Society

Sunday

Alexander Larman

The Royal Family must be careful with Kate

If this year’s Remembrance Sunday was unusually affecting, it was in large part due to the presence of both the King and the Princess of Wales at the service. After one of the hardest years for the monarchy in living memory, surpassing even the so-called ‘annus horribilis’ of 1992, there is hope that, as 2024 draws to a close, business as usual has been resumed – as far as it can be. The King has been dutifully pursuing his obligations for some time now – including a high-profile recent visit to Australia – but it was Catherine’s appearance that most people have been eagerly anticipating. Catherine may be the Firm’s

Patrick West

The strange death of English literature

The interest in reading books and the appreciation of English literature is at a nadir. This week it was revealed that only 35 per cent of eight to 18-year-olds enjoy reading in their spare time. The finding, by the National Literacy Trust, represents more than an 8 per cent per cent drop on last year, and the lowest level ever recorded by the charity since it began surveying children about their reading habits, 19 years ago. The drop has been especially pronounced among boys. It also emerged that Canterbury Christ Church University is to scrap degrees in English literature because of a lack of demand in applicants. The establishment, in

David Christopher Kaufman

Trump’s plan to make America safe again

Donald Trump’s critics like to paint his supporters as hardcore right-wingers. The truth is rather plainer: many of those who voted for Trump are refugees from the conservative establishment desperate for a leader unafraid to speak their truth.  We Americans are scared. Literally  Shamed by the elites, mocked for their beliefs – sidelined by rising ‘wokeness’ and DEI-culture for being white or straight or male – they saw in Trump a man-of-action sympathetic to their back-to-basics worldview. Tired of being told what to say and how to feel, Trump’s supporters were ready to reclaim their voices in the safest space possible: the ballot box. The anti-elitist populism that swept Trump

Matthew Lynn

Elon Musk’s support for Donald Trump is a masterstroke

Elon Musk contributed huge sums of money. He campaigned relentlessly. And his social media network X provided a platform for the candidate. Of all the architects of Donald Trump’s return to the White House this week, arguably none was more influential than Musk, and certainly none were playing for such high stakes. If he had lost, the X owner would have faced a furious regulatory backlash. As it happens, however, the election has been a triumph for Musk – and will make him more powerful than ever. Even from this side of the pond, it was hard to escape Musk’s presence during the US election. The entrepreneur behind Tesla and

Saturday

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, Sean Thomas, Imogen Yates, Books of the Year II, and Alan Steadman

30 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Paul Wood analyses what a Trump victory could mean for the Middle East (1:16); Sean Thomas gets a glimpse of a childless future while travelling in South Korea (8:39); in search of herself, Imogen Yates takes part in ‘ecstatic dance’ (15:11); a second selection of our books of the year from Peter Parker, Daniel Swift, Andrea Wulf, Claire Lowdon, and Sara Wheeler (20:30); and notes on the speaking clock from the voice himself, Alan Steadman (25:26).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The triumph of Mr and Mrs Badenoch

When we used to think of Tory marriages, we mostly thought of when they went horribly wrong – when the Honourable Member was caught with his trousers down, as when, in 1992, David Mellor was found ‘in flagrante’ with a resting ‘actress’ who saw fit to sell her story to a tabloid newspaper. The ghastly Mellor made not just his poor wife and children, but his poor wife’s poor parents all line up grinning like chimps by a five-bar gate to prove how solid his marriage was. (‘A five-bar-gate moment’ is still press slang for displays of fake domestic bliss by shameless politicians, while the ceaseless self-serving confessions of the

Friday

Lara Brown

Labour must learn from Kamala Harris’s transgender muddle

Donald Trump’s remarkable election victory has been rightly attributed to the long shadow of inflation combined with mass illegal immigration across the southern border. While these factors dominated the national swing, an under-discussed element of the Republican campaign was the relentless targeting of voters in swing states with paid advertising linking Kamala Harris to radical trans ideology. Why was this – and what lessons should be drawn for Labour in the UK? The ads were simple. Their tagline: ‘Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.’ The ads were simple. Their tagline: ‘Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.’ They showed clips of her, from

Simon Cook Simon Cook

Why do so many private school students get extra time in exams?

Are independent schools gaming the system to give a disproportionate advantage to their pupils in exams? That’s one possible inference from a new data release from Ofqual (the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation) on access arrangements for school exams. The release sheds light on adjustments designed so that students with disabilities aren’t disadvantaged in assessments. This might include, for example, papers in braille for a blind student or allowing a student with dyslexia to use a word processor. Giving a pupil 25 per cent extra time to complete an exam is the most common adjustment schools can provide. The reasons commonly provided for the adjustment included English being a second language, physical disabilities that

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Did Christianity create secular humanism?

33 min listen

Since the election of an overwhelmingly secular Labour government, people who describe themselves as humanists have a spring in their step: for example, there’s a prospect that humanist weddings will be legally recognised in England and Wales (they already are in Scotland). But what exactly is a humanist? Definitions vary and there’s a heated debate about to what extent the ethical but firmly atheist beliefs of the rather loosely organised modern humanist movement are descended from Christianity. In this episode of Holy Smoke we’ll hear from Andrew Copson, CEO of Humanists UK since 2010 & President of Humanists International, and the theologian and Spectator contributor Theo Hobson, author of God created Humanism:

Alexander Larman

It’s hard not to feel sorry for Prince William

For all his wealth and privilege, it is hard to imagine wanting to be Prince William. Not only was he irrevocably changed by his mother’s tragic death when he was aged 15, but the past year alone has seen his wife and father diagnosed with cancer. His ongoing estrangement from his embarrassing younger brother continues despite the two of them having been in the same room together on at least one occasion. Added to this, an invasive and embarrassing journalistic investigation into his and his father’s landholdings over the weekend has contributed to a sense that the royals exist on an entirely separate plain to the rest of us. With

Thursday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Trump’s comeback, Labour’s rural divide, and World of Warcraft

37 min listen

This week: King of the Hill You can’t ignore what could be the political comeback of the century: Donald Trump’s remarkable win in this week’s US election. The magazine this week carries analysis about why Trump won, and why the Democrats lost, from Freddy Gray, Niall Ferguson and Yascha Mounk, amongst others. To make sense of how Trump became only the second President in history to win non-consecutive terms, we’re joined by the journalist Jacqueline Sweet and Cliff Young, president of polling at Ipsos (00:58). Next: is Labour blind to rural communities? The changes to inheritance tax for farmers are one of the measures from Labour’s budget that has attracted the

Douglas Murray

The problem with Dawn Butler

We hear a lot about white supremacy these days. But for some reason we rarely hear about black supremacy. I wonder why? There’s a lot more of it around. For Butler, describing someone as white or as trying to be white is clearly a great insult While it is vanishingly difficult to find an overt white supremacist in British public life, it is extremely easy to identify their black counterparts. As exhibit A I would present the Labour MP Dawn Butler. I have written about her once before, in 2020, when Ms Butler was in a car that was stopped by police. At the time I speculated that the coppers

Alan Steadman

My time as the speaking clock

Ask young people today if they know that they can dial a number to hear the time and you would probably be met with blank stares. Why would you pay to phone a speaking clock when the time is right there in front of you on your watch or phone screen? However, if you were young in bygone days you may have memories of getting parental permission to phone ‘TIM’ and hear somebody telling the time… precisely. In fact, every year millions of people still phone this service – now the BT Speaking Clock – almost 90 years after its introduction. It was launched by the Post Office on 24

Toby Young Toby Young

Did I deny my son a shot at the Premier League?

When my youngest son Charlie was seven he was talent-spotted by a QPR scout who saw him playing football in the park and invited to try out for the junior academy. I struggled to take this seriously – he still couldn’t ride a bicycle – but duly turned up at a ‘sports academy’ in Willesden, a secondary school, where the trials were held. To my astonishment, a QPR coach told me Charlie had potential and offered to enrol him in a programme that involved spending two hours every Wednesday evening at this school. This wasn’t the junior academy, but a level below. Charlie was keen and after talking it over

Nicholas Farrell

The slippery business of catching a snake

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna It is strange how events elide and create a pattern whose significance remains elusive. I had just returned from a raid under the cover of the night on a huge field near our house a mile from the sea. I had about 50kg of ripe tomatoes in plastic bags in the back of my battered old seven-seater Land Rover Defender and was wondering if, as an impoverished father of six, I could use the Thomist defence: ‘It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another’s property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

How to buy a house that isn’t on the market

There are many, mutually reinforcing causes of the property crisis: it is too easy to borrow; there are too many people; there aren’t enough houses; what houses do exist are in the wrong place; and many houses have the wrong people living in them. Solutions exist to all of these, some of which involve building and some of which don’t. In south-east England it is not uncommon to find people living in£1 million homes who are skint Today we are going to focus on the fifth problem. Too many people are living in houses which are too big for them. In south-east England it is not uncommon to find people

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can we get our messy little boys excused from formal lunches?

Q. To my surprise I have been asked to give a eulogy at the funeral of someone I knew only quite well. I accepted more out of embarrassment than for any other reason but I will feel rather bogus delivering this encomium when there will be much closer friends present who may rightly be annoyed by my taking on this commission. Advice, Mary? – Name and address withheld A. Your name, which has not actually been withheld from Dear Mary, suggests you may have been chosen for status reasons. A funeral is not a time to be mean-spirited however, and the key thing to remember about a eulogy is that

Bruce Anderson

How Maggie took her whisky

The whirligig of time brings in his… astonishments. Who would have thought it? Even a couple of decades ago, the notion that the Tory party could be led by a black woman would have seemed incredible. I remember 1975, and the doubts that were expressed about Margaret Thatcher: much louder than any adverse comment about Kemi Badenoch now. There seemed to be a widespread belief that the country was simply not ready for a female PM. When she was PM, she had to be dissuaded from serving English wine in No. 10 I recall a lunch with Barbara Castle not long after the 1979 election. A former street-fighting termagant, she

Melissa Kite

My run-in with Greta Thunderpants

The anger management counsellor stormed through the door and shouted at me to turn the heating up. Hello to you too, I thought, but I was polite because I realise we are going to get difficult customers doing B&B in West Cork, where tourists come from all over the world. At first, however, I didn’t know that this woman storming round my house was a psychotherapist. I just thought she was spectacularly rude. She was wearing a woolly hat and big coat, even though it was a typically mild West Cork autumn day, about 17°C. She got right in my face as she declared the house too cold at 11