Society

Friday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Kim Leadbeater Edition

35 min listen

Kim Leadbeater has been an MP since winning the Batley & Spen by-election for Labour in 2021. She was elected to the constituency that her sister, Jo Cox, had served until she was murdered during the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign. Having pursued a career in health and fitness, Kim hadn’t initially intended on a life in politics, but she went on to champion social and political cohesion through the Jo Cox Foundation and the More in Common initiative. More recently, she has led the campaign to legalise Assisted Dying. The Bill is currently making its way through Parliament and has been described as the biggest social reform in a generation. On

Mark McGinness

The enduring message of Anthony Powell’s work

Anthony Powell died on 28 March 2000, twenty-five years ago today. It is also fifty years since he completed his 12-novel series, A Dance to the Music of Time, written over a quarter of a century. How well has this unique opus worn? With a title taken from Poussin’s masterpiece of the four seasons, Dance, has been described as ‘Proust Englished by P.G. Wodehouse’. But perhaps Powell’s closely-observed study of 20th-century bohemacy has suffered from being too real: its texture a trifle tweedy; its colours slightly faded. Anthony Powell, the novelist, deserves to be read Powell was not an escapist like Wodehouse; a moralist like Orwell, nor a satirist like

Dwayne Ryan Menezes

J.D. Vance’s trip to Greenland is deeply insensitive

This afternoon, Vice President J.D. Vance is set to touch down in Greenland after deciding to join his wife Usha on her trip there. In a video on X, he explained that: ‘There is so much excitement about Usha’s visit to Greenland this Friday that I decided that I did not want her to have all that fun by herself, so I am going to join her. I’m going to visit some of our guardians in the Space Force on the northwest coast of Greenland and also just check out what is going on with the security there of Greenland.’ Vance accused previous US administrations and Denmark of having ignored

Ferghane Azihari

Is Macron scared of Algeria?

Emmanuel Macron couldn’t have been clearer about why he wants to boost defence spending: ‘We want to protect peace in Europe and thus deter anyone from attacking us,’ France’s president said last week. After years of hesitation, during which the Russian threat was underestimated, at least in Western Europe, it’s about time France is taking defence seriously. Algeria’s rulers are clear on what they think of France. But Macron, who talks tough on Russia, stops short of retaliating Macron wants to raise defence spending to 3 or 3.5 per cent of the country’s GDP, up from 2.1 per cent. But Macron’s resolute stance against the Russian threat would look more

Stephen Pollard

Three cheers to Wigmore Hall for breaking free from Arts Council England

Tonight, I’m going to hear Joyce DiDonato, one of the greatest living sopranos, sing Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise. On Saturday afternoon, I’ll be at a masterclass given by Gautier Capuçon, a glorious cellist. And on Sunday night, I’m seeing him play all five of Beethoven’s cello sonatas. I tell you this not (just) to make you jealous, but because all three concerts will be at London’s Wigmore Hall, which this week told Arts Council England (ACE) where it could put its annual grant of £350,000. ACE really does suggest that the problem with opera is that it is a form of classical music The Arts Council was the successor to

Thursday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

How could Holyrood not mourn Christina McKelvie?

A parliament is an odd place. It’s the arena where clashing worldviews come to cross swords and there’s low and ugly skullduggery. In most other workplaces, political differences are a topic to be avoided, but the job of a parliamentarian is to spend day after day with colleagues whose values they abhor and whose ideas they consider harmful. For all the florid patter back in 1999, about how the Scottish parliament’s electoral system, working practices and even semi-circular chamber would fashion a more collegial politics, Holyrood has proved every bit as factional and partisan as the House of Commons. Yet, like the Commons, exposure and proximity to political foes engenders

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Farewell Just Stop Oil, you won’t be missed

So it’s a not-so-fond farewell to Just Stop Oil, the soup-throwing, hand-gluing environmentalist troupe. According to JSO activist Hannah Hunt, who helped kick off the group’s campaign of infamy back in 2022, she and her comrades are calling it a day.  The reason? They’ve just been too successful. ‘Just Stop Oil’s demand to end new oil and gas is now government policy, making us one of the most successful civil-resistance campaigns in recent history’, says Hunt. ‘But it’s time to change.’  Tragically, they haven’t given up altogether. They intend to work on new groups and strategies to deliver the ‘revolution’ they believe we need to ‘protect us from the coming storms’

Joanna Williams

Why are firefighters painting their nails to ‘redefine masculinity’?

Call me old-fashioned but if I ever have the misfortune to be stuck inside a burning building, I want a fireman to come to my rescue. As the temperature rises, I won’t give two hoots as to whether my particular fireman is black, white, gay, straight, male or female. I just want someone brave enough to ignore the flames and strong enough to carry me down flights of stairs. A bit of Stoicism might be good too; I don’t want to have to hand out tissues to my weeping saviour. But a firefighter with a decent manicure? I’ll be honest, that comes way down my wish list. Perhaps I have

Emma Thompson

What the CofE needs from Justin Welby’s successor

The Church of England website features a public consultation closing on 28th March on what qualities should be looked for in the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury. But aren’t the Church’s staff meant to be the experts on God? The Church, with all its committees, seems adept at diffusing and side-stepping responsibility. Could this be a fake consultation to make people think they have a voice? Then, whatever controversy nominees cause, the selectors can say, ‘Oh well, it’s what the public told us to do’ – with nobody able to prove otherwise. Moreover, respondents might not take seriously the task of choosing someone to follow in St Augustine’s footsteps. After all, in 2016, a

Simone Hanna

The collapse of 23andMe spells trouble for a part-neanderthal like me

Those of us who signed up for DNA testing kits from 23andMe did so thinking we’d unlock deep ancestral secrets. Maybe we’d discover we had royal blood, or finally settle the family debate over whether great-grandpa Dmitri was really Kenyan after all. Often, the results were far less conclusive: the tests revealed that we were 12 per cent Neanderthal, distantly related to Genghis Khan’s less-heralded cousin, Mungo, and possibly allergic to liquorice. Not uninteresting, but not that exciting, either. The tests revealed we were 12 per cent Neanderthal and distantly related to Genghis Khan’s less-heralded cousin, Mungo Now, though, our DNA is the source of high drama, and no small

Andy Preston

Who doesn’t want a free Eton education? Labour, apparently

Labour’s decision to add VAT to school fees shows that the party has an irrational hatred of posh schools. Hiking fees might bring in relatively little money, but that hardly matters when there is a class war to be fought. While the targeting of private schools has grabbed the headlines, another story – with equally disastrous consequences – has gone under the radar. Hellbent on hurting private schools, the government has made a decision that will deny our brightest kids the best possible future. For years, Eton College, the world’s most famous school, had hoped to make a difference in overlooked English towns, in a partnership with Star Academies, a

Michael Gove

Is Simon Heffer a security threat?

Airport security was much on my mind last Friday afternoon. I had been due to fly from Heathrow to Zurich that morning, but the substation fire meant a switch to an afternoon departure from London City Airport. City is a business-oriented operation in every respect and one of its many efficient features is a baggage-checking regime that does not require you to separate your 100ml bottles of shampoo and shaving foam into a plastic ziplock bag. The X-ray machine and associated sensors are supposed to penetrate your luggage and identify anything dangerous with scientific precision. My heart sank when my carry-on bag was shunted off the conveyor belt and a

The Spectator

Letters: The futility of net zero

Not zero Sir: I was delighted to see your leading article about the impossibility of net zero (‘Carbon candour’, 22 March). We need now to expose its futility. The UK’s efforts will make no difference at all to global temperature. Whether it is naturally occurring or produced through coal burning, there is not the slightest chance of stopping the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (not ‘carbon’, which is nasty black stuff). Guy Liardet Meonstoke, Hampshire Ideological bullets Sir: ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you’, they say. But by biting the hand of business with her Budget, Rachel Reeves has shown total recklessness (‘The Rachel capers’, 22 March). By killing

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

America is a moral idea or it is nothing

Harold Wilson once declared that the Labour party ‘is a moral crusade or it is nothing’, a proposition whose logical consequence is troubling. Returning now from the United States, the comparable proposition both haunts and comforts me, because America is not nothing. Travelling through several Midwest and western states, I’ve been struck by how many Americas there are even in one region, how different they are and how, like the individual wooden staves of a great barrel, they depend upon the metal hoops that bind them. If the hoop stays strong, tight and in place, the construction is formidable. Loosen that steel belt, and the staves fall into a useless

Douglas Murray

JFK conspiracy theories won’t die

One of the most controversial things that can happen at any American table is to start talking about the JFK assassination and then say: ‘I think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.’ Thanks to decades of theories, counter-theories and Hollywood movies, a majority of the American public have for many years believed that there was a conspiracy to kill the 35th president. In their view, even if Lee Harvey Oswald was the gunman (which some dispute) then he must have been acting as part of a larger plot involving the CIA, FBI, LBJ, KGB, KKK or KFC. OK, I threw in the last one to check you were still with me.

Nick Newman

How Dr Seuss took on American isolationism

A cartoon is doing the rounds online, critiquing American isolationism and the reluctance to engage with the war in Europe. It lampoons the head-in-the-sand myopia of the America First movement – and feels highly relevant today. But this cartoon isn’t new; it is from 1941. And its targets aren’t Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, but Charles Lindbergh and Joseph Kennedy. The cartoon, while acerbic, has a cosy, familiar quality reminiscent of children’s books – for good reason. It was drawn by Dr Seuss.   He was particularly critical of Lindbergh – an aviator hero, appeaser and possible Nazi sympathiser Long before the Cat donned his Hat and the Grinch stole Christmas,

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The Met’s misogyny

My friend Rose likes a drink. She lives on the same street as another friend in Camden and three or four times a year, when the weather warms up, she stands on her doorstep, smashed, and yells at the world. I don’t blame her. Rose has been through the mill. She’s a slight woman and she’s suffered at the hands of predatory men all her life. Perhaps the occasional shouting irritates the neighbours, but it’s only the same monologue most of them paid through the nose to hear Mark Rylance deliver on stage in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem: ‘I, Rooster John Byron, hereby place a curse/ Upon the Kennet and Avon

Peter Jones

How to live morally (according to the Romans)

‘Make America Great Again!’ cries Donald Trump. ‘Do Britain Down Again!’ (DOBRIDA!) screech our academic historical institutions. That was not the Roman way. In ad 31, Valerius Maximus completed his nine books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings of the Roman world. They were enormously popular and became a sort of handbook of Roman moral standards for imitation. While there were sections that castigated cruel, greedy, treacherous Romans who did not live up to the proper standards, most of the 91 chapter headings concentrate on those men and women who exhibited, e.g. endurance, moderation, generosity, compassion, humility, a capacity for friendship, respect for gods, the ability to face changes of fortune,

Toby Young Toby Young

How to be a Lord

At the end of my first day at the House of Lords, I staggered out with so many books and leaflets and three-ring binders I could barely see over the top. These were the official rules, what Walter Bagehot would have called the ‘dignified’ part of the constitution. But on top of these are the unwritten rules, which are twice as voluminous. Some people compare parliament to Hogwarts, and it’s true that there’s a ‘secret’ entrance in Westminster tube station. But Harry Potter didn’t get as many things wrong as me in his first term. Admittedly, some of the rules I’ve had difficulty mastering are pretty basic. When you enter

Mark Mason

The curious language of coins

Lewis Carroll used to travel with purses divided into separate compartments, each containing the exact number of coins he’d need for a particular transaction (train fare, porter, newspaper and so on). These days we have one bank card which gets tapped everywhere. The coinless society might be more convenient – but it’s also more boring. Coins are beautiful and fascinating. For centuries they were the only way most people knew what their monarch looked like. Henry VIII was nicknamed ‘Coppernose’ because of the way the silver coating on copper coins rubbed away, starting with his nose. Even Oliver Cromwell put himself on the currency (as a Roman emperor wearing a