Society

Monday

Druin Burch

Why are world leaders shocked by the Bondi Beach attack?

Micheál Martin, Ireland’s Taoiseach, said he is shocked by the anti-Semitic slaughter on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, is shocked too. So is Christopher Luxon, the prime minister of New Zealand. Yet there is really nothing shocking about the Australian attack. Insanity, as the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Australia’s ABC News is reporting this morning that one of the Bondi Beach gunmen was previously investigated over his ties to a Islamic State (IS) terrorism cell. An Isis flag was also reportedly found in the car of the gunmen. Islamic terrorist

Stephen Daisley

Why was this innocent doctor ever investigated for her 'anti-trans' posts?

This one has everything: drag queens, swastikas, X and freedom of speech. Dr Anne Woodhouse is a clinical psychologist in Inverness who has just been cleared of misconduct charges by her regulatory body, the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCPTS). The accusation was that Dr Woodhouse’s ‘fitness to practise is impaired by reason of misconduct’ because of two posts and three ‘likes’ from an X account she co-owned. Woodhouse denied all charges against her. Dr Anne Woodhouse is a clinical psychologist in Inverness who has just been cleared of misconduct charges by her regulatory body Post one: ‘The majority of trans women are the result of men’s sexual fetishes,

Daniel Norcross

What Australia's tabloids make of England's Ashes failure

No doubt even the cricket averse among you will be aware at some level that the England team is currently undergoing its traditional four yearly mauling at the hands of gleeful Australians under unforgiving, sun-drenched skies Down Under. Fans back home are enduring miserable nights, pock-marked by false hope, fever dreams and regret for engaging in the whole inevitable business of sporting despair but with added insomnia thrown in for good measure. Failure in Australia means that really it doesn’t matter what England do until they win The results on the pitch have once again been dismal, but in fairness to this team, they are simply following a trend that

Sunday

Rod Liddle

Why did Robin Ince have to leave The Infinite Monkey Cage?

It was with mild pleasure that I read of the decision of Robin Ince to end his association with the Radio 4 programme, The Infinite Monkey Cage. I enjoy the show, but have never been entirely sure what Ince brings to it. He is not terribly funny, nor erudite, although what he lacks in those qualities he makes for in self-regard. He is not terribly funny, nor erudite, although what he lacks in those qualities he makes for in self-regard Why did he go? Apparently the BBC think he is too outspoken on various political issues, such as Gaza and trans rights. As you might imagine, Ince is wrong (and

Rosie Lewis

The care system isn’t built for Afghan teenagers

The sentencing this week of Jan Jahanzeb and Israr Niazal for the rape of a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa has reignited the immigration debate. The two 17-year-old Afghans arrived in the country by small boat, claimed to be minors, and were duly absorbed into the British care system before they committed this horrific crime. We continue to ask ordinary families, often single women like me, renting modest semis, to absorb adolescents who may speak no English, observe strict religious codes, and carry more trauma than most adults ever will But behind the justified outrage, a quieter, more uncomfortable truth has been forgotten: the care system we ask to absorb

Geoff Hill

The story of the Battle of Blood River

Johannesburg, the wealthiest city in Africa and home to more than 12,000 millionaires is about to become a ghost town. Just over a week before Christmas, there’s a lull in the traffic as homes in both the suburbs and the sprawling black townships empty out. On 16 December, the Day of Reconciliation marks 187 years since the Battle of Blood River when a party of 464 voortrekkers or white pioneers who had left British rule in the Cape to search for a homeland, moved east and passed through the Zulu kingdom. The trekkers, born in Africa of Dutch and French descent and speaking a blend that would become known as Afrikaans, had

Saturday

Patrick West

Gen Z can't cope with the real world

Everyone recognises that teenagers today are unduly anxious. Many people attribute this to a rise in smartphone use. Some even blame an education system that places too much pressure on young people. Yet the acute dysfunction of adolescents and young adults these days could have a more simple, and more serious, explanation: they don’t spend enough time outdoors mixing with other human beings. The more you shy away from human contact, the more shy you become of humanity A study commissioned by an online school, Minerva Virtual Academy, to explore the emotional, social and physical factors that make school attendance so troubling for some today, has found that half of

Alexander Larman

How candid is King Charles being about his cancer treatment?

The news that King Charles’s cancer treatment will be moving into a new phase as of next year is undeniably welcome, both for him on a personal level and for those who have been anxiously wishing him well since his diagnosis in January 2024. He offered the nation an update on his situation last night in a televised message, broadcast on Channel 4 as part of its ‘Stand Up To Cancer’ special programming, and appeared to speak candidly about what he called ‘my cancer journey’. In best public service broadcasting fashion, Charles said: ‘Your life – or the life of someone you love – may depend upon it.’ During his

Brendan O’Neill

Primal Scream's Nazi Star of David stunt is unforgivable

It’s hard, in 2025, to call out anti-Semitism. You’ll find yourself besieged by digital armies of apologists for bigotry. ‘It’s just criticism of Israel!’, they’ll wail if you express alarm about someone calling the Jewish State a ‘Nazi entity’ or protesters carrying a Jew effigy complete with horns and bloodstained mouth. It’s all the rage these days to see racism everywhere. But anti-Semitism? You spot that at your peril. How many of those sweaty music fans clocked the horror of what was happening on stage? Yet surely no one will defend what Primal Scream did at the Roundhouse in Camden on Monday? Surely even those craven excuse-makers for Jew-baiting, the

Druin Burch

How terror triumphed at the Christmas market

Mulled wine and Heckler & Koch assault rifles don’t belong together, except in Christmas films like Die Hard. Festive visitors to Christmas markets in Berlin, London or Strasbourg this year will notice the pairing all the same. Concrete blocks surround fairy lights, and the scent of cloves and cinnamon wafts over armed police carrying submachine guns. Concrete blocks surround fairy lights, and the scent of cloves and cinnamon wafts over armed police carrying submachine guns Since an Islamist drove a lorry into the Breitscheidplatz market in Berlin in December 2016, killing twelve and injuring dozens, we deck the halls with blast protection. There are still tacky wooden chalets selling sausages, but

Harry Mount

What happened to the Oxford interview?

This week, there’s a strange absence in Oxford. For years, in December, you’d suddenly see a strange invasion of the streets of the university town. White-faced, terrified 17-and 18-year-olds, preparing for their university interviews. Colleges, tea rooms and restaurants were haunted by these poor, clever souls, mumbling equations and gerundives to themselves. Well, no more. If candidates clam up on screen, it’s much harder to respond to even the kindest don, hundreds of miles away The teenage geniuses are still applying to Oxford – but from the comfort of their bedrooms at home. In-person interview was temporarily halted, quite understandably, in 2020 because of Covid. But Covid came and went.

Eliot Wilson

Can Britain afford Aukus?

‘Full steam ahead’: That was the verdict on the Aukus alliance from Defence Secretary John Healey after the United States concluded its review of the alliance this week. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered the good news to Healey and Richard Marles, Australia’s Minister for Defence, in Washington this week. But there’s a catch: with no mention of increased defence spending in last month’s Budget, does the UK really have the money to fund the grand plans Aukus commits it to? This renewed commitment to Aukus by America is good news and could not have been taken for granted. When the Pentagon announced in June that it was undertaking

James Heale

Christmas I: James Heale, Gyles Brandreth, Avi Loeb, Melanie McDonagh, Mary Wakefield, Richard Bratby & Rupert Hawksley

45 min listen

On this week’s special Christmas edition of Spectator Out Loud – part one: James Heale wonders if Keir Starmer will really have a happy new year; Gyles Brandreth discusses Her Majesty The Queen’s love of reading, and reveals which books Her Majesty has personally recommended to give this Christmas; Avi Loeb explains why a comet could be a spaceship; Melanie McDonagh compares Protestant and Catholic ghosts; Mary Wakefield explains what England’s old folk songs can teach us; Richard Bratby says there is joy to be found in composers’ graves; and, Rupert Hawksley provides his notes on washing up. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Friday

Mike Pitts

Were the Romans good for Britain?

Since the Romans themselves wrote about the subject, we have a clear idea of the good things they did for Britain. Roads, towns, stone and brick buildings, plumbing, writing (IOUs), vineyards and leather bikinis were some of the many gifts of what used to be called Rome’s civilising power. Thanks to archaeology, we know some of these advances were less dramatic than thought – there were Iron Age towns and roads in Britain before the invaders arrived, for example. Now new evidence shows they had a clear negative impact on the native population. As happened centuries later during the Industrial Revolution, the Roman conquest led people to move into towns

Henry Donovan

When will Europe's leaders wake up to the Russian threat?

Europe’s leaders flocked to London this week, determined to show the world a united front. Like school boys at a bus stop, Ukraine’s president Zelensky stood beside Keir Starmer, German chancellor Friedrich Merz and French leader Emmanuel Macron in a carefully staged tableau of Western resolve. It was designed to send a message to Moscow: Europe is ready. Yet the spectacle only highlighted the uncomfortable truth: Europe talks like a military power, but behaves like a political debating society. The continent insists it has woken up to the new reality, yet it still refuses to build the armies required to confront it. Europe talks like a military power, but behaves

Lara Prendergast

From The Queen to Bonnie Blue: The Spectator’s Christmas Edition 2025 

40 min listen

The Spectator’s bumper Christmas issue is a feast for all, with offerings from Nigel Farage, Matthew McConaughey and Andrew Strauss to Dominic Sandbrook, David Deutsch and Bonnie Blue – and even from Her Majesty The Queen. To take us through the Christmas Edition, host Lara Prendergast is joined by deputy political editor James Heale, associate editor Damian Thompson and writer of the Spectator’s new morning newsletter, Morning Press, Angus Colwell.  They discuss: the state of British politics as we leave 2025 behind, and who will have a worse year ahead between Kemi and Keir; what physicist David Deutsch’s enthusiasm for humanity can teach us all in the age of AI; why the Sherlock Holmes

Thursday

Michael Simmons

Is the superflu really ‘unprecedented’?

The NHS is facing a ‘worst-case scenario’ for flu this winter. That was the verdict of Professor Meghana Pandit, national medical director for the NHS, this morning as she warned the tsunami of ‘super-flu’ cases sweeping the UK is ‘unprecedented’. Worse still, the peak of this wave is ‘not in sight’. Her warning came as NHS figures revealed the number of patients in hospital with flu in England is up 55 per cent compared with last week – meaning an average of 2,660 patients are in hospital every day. Internal NHS forecasts predict that, by the end of the week, that number could have risen as high as 8,000 –

Paul Burke

Why the McDonald’s AI ad flopped

Be afraid, be very afraid. That’s what we’d been told in the advertising and commercial production industry. AI is coming for your job. It’ll be faster than you, more creative than you and certainly more cost-effective than you. Well, if the McDonald’s new – but swiftly deleted – Christmas ad was anything to go by, we haven’t, for the moment, got too much to worry about.    The completely AI ad was produced for the Netherlands but thanks to YouTube, has been been met with a mix of ridicule and revulsion all over the world. Ridicule because its images are so badly rendered and revulsion because those images are also quite creepy and disturbing.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYz-5cL-BhA The

Melanie McDonagh

What humans can learn from mice about monogamy

Time was, we took lessons from brute creation. Medieval bestiaries, books of beasts, weren’t simply descriptions of animals; these compendiums of their home lives and habits, mostly derived from a text called the Physiologus of the second century, were for the edification of the reader. The upshot of the research is that we are roughly two third monogamous, which puts us way ahead of dolphins and chimps ‘But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of the air and they shall tell thee’, said the book of Job. The lion, being brave and kingly, represented Christ. Some animals had bad characteristics to avoid, like the

Flora Watkins

I'll miss the unintended hilarity of the round robin

‘Dearly beloved friends and family, well, what a year it’s been! Where to start?! The big event for us – aside from nurturing our preternaturally gifted children and enjoying multiple holidays in exotic locations – was the “K” for Rupert in the King’s Birthday Honours list. Mingling with the Beckhams at Buck House after the investiture was an experience we won’t forget in a hurry!!! Meanwhile, Sarah’s novel about Thucydides is doing rather well in the Kindle charts and Agatha, Mungo and Antigone continue to impress…’ A few years ago, by this point in Advent, many Spectator readers would have received a pile of similar missives tucked into Christmas cards.