The Week

Leading article

Trump on the edge

Donald Trump has often wrong-footed the media. In last year’s election his campaign seemed to be always on the verge of falling apart, but it didn’t. Candidate Trump was endlessly engulfed by crisis. The media said he could not win, but he did. It’s tempting to think that the Trump presidency fits the same pattern;

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the Week – 18 May 2017

Home The National Health Service was one of the first big victims of a vermiform global ransomware computer infection going by names such as WannaCrypt and WannaCry, which locked computer systems. Hackers demanded $230 a time in Bitcoin to unlock them. Thousands of NHS devices were affected and outpatient appointments had to be cancelled. The

Diary

Diary – 18 May 2017

On the heels of the Today programme’s invitation to discuss ‘cultural appropriation’ (again), the New York Times reported the disheartening fate of a Canadian magazine editor, Hal Niedzviecki. ‘Anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities,’ he wrote, gamely proposing an Appropriation Prize for the ‘best book by an author

Ancient and modern

Power and the middle class

The Labour party’s tagline for the forthcoming general election is: ‘For the many, not the few.’ Aristotle, who understood this as ‘For the poor, not the rich’, thought this a recipe for conflict and proposed a solution of which Mrs May would approve. Suspicious of monarchy, Aristotle favoured two styles of constitution: oligarchy and democracy.

Barometer

Barometer | 18 May 2017

Veggie skills Forest Green Rovers, described as the world’s first vegan football club, was promoted to the Football League. Some sportsmen who have become vegan: Neil Robinson turned vegan at 23 while playing football for Everton in 1980. Dustin Watton played in the US National Volleyball team in 2015. Peter Siddle, a bowler in the Australian

From the archives

A brave new world

From ‘The New Reform Bill’, The Spectator, 19 May 1917: Though we used to be opposed to the suffrage for women, and have only accepted it in view of the great upheaval of the war, we feel most strongly that it had better be ‘a clean cut’ and a generous cut. Just as we opposed it

Letters

Letters | 18 May 2017

Libyan solution Sir: Boris Johnson correctly reports glimmers of hope in Libya, but to say its problems can be solved by political will risks falling into the same trap of wishful thinking that has hobbled the international community’s intervention there (‘Libya’s best hope’, 13 May). To fix Libya, its political process must be restructured to