom Adam’s relatable paean to the Nokia: I mourn that lump of plastic and its tiny little screen, With only ‘Snake’ to offer up a hit of dopamine. And Simon Godziek’s

Dot Wordsworth

My discontent over ‘content’

Dame Anna Wintour, with her rather marvellous bob hairdo, this month became chief content officer for Condé Nast. I had forgotten that a couple of years ago she was appointed a Companion of Honour – one of those interesting people the King likes to have for lunch. And I couldn’t remember whether I’d written here about content. ‘That is probably not a sign of dementia,’ said my husband encouragingly. Why is content such an unpleasant label for articles in a magazine? After all, the title page of the Great Bible, ordered to be published by Henry VIII in 1539, read: ‘The Byble in Englyshe, that is to saye the content

Doc

2721: In short

21 solutions in the grid are represented as follows: A B C d H I K L m N O p r s t U v W X y z. They have to be fitted into the grid jigsaw-fashion. Across 12    German novelist from the Wiesbaden area (5) 14    Single within the boundaries of Headingley, dearie (5) 16    Moving into gear, I start (9) 17    Young ewe runs from two dozen (6) 21    Exercise wearing a piece of armour, but not fighting (2,5) 22    Groups of atoms in clue order  (6) 25    Devotee making an impression, taking that female in (8) 30    Article of faith explained (3) 34    Rocky situation?

The Spectator

2718: Caged – solution

Each of the unclued lights contained the name of a bird (i.e. which was CAGED). First prize G. MacLennan, Lancaster Runners-up Alan Pink, Crowhurst, East Sussex; Elaine Galloway, London SE6

Emily Hill Emily Hill

The rise of performative reading

‘To be or not to be’ may be the question but when it comes to eliciting answers, I’ve always preferred Mr Darcy’s epic conversation starter: ‘What think you of books?’ Two hundred years on, it has become harder than ever to find out what anyone actually thinks of books – and not just because our attention spans have been so corroded by dopamine addiction. There are more books published today than ever. TikTok creates relentless literary sensations, and the day after the murder of Charlie Kirk, AI-produced histories were available on Amazon giving ‘the full story’.  If social media is to be believed, everyone is reading so much it’s impossible

The Spectator

The failure of Britain’s elite universities

Politicians, authors, priests and the occasional Spectator editor have all served as the Oxford Union’s president over its 200-year history. Few among them would know what to make of George Abaraonye. The debating society’s president-elect faces disciplinary proceedings for celebrating the killing of Charlie Kirk. Upon hearing of the conservative activist’s assassination – some four months after the pair had debated in person – Abaraonye posted ‘Charlie Kirk got shot loool’ on social media, along with other excited expletives in a WhatsApp group chat. He deleted the remarks but defended making them. Something is rotten in the state of Oxford when its chief debater celebrates the murder of a free