Society

Thursday

Joan Collins

Am I a MAGA icon?

‘Traitor!’ the woman yelled at me the instant I entered the beautifully decorated living room of a famous actress. It was a Twelfth Night celebration, and the room was full of glamorous friends and acquaintances. ‘What?’ I replied, bemused. ‘That photo!’ she screamed, ‘How could you take that picture with all those Republicans?’ Over Christmas I had been to a dinner hosted by some good friends who happen to be Republicans. This, it turned out, was a great crime. I am a Tory but have many socialist friends and we get along just fine and have hearty and amusing conversations. Here in America, though, it seems Democrats and the Republicans

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The National Trust took the knee

In a recent interview, Hilary McGrady, the director-general of the National Trust, complains that ‘The culture wars we’re trying to grapple with are never something I supported’. I do believe her: she is not a political warrior. But what she does not acknowledge – or possibly does not understand – is that it was the wokeists within the National Trust’s staff, and the outsiders they commissioned to help them, who started the fight. There would have been no unhappiness among members if, to improve historical understanding of Trust properties, more attention had been given to the origins – good, bad or something in between – of the money which built

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer saved his favourite attack until the end at PMQs

Kemi Badenoch continued with her theme of ‘why can you trust anything the Prime Minister says’ at Prime Minister’s Questions today, covering the economy, the Chagos Islands, Tulip Siddiq and Gerry Adams. The Tory leader also claimed that Starmer was once again not answering the questions that she asked, which was true, but his replies were better than her questions.  Starmer said the Conservatives are ‘economic vandals and fantasists’ Starmer had obviously come armed with the surprisingly good inflation figures, but he also had a number of one liners and attacks that were more effective than those from Badenoch. These included the early description of the Conservatives as ‘economic vandals

Patrick West

The triumph and tragedy of Tony Slattery

Tony Slattery was outrageously funny. And he was funny because he was outrageous. The actor and comedian, who died yesterday aged 65, may have belonged to that unhappy category of performers who were ‘troubled’ – tormented by insecurities and afflicted by addiction – but he also joins that distinguished pantheon of entertainers who made their mark for their rude and bawdy humour. Slattery was described as a ‘lost anxious teddy bear’ Slattery first came to public attention in the late-1980s as a panellist on the Channel 4 improvisation show Whose Line Is Anyway?, a programme that entailed playing out scenes in the style of a movie, programme or genre decided by

Alexander Larman

The quiet bravery of Kate Middleton

It may only be halfway through January, but the two opposed branches of the younger royal family have both made their first significant public statements of the year. Meghan and Harry, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex came forward with a typically tone-deaf and self-aggrandising attack on Meta, which ended with a plug for the Archewell Foundation and reminded us all, after a relatively quiet 2024, how irritating their presence in public life continues to be. And then the Princess of Wales, who quietly and stoically spent much of the past year undergoing cancer treatment, visited a hospital and, matter-of-factly, announced that her illness is in remission.  Kate’s visit to the Royal Marsden

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Why did Keir Starmer handle the Tulip Siddiq furore so badly?

When the anti-corruption minister is accused of corruption by a foreign government and has no prospect of being able to shut the story down any time soon, it is perfectly obvious that her position is untenable. Yet Keir Starmer allowed the furore over Tulip Siddiq to run for several weeks before the obvious resolution – that she must step down from her ministerial role – was implemented.  The Tulip Siddiq furore may drop out of the headlines but it could return in a more virulent form Siddiq was named as a suspect in a corruption investigation by Bangladesh back on 19 December. Since then the controversy over the Hampstead and

Richard Ekins

How to stop Gerry Adams’s taxpayer-funded pay day

The government’s fealty to human rights law is not in doubt. Still, one might have hoped that the human rights lawyers who dominate this government – the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer KC and the Attorney General, Lord Hermer KC – would handle human rights law effectively, distinguishing weak from strong arguments and making a reasonable case for our national interest. The unfolding debacle in relation to cession of the Chagos Islands shows that this is not so. In bending heaven and earth to agree a treaty of cession with Mauritius before the looming change of political leadership in the United States, the government seems to have undersold the UK’s existing legal position,

Ben Goldsmith

It would be a huge mistake for Labour to dam the beavers

The Guardian is reporting that No. 10 is set to delay plans to release beavers into the wild, potentially because it is seen by officials as a ‘Tory legacy’. Could it be that Labour’s Steve Reed is set to join a long line of Defra ministers who, having promised finally to legalise the reintroduction of beavers into the wild, end up backpedalling under pressure from rural lobbyists who have long decided beavers have no place in the countryside? The assorted vested interests, farming representatives and rural power cliques who direct countryside policy from the shadows dislike beavers on account of their astonishingly poor understanding of how nature actually works. Their lack of

James Delingpole James Delingpole

The day I was heckled for speaking about the rape gangs

It’s odd being lionised for something you did so long ago you’d almost forgotten you were there. But this is what has been happening to me on social media these last few days, as a result of clips of me on a 2014 BBC3 political debate programme called Free Speech going viral. Free Speech was one of those slightly cringey ‘let’s make politics relevant to da yoof’ programmes once satirised on Not The Nine O’Clock News in a sketch called ‘Hey Wow’. Hardly anybody watched it at the time and I never expected it to resurface again. But it has suddenly become topical – and been seen by an order of magnitude more viewers –

Jenny Lindsay

The ‘self-cancellation’ trend taking over the literary world

The phenomenon that has blighted the live literature world over the last ten years could be classed as a ‘stooshie’, or ‘a big commotion’, in Scots. Indeed it feels rare for any books-based event or literary festival not to provoke one these days. The last decade has seen a huge increase in fractious warring in the world of books, driven in no small part by the use and abuse of the powers of social media by certain activist-writers. In my experience as a writer and former events organiser of two decades in Scotland, there has been a rising intolerance amongst a significant minority of often mid-career or even debut authors

Eliot Wilson

How much longer will Starmer back Reeves?

It’s not been a happy new year for Sir Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister’s Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq has been forced out following an anti-corruption investigation in Bangladesh. Siddiq’s job became untenable following questions over links to her aunt, the former prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina. Siddiq has denied wrongdoing and an independent investigation found that she had not breached the Ministerial Code, but it was clear over the weekend that Siddiq’s position was untenable. Starmer, however, bafflingly allowed to her to stay on until yesterday afternoon. ‘Starmer dithered and delayed to protect his close friend,’ says Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. It’s hard to disagree with that assessment. Reeves’

Chas Newkey-Burden

Starbucks and the hell of the modern café

Starbucks has announced that it is reversing its rule that allowed people to hang round in cafés in the United States even if they’d not bought anything. From 27 January, Americans will have to buy something or leave. Some people think that’s a bit harsh but it doesn’t go far enough: there are also plenty of paying customers that should be simply banned from cafés everywhere.  The first to be shown the door should be remote workers who rock up in the morning with their laptops, order a small coffee, grab the best table and jealously hog it all day long, nursing their solitary flat white and treating the place

Tuesday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Francis reveals himself to be a pope of two halves

The Pope’s autobiography is out and it’s still not entirely clear why. Carlo Musso, the ‘co-author’ of Hope: The Autobiography, says that it was originally intended to be published after his death, but on account of ‘the new Jubilee of Hope’ (the Jubilee Year), and the ‘circumstances of this moment’ (i.e. him not dying), it’s been brought forward. Truth to tell it reads a bit scrappily, more like a series of interviews, with occasional errors – the Arian heresy, for instance, is not the ‘Aryan’ heresy, presumably a Hitlerian thing. The book is up to date, taking on board his encounter with clerical sex abuse survivors in Belgium last year

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Europe’s car industry is under attack on all fronts

It is half a century since Britain’s native car industry embarked on its long, painful decline, precipitated by Austin Allegros with rear windows falling off, endless strikes over the length of tea breaks and terrible commercial decisions such as to cede the hatchback market to overseas competition. But where Britain led, Germany and France now seem to be following. How much longer before names like Peugeot, Renault, and even Volkswagen, either disappear or become reduced to mere badges affixed to Chinese-designed and produced vehicles? The retreat of the European car industry has cropped up from time to time in recent months. In October, Volkswagen announced, for the first time, its intention to

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Labour MPs turn on Starmer over grooming gangs

Will Keir Starmer have to change his tune on a public inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal? Just last week, the Prime Minister appeared to suggest those calling for a new inquiry into grooming gangs were jumping on a ‘far-Right bandwagon’. However, since then – and following a backlash over the comment – Starmer appears to be slowly changing his position. At Prime Minister’s Questions, Starmer suggested everyone was entitled to their own opinion on whether there should be an inquiry into the scandal between 1997 and 2013, which saw children as young as 11 raped and trafficked by gangs of men, predominantly of Pakistani descent. Champion is backed by

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The ‘grooming gangs’ delusion is finally being shattered

The re-eruption of the rape gangs scandal has shone a dazzlingly bright light on the language that makes us flinch and fluster, and clutch at euphemistic straws. For years, the mass sexual abuse of thousands of vulnerable girls in towns across England has been blamed on ‘grooming gangs’. But this euphemism hardly does justice to this appalling scandal. ‘Asian grooming gangs’ is a mealy-mouthed phrase In the last fortnight, there has been a shift to a different, more accurate term – ‘rape gangs’ – that better describes who was responsible. This change in terminology is long overdue. And while it offers few crumbs of comfort to the victims, it is

Alexander Larman

The Sussexes’ tone deaf attack on Meta

Who do the Duke and Duchess of Sussex think they are? Since their quasi-abdication from the royal family five years ago, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have seldom found a publicity angle that they were not prepared to exploit for their own personal (and commercial) gain. But the sheer effrontery of the statement that they have put out this week, criticising Meta for scaling back its fact-checking initiatives from public posts, takes some beating. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg declared that fact-checkers “have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US”. But this is not good enough for the Sussexes, and they have responded with vigour. The pair announced

Monday

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Charles Darwin and the zealotry of Just Stop Oil

Just when you thought it was safe to go to a museum, art gallery or World Heritage Site, Just Stop Oil has struck again. Having already defaced Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, Stonehenge and Magna Carta, the eco-activist group has decided to really hit the fossil-fuel industry where it hurts this time… by defacing Charles Darwin’s grave at Westminster Abbey. Take that, BP! Today, Alyson Lee, 66, and Di Bligh, 77, scratched ‘1.5 is dead!’ in orange chalk on Darwin’s marble gravestone, nestled in the north aisle of the nave of the Abbey. ‘We have passed the 1.5-degree threshold that was supposed to keep us safe’, proclaimed the activists, before explaining their target’s tenuous connection to their cause: ‘Darwin would be

Terry Barnes

Djokovic must forgive and forget his shoddy Covid experience in Australia

Another Australian Open tennis tournament, another Novak Djokovic media sensation. As play gets under way at Melbourne Park, Djokovic the showman has been working the Australian media, as well as doing a glossy spread for the upmarket US magazine, GQ. The common thread of his media commentary is his experience coming to the 2022 Australian Open when, as the Covid-19 pandemic still raged, the unvaccinated Djokovic was detained and deported after seeking to enter Melbourne, the city oppressed by arguably the most draconian lockdown and vaccination mandates in the world, let alone Australia. The Serbian star’s 2022 experience clearly gnaws at him Having initially been given an exemption to enter

Ammad Butt

Labour’s shake-up risks making the NHS even more bloated

Labour’s plan to reform elective care is nothing new. Successive governments over the last twenty years have tried and tested reform in the NHS and the result is a minefield to navigate for both patients and staff alike. The resulting bureaucracy has left doctors and patients baffled. The process can be mind-numbing and leaves doctors who just want to help patients despairing It’s no surprise then that doctors like me are sceptical about the government’s planned shake-up which was unveiled by Health Secretary Wes Streeting last week. While the changes are designed to ‘empower’ patients, it’s likely to leave them even more confused. The announcements include the expansion of ‘Community