Society

Tuesday

Lara Brown

A grooming gang inquiry will expose Labour’s guilty men

Sir Keir Starmer claimed in January that those who were concerned about the systematic rape and abuse of little girls were ‘calling for inquiries because they want to jump on a bandwagon of the far right’. Yesterday, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, promised that victims would finally get the full national inquiry which campaigners have been demanding for so many years. If Starmer has any sense, he will bring out his party’s bodies willingly before he is forced to Cooper’s statement in the Commons was relatively encouraging. She conceded that much of the (admittedly shoddy) data around child grooming points to ‘clear evidence of overrepresentation amongst suspects of Asian and Pakistani

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

The good and bad news about the UK-US trade deal

Donald Trump and Keir Starmer’s transatlantic trade deal has finally been signed. Before making an early exit from the G7, the US president approved an executive order giving legal effect to parts of the US-UK deal. The outline of the agreement was settled weeks earlier during a conference call, with Trump in the White House and Peter Mandelson, the UK ambassador in Washington, standing, slightly creepily, over his shoulder, as Starmer dialled in from 4,000 miles away. If the deal is to progress further, an almighty row could be brewing The delay in any further announcement left conservatives, and businesses, wondering whether the deal outline a month ago was turning

Mike Pitts

The remarkable quest to identify Captain Cook’s Endeavour

The announcement that a shipwreck in Newport Harbor, 200 miles up the coast from New York City, has been proven to be James Cook’s HMS Endeavour, will not surprise those who have followed the search for years. In 1768, when Cook set out to record the transit of Venus in Tahiti, the first of his voyages of discovery, he was a mere lieutenant. The Endeavour was not the best of his ships, and the solo journey – two ships sailed on each of his second and third Pacific voyages – was not the most productive.   Every detail of what has survived of the timbers of ship ‘RI 2394’, matches

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

JK Rowling’s takedown of Boy George was a joy to behold

Few things are more delicious to watch than an uneven battle of wits – and it is hard to imagine a more uneven fight than one between Boy George and JK Rowling. ‘Which rights have been taken away from trans people?’, Rowling asked her followers on X this weekend. ‘The right to be left alone by a rich bored bully!’, Boy George responded. ‘I’ve never been given 15 months for handcuffing a man to a wall and beating him with a chain,’ wrote JK Rowling We waited with bated breath for the inevitable response from the Harry Potter author. When it came, it didn’t disappoint. ‘I’ve never been given 15

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Ballymena got what it wanted

Thursday evening. All quiet in Ballymena so far, after three nights of wrath. On the kerb of Waring Street – just off Larne Street, which rioters tore through on Tuesday and left burning and beaten – sit James and Casper, both 16. James is wearing a balaclava with a Rottweiler’s face printed on the front. Casper wears a hoodie. Opposite the boys, a woman is handing out signs for people to put in their windows which read ‘LOCALS LIVE HERE’, and down the road, on the corner of Henry Street and Railway Street, a man is pointing his phone at a row of parked police jeeps, and will expectantly livestream

Sunday

Debbie Hayton

Bristol museum’s trans exhibition is like something out of a cult

The Bristol Museum and Art Gallery is one of those places that makes me feel uncomfortable. I feel picked-on even visiting the website. At the top of the screen – before any mention of the collections and exhibitions – we are all told that ‘Bristol Museums welcomes trans and gender-diverse visitors, volunteers and members of staff’. Perhaps this is a response to the Supreme Court judgement that biological sex quite rightly takes precedence over paperwork when distinguishing women from men? But I find it unhelpful and intrusive. I might be transsexual, but I am a human being just like everyone else, and I don’t need special treatment. I certainly don’t

Joshua Young

AI is rotting our children’s minds

‘He’s more machine than man now’, complains Obi-Wan Kenobi of his notoriously fallen apprentice Darth Vader in Star Wars. The same thought crossed my mind last week in the wake of the worst betrayal I have suffered as an English tutor. Something is wrong when your favourite pupil uses AI to generate the two-line reference they had offered to write for you, making you sound even blander than feared. ‘Ottillie,’ – not her real name – I blurted, ‘how could you?’ The reply was endearing but terribly ominous: ‘I wanted it to be perfect.’ ChatGPT is already shockingly good, much better than most people admit. Get it to rewrite itself to sound less like

Lana Hempsall

Motability won’t give up its lucrative business without a fight

Motability, the scheme set up to provide vehicles, scooters and powered wheelchairs to disabled people, has become something of a monster. By the end of 2024, Motability supported a staggering 815,000 vehicles, up by 200,000 in the last two years alone. It is clear that the scheme has extended way beyond its original purpose and is in dire need of reform. But Motability is determined not to give up its lucrative business model without a fight. Only five per cent of Motability cars are adapted for those with physical disabilities Andrew Miller, the scheme’s chief executive, has hit back at criticism of Motability. ‘We’ve been a business all along. Any sense

James Ray

How to be a better father

Children in this country are desperate for fathers to rise to the occasion. All the research indicates that a key determinant of a child’s ability to flourish – to make a success of growing up – is having a father actively involved in his or her life. Having a decent dad in the picture is vital. The affection of a father can prove one of the most authoritative things in a child’s life. A million British children have no meaningful relationship or regular contact with their fathers We mustn’t give up on that ideal. But nor should we ignore reality. A million British children have no meaningful relationship or regular

Saturday

Chas Newkey-Burden

David Beckham deserves his knighthood

Leonardo DiCaprio got his Oscar after 23 years. King Charles was crowned after 70 years. And now David Beckham will finally get his knighthood. Good things come to those who wait – and how Beckham has waited. It’s no secret that Goldenballs has been gasping for a knighthood for a long time, nor that the former England captain has worked tirelessly for one, but he’s not lacking in stamina or focus. As a teenager, he stayed behind on his own for hours after training to continue working on his technique. That attitude served him well in his epic quest for a knighthood.  Beckham was first put forward in 2011 after

Mike Pitts

The impossible politics of ‘ancestral remains’

In 2002 the remains of Sarah Baartman were buried in her South African homeland. She was among thousands of people around the world from whom body parts were collected in recent centuries and stored or displayed in museums. You might think, as tastes and norms change, returning these remains to their communities a simple thing. But a recent report from an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Afrikan Reparations urging such action has proved controversial among archaeologists. The APPG, chaired by Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, sets out its recommendations in a policy brief called Laying Ancestors to Rest. It calls for the outlawing of the sale of human remains, an inquiry into the use

Friday

Brian Mathew

Life is too precious for assisted dying

Assisted dying has attracted for me, and no doubt many other MPs, far more mail than any other issue. The weight of this mail on either side of the argument has been pretty much the same. It has also involved more surgery discussions than any other subject, and an online meeting for my constituents, which around a hundred people participated in. The interest and passion on both sides of the argument has been immense, but so has been the respect that all have given to this sensitive topic. Technically the bill’s proposers and the committee have done an impressive piece of work. They included a suggestion I made that social workers also be a part of the

Chas Newkey-Burden

What is the point of the RSPCA?

The secretly-filmed footage is a horror show. Hens are desperately trying to escape as they suffocate in a gas chamber. The birds, which are being killed for supermarket meat because they’re past their egg-laying days, gasp for breath. They appear to cry out as they die slowly. The floor of the gas chamber is littered with dead bodies. The RSPCA increasingly feels like a relic that has lost its way Should we phone the RSPCA? Oh, someone already did. The animal welfare charity’s response? While it acknowledged that the footage was deeply upsetting, it said that using carbon dioxide to gas chickens was permitted under RSPCA welfare standards: ‘This can

Kristina Murkett

The sad decline of reading

At secondary school open days, English teachers are always asked the same questions by anxious parents of year six students: How do I get my child to read more? Why has my child suddenly stopped reading? What books would you recommend to make reading less of a chore? For too many children (and adults), reading has become like swimming upstream This apprehension is not surprising. Reading enjoyment among children and young people has fallen to its lowest level in two decades, according to research by the National Literacy Trust. The decline is particularly pronounced in teenage boys, of whom only a quarter said they enjoyed reading in their spare time.

Sean Thomas

Sean Thomas, John Power, Susie Mesure, Olivia Potts and Rory Sutherland

22 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Sean Thomas reflects on the era of lads mags (1:07); John Power reveals those unfairly gaming the social housing system (6:15); Susie Moss reviews Ripeness by Sarah Moss (11:31); Olivia Potts explains the importance of sausage rolls (14:21); and, Rory Sutherland speaks in defence of the Trump playbook (18:09).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Dominic Cummings

Westminster must fall

Dominic Cummings delivered a Pharos Lecture in Oxford this week on why western regimes are in crisis. Here is an edited transcript of his speech: The old political parties, the old Whitehall institutions, the old media, the old universities, the old courts constitute a political regime. This regime has become cancerous. The cancer has metastasised and the cancer is attacking everything healthy in the country; all the healthy institutions and healthy impulses are the target of Whitehall. If you imagine our ancestors who built our civilisation over generations, looking at a sample of recent years, what would they see? They’d see the regime fighting to maintain secrecy of the vast

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

How good was Brian Wilson?

I recently did an online quiz to name the 100 biggest selling pop and rock acts in the USA. The Beatles came top – the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Queen and so on, along with the homegrown stuff: Elvis, the Eagles and Chicago. Noticeable by their complete absence were the Beach Boys. In the late sixties and early seventies they were often considered superior artists to the Beatles by American critics. I don’t think many would have that view now. It is not so much that their stock has fallen, simply that they now seem a rather lovely idiosyncrasy rather than at the very top of the division. Wilson was,

Alexander Larman

The tragedy of Brian Wilson’s life

The late Brian Wilson, who has died aged 82, once had his songs, which included modern-day classics such as ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘Good Vibrations’, described as ‘pocket symphonies to God’. For just about any other artist, such a description would be grandiloquent tosh. Yet in the case of Wilson, who struggled with personal demons that all but consumed him after a brief, brilliant flourish of early success, such praise is entirely justified. It is little wonder that his friend and rival Paul McCartney was inspired to write Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band after hearing the Beach Boys’ masterpiece Pet Sounds for the first time. That album was thrillingly

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why isn’t the BBC telling us what caused the Ballymena riots?

Does anyone know what’s actually happening in Ballymena, in Northern Ireland? If you’ve just been following the news on the BBC, it’s actually quite hard to work out what has led to the violence which has injured at least 32 police officers. The initial news bulletins told us that there rioting youths were protesting about a sexual attack on a girl and that two teenage boys were in custody facing charges. My first thought – reverting to the Troubles – was that there was a sectarian element to the whole thing. But we also learned that the police condemned the riots as racist thuggery; so, not sectarianism, it seems, but

Louise Perry

Porn Britannia, Xi’s absence & no more lonely hearts?

47 min listen

OnlyFans is giving the Treasury what it wants – but should we be concerned? ‘OnlyFans,’ writes Louise Perry, ‘is the most profitable content subscription service in the world.’ Yet ‘the vast majority of its content creators make very little from it’. So why are around 4 per cent of young British women selling their wares on the site? ‘Imitating Bonnie Blue and Lily Phillips – currently locked in a competition to have sex with the most men in a day – isn’t pleasant.’ OnlyFans gives women ‘the sexual attention and money of hundreds and even thousands of men’. The result is ‘a cascade of depravity’ that Perry wouldn’t wish on