Society

Thursday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The origin of The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year Awards

Forty years ago, a whisky company, Highland Park, which advertised its Famous Grouse in The Spectator, approached us with a sponsorship offer. It wanted a debating competition to gain attention among ‘opinion-formers’. I had just become the editor, and was interested, but thought that debating was already covered by rivals (e.g. the Observer Mace). How about awards for politicians, I suggested. That might get their attention. Obviously, the thing would work only if it were politically neutral, so the awards must be for parliamentary achievement alone, regardless of party. Highland Park liked this idea of crowding a chunk of what business likes to call ‘UK plc’ into one room. The

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

World war twee: the hideous triviality of our times

I remember the moment I first understood that we, the British, had a national character. It was in the mid-1970s and my family and I were watching a clip from an American TV show which was being shown to us by ITV for a giggle. It was a celebration of the love between mothers and daughters. A hyper-glamorous mother walked down a marble stairway on the left, her young daughter descended an identical stair to the right, and they met at a gently tinkling plastic fountain. Over the soothing sound of the water they took it in turns to stare gooily into each other’s eyes and emote. The daughter lisped

Matt Ridley

Wuhan wager: the $400 ‘bio bet’ that predicted the pandemic

At the end of this month, one of the world’s most renowned scientists will send $400 to a charity to settle a wager with another of the world’s most renowned scientists. We don’t yet know who will win, but it is likely to be the wrong person, in my view. The money will probably come from Cambridge, England, not Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rees thinks if the tragedy of Covid has an identified ‘villain’ it would aggravate tense US-China relations The two scientists involved are Lord (Martin) Rees, the Astronomer Royal and former president of the Royal Society, of Cambridge University, and Steven Pinker, the Harvard linguist, neuroscientist and author of many

The Spectator

Labour’s confidence tricks

There is nothing new, nor necessarily fatal, about making a poor start in government. Margaret Thatcher had a torrid first couple of years in office, set back by galloping inflation and mass unemployment, before she found her direction. Those who assume that Keir Starmer is doomed to be a one-term prime minister thanks to his plunging popularity are speaking too soon. The resignation of Louise Haigh over a historic fraud conviction will swiftly pass. The mini-scandal of freebies accepted by government ministers, which kept Fleet Street occupied over the summer, has already been largely forgotten. Starmer is good at setting targets, rather less good at coming up with any realistic

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The BBC vs Gregg Wallace

The last time I took my wife to watch Millwall play a home game, a gentleman a few rows in front of us took grave exception to the behaviour of an opposing player and identified him, very loudly, as the author of The Critique of Pure Reason – repeatedly and with venom. Having vented his spleen, he turned to sit down and caught sight of my wife. An expression of contrition spread across his face and he said to me in a conciliatory tone: ‘I am very sorry for using such language in front of your lovely lady.’ The apology, you will note, was to me, not to my wife.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Labour’s ‘plan for change’, falling productivity and 20,000 wolves in the EU

Home The Labour government announced a ‘Plan for Change’ that it refused to call a reset. Sir Chris Wormald was named Cabinet Secretary. In his Guildhall speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said that ‘the idea that we must choose between our allies, that somehow we’re with either America or Europe, is plain wrong’. He said ‘we must continue to back Ukraine’ against Vladimir Putin as something ‘deeply in our self-interest’. With the arrival of another 122 people on 1 December, more than 20,000 had crossed the Channel in small boats since Labour entered office. A group of about 60 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers

Luke McShane

Ding’s early win

It may sound strange to say that Ding’s win in the first game of his world championship match came as a shock, but it did. His recent form had been shaky and his challenger Gukesh, heavily favoured by pundits, had the advantage of the white pieces. There was every reason to expect Ding to stick to classic match strategy which dictates a ‘safety first’ approach when playing black. Gukesh opened with 1 e4, whereupon Ding usually prefers 1…e5 and plays in a solid, classical style. Instead, his choice of 1…e6 (the French defence) was, I imagine, perceived by Gukesh as a small provocation. It is likely that Ding’s second, the imaginative Hungarian

Luke McShane

Chess puzzle

White to play. Adewumi-Shlyakhtenko, New York, November 2024. The dangerous passed pawn on a7 means that White is the side pressing for the win. Which move allowed 14-year-old Tani Adewumi to win the game? Please note that because of the Christmas printing schedule there is no prize for this puzzle. Last week’s solution 1…c3! 2 bxc3 Bh4 traps the white queen Last week’s winner Jeff Aronson, Oxford

James Walton

Spectator Competition: We can be heroes

In Competition 3378, you were invited to give the full 18th-century, mock-heroic, rhyming-couplets treatment to any trivial recent event. Whether this was applied to news stories or more personal minor tragedies, the standard was remarkably high, with near misses for Alan Millard, Max Ross, Elizabeth Kay, Jasmine Jones and others. It was also striking just how many Spectator readers are impressively knowledgeable fans of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! The following win £25. As burnish’d russet fruit of spreading trees Burst from their spiny nests across the leas, Heroes were pitched in combat, ever bent On triumph in a momentous world event. For hark! The clash of

Lavatch

2683: Famous last words

Around the perimeter clockwise from square 1 goes a quotation in ODQ minus its last word. This last word suggests the remaining unclued lights, a final example of which (6) must be highlighted in the completed grid. Across 11            Jam is an Asian food (6) 12            US record nut with some bread (6) 15            I’m surprised after soldier deserted tree in Oz (6) 17            Petrol is running around a rock (9) 20            Two newspapers probing rotten thief’s birthday (8) 21            Question about mince pie resembling dairy product (6) 23            Card player, for instance, in film (4) 26            Gnome fixed cutter’s tool (3,3) 28            Latvian regularly ignored after excessive interval (6)

The Spectator

2680: Two of a kind – solution

The two works are THE OLD WIVES’ TALE (1A/8) by ARNOLD (34) Bennett, born in HANLEY(25), and TALKING HEADS (27/36) by ALAN (35) Bennett, born in ARMLEY (17). BENNETT, in the fourth row starting at 16, had to be shaded. First prize Alison Latham, East Wittering, West Sussex Runners-up Stephen Saunders, Midford, Bath Mike Carter, Kirkby Overblow, Harrogate

Wednesday

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Marc Guehi has exposed the flaw in football’s Rainbow Laces campaign

Is the Football Association’s Rainbow Laces campaign about inclusivity or not? The FA doesn’t seem to be able to make up its mind. When Crystal Palace captain Marc Guehi wrote ‘I love Jesus’ on his rainbow-coloured armband during his side’s draw against Newcastle United on Saturday, he was ‘reminded’ by the FA that religious messaging on kit is banned. Last night, Guehi called the FA’s bluff by writing another message – ‘Jesus loves you’ – on his armband in Crystal Palace’s game against Ipswich. His messages seem to be a sensible way of taking part in a campaign showing support for inclusion in sport, while expressing his own Christian faith. If the

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

I’m A Celebrity has been enjoyably dull

The current series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! has been a big contrast to the previous two. The 2022 and 2023 camps contained politicians, and they were two particularly hot – in the potato sense – politicians. Matt Hancock and Nigel Farage carried baggage with them into the camp. In Hancock’s case, radioactive baggage. None of that this year. Ant and Dec opined last year that they were a little sick of politicians on the show, and ratings took a small tumble. There was a feeling that Celeb was a place viewers went to escape from the sturm und drang of current affairs, and that it

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Masterchef gives me the creeps

Eating porridge with my daughter this morning (me brown sugar; her honey) I was telling her about Ready Brek, and the boy in the advert going to school surrounded by a warm glow. She shushed me: they were talking about porridge on the radio! In fact they were talking about a successor to Ready Brek called Porridge Pot. Someone said it was more like a pudding than a breakfast cereal, and was one of the processed foods adding to the obesity crisis. Masterchef fetishises fine-dining Then a foodie guru came on and told us about the pleasures of real porridge. Obviously I was the choir for her preaching. Or was

Francis Pike

South Korea has a long history of martial law

Yesterday afternoon South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol made the shock TV announcement that he was putting his country under martial law. According to Article 77 of South Korea’s constitution, the People’ Power party President was within his rights. But why? Yoon wheeled out the standard coup trope that he needed ‘to restore order’. He argued that South Korea needed to be rescued from South Korea’s left wing Democrat party which won a majority in the unicameral National Assembly in April. Yoon accused of the Democrats of putting the country at risk from communist North Korea. But his problem was the absence of an emergency. Without that Yoon’s declaration of

Ed West Ed West

The right reason to give back the Elgin marbles

I took my daughter to Athens for a short holiday at half-term. She is studying Ancient Greek at GCSE, which makes me immensely proud as I didn’t even get that far with Latin. Delphi was wondrous but Mycenae was perhaps the most powerful: there is something about the place, as if one might close one’s eyes, touch the stone and travel back to the Age of Heroes. It is also salutary to ponder that this was once the largest city in Europe, just as Uruk, home to the written word, is now rubble. There is a streak of romantic Hellenism that runs through the British ruling class Yet the Parthenon, even though I’ve

Tuesday

Jawad Iqbal

The problem with the FA’s rainbow laces furore

The suits who run football in this country can always be relied upon to make a pig’s ear of things. The latest example of their capacity to cock up matters is the farce over this week’s return of the rainbow laces campaign in the Premier League. This campaign, now in its eleventh year, is an initiative backed by the charity Stonewall, in which team captains wear rainbow armbands and laces to signal support for LGBT+ inclusion and the fight against homophobia. It would be fair to say that things have not exactly gone to plan. The England and Crystal Palace defender, Marc Guehi, chose not to play ball at the

Lucy Vallance

How to prevent another Gregg Wallace scandal

‘Huw Edwards, Russell Brand, Jermaine Jenas, Phillip Schofield, Gregg Wallace… when will it end?!’ read the message from a friend. Sadly, the answer is that it won’t anytime soon. The media scandals that explode into the headlines – such as those surrounding Gregg Wallace, who is alleged to have made inappropriate comments while working on Masterchef (something he denies) – are met with fury and indignant cries. ‘How was this allowed to happen?’, people ask. But the truth is that these cases are only the tip of the iceberg. It’s easy to see how the ego of the ‘talent’ can grow to monstrous proportions Why is the broadcast media so susceptible

Alexander Larman

The new Jaguar is spectacularly hideous

Winston Churchill reputedly said ‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’ This adage must have been at the forefront of the minds of Jaguar’s chief executives as they unveiled the brand’s new electric concept car, the Type 00, during Miami Art Week. The company has had a torrid past few weeks as the advertisement they chose to announce their relaunch with was met with a mixture of incomprehension and ridicule. The company was accused of being everything from woke to simply incompetent at the job of selling cars that people might want to buy.  Unfortunately, the results are not just hideous, but spectacularly, provocatively so Therefore, the

Christian Wolmar

The Japanese are in for a big TfL culture shock

Tokyo Nothing can prepare the good people from Tokyo Metro – who are coming to London to run the Elizabeth Line – from the culture shock they will undoubtedly suffer here. Japan, as we all know, is a very different place and the way they operate their transport system is very different to how business is conducted here. To make it even harder for those plucky Japanese managers to adapt, the key difference is one that can only be felt rather than seen – the utter divergence in the business ethos of the two nations. Nowhere is that better expressed than in their respective railway networks. For a start, Tokyo