Society

Thursday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The ECHR will never be reformed

It is more than nine years since I was suspended by the Labour party for – I think – a comment I made about Palestine. I had written: ‘If you handed over Israel to the Palestinians they would turn it into Somalia before you could say Yom Kippur.’ I remember having worried about the sentence a little – not because of its meaning, but because I wasn’t sure that ‘Yom Kippur’ was quite right in that context. I thought, and still do, that ‘Allahu akbar!’ might be better, but there we are. Anyway it was either that or a following sentence where I wrote: ‘For many Muslims the anti-Semitism is

Gyles Brandreth

The day ‘Hitler’ was captured in Tottenham

Given the way the world is right now, I am avoiding it in the main. For the sake of my mental wellbeing, I require less bad news and more fun company. Just as George V collected postage stamps and Rod Stewart collects toy trains, I have been collecting theatrical dames since the beginning of the 1970s when I first worked with Dame Peggy Ashcroft. It’s an odd hobby, but it has proved hugely rewarding. From Dame Flora Robson (who gave me a very useful book on window boxes when I bought my first flat) to Dame Joan Plowright (who bequeathed me her husband Laurence Olivier’s favourite sun hat, which I’ve

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

What’s the point of remaking Amadeus?

At the close of Milos Forman’s Oscar-winning film, Amadeus, the central character, the terminally envious court composer Salieri, declares: ‘I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint.’ It’s one of the many memorable lines in the film, adapted from Peter Shaffer’s play, which revolves around the relationship between the decorous, respectable, well-connected Salieri and Mozart, who is portrayed as a near-insufferable upstart who has been given – unfathomably, in Salieri’s eyes – a musical talent that dwarfs everyone around him, not least the older man. There is every chance that Amadeus will be rubbish, a classic cheapened by identity politics and made

Robert Colvile

Thatcherism shows where Britain went wrong – and how it can go right

It is a hundred years since Margaret Thatcher was born. Fifty years since she took over the Conservative Party. Thirty-four years since she was forced from office. Today’s voters are Thatcher’s grandchildren – even great-grandchildren. So why do we still care? Thatcher warned that the great temptation in politics was to ‘lose sight of the eternal truths and choose the popular, quick fix’ The last couple of weeks have seen a parade of Thatcher-philia. At Conservative Party Conference there were Thatcher portraits, a Thatcher mosaic, even an exhibition of her dresses. There have been cardboard cutouts, a gala dinner at the Guildhall in her honour, even an AI Thatcher-bot. No

Alexander Larman

No, Meghan: your Netflix deal isn’t a sign of ‘strength’

The Duchess of Sussex has been largely absent from the public eye since the release of the second series of With Love, Meghan, which came and went without anyone – save sarcastic journalists – bothering to pay it much attention. However, Meghan Markle is nothing if not indomitable. And so, shortly after she and her husband were honoured as the Humanitarians of the Year in New York last week, Meghan has argued that her new, reduced deal with Netflix is not a reflection of her waning commercial appeal, but instead represented a sign of strength. Really? Meghan argued that her new, reduced deal with Netflix is not a reflection of

Andrew Tettenborn

Human rights busybodies should keep out of the trans toilet row

The problems with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the bureaucracy behind it aren’t limited to the spanners they push into the wheels of immigration enforcement. They also now appear to be meddling over hard-won sex-based rights. A letter from the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, Michael O’Flaherty, is likely to be seized upon by the trans lobby to further their cause. An urgent ECHR exit just became a great deal more plausible – and rightly so The missive suggests that any serious government effort to implement the landmark ‘For Women Scotland’ Supreme Court ruling – which held that the legal definition of ‘woman’ in the Equality

Jimmy Nicholls

Trigger warnings don’t work

As trigger warnings became fashionable over the last decade, many argued that they were artistically stifling, patronising, and even redundant given the fame of many of the works targeted. But it turns out there is a simpler objection: trigger warnings don’t work. Amazon branded the Bond franchise with a range of cautionary messages That is the finding of a recent study from Australia, which argues that the advisories are worse than useless. Not only did the authors find that a trigger warning failed to persuade 90 per cent of participants to consistently avoid potentially traumatic content on social media, in some cases it may have actually piqued their interest –

Chas Newkey-Burden

Strava is ruining running

When I first started running 25 years ago, it was the simplicity that captured my heart. There were no complicated techniques to master, no ghastly membership fees or extortionate equipment to shell out on. You just needed to buy a pair of shoes, get out there in the fresh air and put one foot in front of another, more swiftly than usual. Strava is basically a cult In return for this modest outlay and effort, you were treated to an avalanche of physical and emotional health benefits. As you ran, you could truly live in the moment, bask in the solitude and enjoy the connection with nature. It felt like

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

With Gyles Brandreth

36 min listen

Broadcaster, writer, actor – and former MP – Gyles Brandreth joins Lara Prendergast on this episode of Table Talk to discuss his memories of food, from hating dates and loving ‘bread sandwiches’ to his signature dish of fish fingers and his love of eating baked beans cold from a can. Gyles also tells Lara about getting permission to eat swan, his encounter with Raymond Blanc and his friendship with a former editor of The Spectator. Plus – Gyles bemoans the lack of freebies that come with recording a Spectator food podcast (sorry Gyles!). Gyles’s new biography of A.A. Milne, Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear, is out now. Produced by

Patrick West

I visited Canterbury Cathedral’s graffiti. Here’s the worst thing about it

The first, and the lasting, impression one gets from Canterbury Cathedral’s new graffiti-style art instillation is just how reasonable and normal are the questions it quite literally poses. That’s some feat for an exhibition that purports to be ‘thought-provoking’ and ‘dynamic’ while simultaneously attracting such derision – even provoking the ire of the US vice president, J.D. Vance. Echoing the feelings of many people in this country, he asked why the cathedral’s curators had to make a ‘beautiful historical building really ugly’. What really gets people riled about this exhibition is not so much the questions it raises, but its motives and its methods Yet there’s nothing shocking in the

The Spectator

Speaker Series: An evening with Charles Moore

Watch Spectator chairman Charles Moore and assistant editor Isabel Hardman discuss Charles’s new Centenary Edition of Margaret Thatcher’s biography, exclusively for Spectator subscribers. Charles will reflect on Thatcher’s legacy, draw sharp parallels with today’s political landscape and ask where conservatism – with its split between the Conservatives and Reform – goes from here. Beforehand, Charles, along with Kate Ehrman, will present his short semi-dramatisation The Fall of Margaret Thatcher: A Whodunnit, a retelling of Thatcher’s last three days in office.

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The truth about the Green party’s booming membership

The Greens are having quite a moment. Since the anointing of Zack Polanski as leader of the party, there’s been a 45 per cent increase in the membership, which is now up to about a hundred thousand believers. The party is also doing very well, comparatively speaking, in opinion polling, reaching about 15 per cent, not very far behind the Tories. The Polanski surge has come courtesy of a Corbyn-esque policy blitz But while the Greens are keen to talk up their polling success and growing membership – which is, naturally, good for party coffers – it won’t necessarily correlate to wider electoral success. We’ve been here before: during Jeremy

Clarissa Hard

Britain’s unofficial blasphemy laws have been decades in the making

Defenders of free expression can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Hamit Coskun – the man who burnt a Quran outside the Turkish Consulate in London in February and was found guilty of a ‘religiously aggravated public order offence’ – had his conviction overturned at Southwark Crown Court on Friday. People are still scared to blaspheme against Islam. We already live under unofficial blasphemy laws enforced by fear Coskun exercised his freedom of conscience and felt the iron fist of the law. His original trial even bordered on victim-blaming. The fact that he was attacked on the street by a Muslim man wielding a knife was effectively used against him,

Monday

Alexander Larman

Will the Epstein files ever stop haunting Prince Andrew?

It has not been a good year to be the Duke of York. Firstly, Andrew Lownie’s devastating joint biography of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, Entitled, splashed allegations of the grim antics of the prince over its unforgiving pages, to bestselling effect. In a few weeks, Virginia Giuffre’s posthumously published memoir will also be published. It will likely be hugely embarrassing for Andrew as Giuffre is expected to have detailed precisely what she alleged occurred between her and the duke several years ago. It seems likely that this sordid, reputationally shattering story still has a few twists and turns yet to come This, of course, took place under the auspices

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Donald Trump is the real anti-fascist hero

Tell me: who has done more for the cause of anti-fascism? Real anti-fascism? Those masked mummy’s boys of the Antifa movement for whom ‘fighting fascism’ means little more than hurling abuse at blue-collar oiks who voted for Donald Trump? Or Donald Trump himself, the man they love to loathe, who today accomplished the miraculous feat of liberating 20 Israelis from the anti-Semitic hell of Hamas captivity? It’s Trump, isn’t it? Today should be the day that Trump Derangement Syndrome is laid to rest As of today, following the soul-stirring emancipation of the last living Israeli hostages, whenever I hear the phrase ‘anti-fascist’ I will think of Trump. Forget those sun-starved

David Shipley

The Canterbury Cathedral graffiti isn’t transgressive

Canterbury Cathedral’s ‘Hear Us’ ‘art installation’, in which the heart of English Christianity has been covered in fake graffiti, has caused outcry and anger. The exhibition, which according to the Cathedral involved ‘collaboration with marginalised communities’ covered much of the building’s interior with stickers which they say have been ‘expertly and sensitively affixed to the Cathedral’s stone pillars, walls and floors’. The stickers ask questions such as ‘Are you there?’, ‘Why did you create hate when love is by far more powerful?’, ‘God, what happens when we die?’ and ‘Does everything have a soul?’ The questions posed are unexceptional and often the wording itself slips into the language of a

Sam Leith Sam Leith

The joy of university

I log in so infrequently these days that Facebook has, I’m pleased to say, nearly given up on me. Like a half-hearted stalker whose head has been turned by a fresh victim, it sends me alerts and updates with ever-diminishing regularity, and few of them remotely tempt me to click. So it was quite unusual to see one, a few days ago, that did make me click. It was the link to a photograph of my brilliant god-daughter arriving for her first term at university. Are we not ignoring the likelihood that most students are getting on with doing what students have always done? The first thing that this picture – full as it was of sunshine and hope and promise – made me feel was very, very old. The second thing

Robert Taylor

Move over shy Tories – it’s all about shy Reformers now

It was the most blatant and shameless piece of virtue signalling I’d ever seen. After a long day of training at a government department a couple of years ago, we went for a drink off Whitehall and talked politics. Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of my fellow trainers took a card out of her bag and proudly displayed it to us, her eyes beaming with anticipation of our admiration and approval. What was it? A Labour party membership card. ‘Isn’t this perfect evidence of my superiority as a human being?’, her eyes said, as she turned to each of us in turn. She looked like she wanted a round of

Sunday

David Shipley

The death of Ian Watkins shows our prisons are out of control

Many have celebrated, and perhaps none will have mourned the murder of former Lostprophets frontman and prolific sadistic paedophile Ian Watkins in HMP Wakefield. But his killing in the notionally high-security Category A prison demonstrates just how little control exists in our jails. Indeed, just two weeks ago HM Inspector of Prisons published a report on Wakefield in which he noted that ‘violence had increased markedly…with a 62 per cent rise in incidents and a 72 per cent increase in serious assaults’. The inspector went on to note that ‘older men convicted of sexual offences’ felt particularly unsafe, and lacked confidence that staff would protect them. Men with a high

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

How was Ian Watkins killed in prison?

Why should we care about a degenerate paedophile allegedly put to death by those locked up with him in prison? Ian Watkins, the former lead singer of the Welsh rock band the Lostprophets, was reportedly stabbed to death in HMP Wakefield yesterday. Watkins was convicted in 2013 of multiple counts of sexual violence against children, including babies, in offences so depraved many people would say he deserved his execution by the state. He was serving a 29-year sentence. Two prisoners have been arrested by West Yorkshire police on suspicion of his murder. Absent any sympathy for the wretched way this man lived and died, this incident is important because of what