Culture

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer

France’s burkini row returns

Bad weather swept across southern France over the May Day holiday but summer is just around the corner and with it will come the burkini. Last week, a call was issued to burkini-wearers to gather at the Cannes film festival later this month, with the organiser saying it will be the perfect moment ‘to celebrate together this freedom in the town that was the first to ban the burkini’. The burkini brouhaha of last August made headlines around the world but it soon blew over like a summer storm. A handful of beaches on the Cote d’Azur banned young women from wearing the Islamic swimsuit, citing concerns over public disorder,

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

By their own logic, feminists should support Marine Le Pen

Why aren’t feminists lining up behind Le Pen? I thought women had a moral responsibility to back women standing for office? That’s certainly what they said during the Hillary-Trump clash. Yes, I am voting for Hillary because she’s a woman, because she ‘knows what it’s like to menstruate, be pregnant, give birth’, said one American feminist. So does Le Pen. She has three children. According to the rather crude biologism of feminist identitarianism, that makes her an even better candidate than Hillary, who has one kid. So why the silence, feminists? Aren’t you ‘With Her’? Looking back at the Hillary love-in, its remarkable how much it hinged on ‘Hillary’s a

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Will Prince Charles’s ‘climate collapse’ prediction come true?

Each year, this column has the melancholy duty of reminding the public of the Prince of Wales’s prediction, made in Brazil in March 2009, that there were only 100 months left to prevent ‘irretrievable climate collapse’. Those 100 months will have elapsed at the end of next month, so it looks as if we are all doomed. The general election on 8 June will therefore be pretty pointless. It is noticeable, however, that the Prince has not, in recent years, repeated his exact dating of the catastrophe, muttering, in 2015, that it might be 35 years. Even more striking was his co-authorship, at the beginning of this year, of the

Thursday

Nick Cohen

J. K. Rowling and the curse of the left

How people who want a fairer society should vote at this election is causing agonies across the liberal-left. It is easy to mock the torn activists. Why do they bother? One vote is worth next to nothing under a PR system. Under first past the post there are hundreds of safe seats where there’s no point in voting, let alone worrying about how you vote. The number of safe Tory seats is likely to grow after this election. Indeed, if you believe the opinion polls, it is likely to rocket. The futility of casting a token anti-Tory vote is more apparent than ever. For all that, those who laugh at

Thursday

Charles Moore

In defence of the stiff upper lip

At the time of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, Prince William and Prince Harry were in Balmoral. Somebody who claimed to know told me shortly afterwards that what the boys had most wanted to do, in reaction to the terrible news, was to go out and shoot a stag. They were not allowed to. I do not know if the story was true, but if it was, the boys’ desire seemed understandable. How could anyone — much less a teenager and a 12-year-old — ‘process’ such an event? The best immediate solace would be something strenuous, physical and wild. Twenty years later, Prince Harry has told us

Wednesday

Ross Clark

MPs should practice what they preach – and have a shorter summer holiday

One of the consequences of the early election is that Britain will find itself without a functioning parliament for six weeks at a time when arguably it has never needed one more. I am sure that many MPs will feel entitled to a holiday after yet another election campaign – or at least those who are not sent into premature retirement. But what about Parliamentary business? The Great Repeal Bill requires debate and scrutiny – and in Parliament, not the TV studio. As thing stand, Parliament will rise in the first week of May.   It will then reconvene in the middle of June only to break up for the summer

Saturday

Stephen Daisley

The trial of Kelvin MacKenzie

Kelvin MacKenzie’s baffling compulsion to pick at Liverpool has brought him up a cropper again, with the Sun pulling his latest polemic on Everton FC player Ross Barkley. MacKenzie has compared the footballer, recently victim of an assault in a nightclub, to ‘a gorilla at the zoo’ and added that, in Liverpool, ‘the only men with similar pay packets are drug dealers and therefore not at nightclubs, as they are often guests of Her Majesty’. Liverpool is outraged. Fair enough. Everton has mimicked Anfield in banning the Sun. Why blameless footie hacks should be punished is beyond me, but that’s up to the club. In a fairly extraordinary step, however,

Friday

Nick Hilton

Forget the Garden Bridge – and let’s destroy our existing bridges

The Garden Bridge project, loved by Joanna Lumley and no-one else, has been roundly criticised by Dame Margaret Hodge in a report for the Mayor of London. In her review, Hodge says it would be ‘better for the taxpayer to accept the financial loss of cancelling the project’, a perspective that the Garden Bridge Trust have today condemned, calling it ‘very one-sided’. With £40 million already spent and an estimated £200 million required to complete the project, now seems a good time for City Hall to debate Hodge’s findings. But beyond the question of cash, we should also be interrogating whether the traditions of the city are being undermined by

Wednesday

Matthew Parris

Give me the Anglican option

The Algerian government’s official tourist guide describes ‘the walled town of Beni Isguen — normally closed to foreigners — where the women, clad entirely in white, reveal only one eye to the outside world’. Rod Dreher’s Easter call to devout Christians to separate themselves as a community from what he believes to be the degeneracy of our western culture puts me in mind of that sad, disturbing place. Beni Isguen is one of the oasis towns near Ghardaia in southern Algeria. I visited many years ago and can be sure there has been little change since, for the community has clung to unchanging and uniting beliefs for hundreds of years.

Monday

Lara Prendergast

Fashion is about change – and British Vogue’s first male editor is exactly that

After months of speculation, Alexandra Shulman’s successor at British Vogue has finally been announced. And in what may come as a shock to Samantha Cameron – who recently launched a new fashion line, and whose sister Emily Sheffield was hotly tipped for the role – the job has gone to someone cut from slightly different cloth. In fact, the powers that be at Condé Nast have gone for something quite radical: British Vogue now has its first black, male editor.   There will be plenty of people annoyed by Edward Enninful’s appointment. Some will believe that editing Vogue is a woman’s job – and that giving it to a man is a step in the wrong direction. There were plenty of highly-qualified women

Saturday

Camilla Swift

How to pick a winner in today’s Grand National

Aintree’s Grand National festival is well underway, with the ladies of Liverpool making the most of the unseasonably warm weather. It’s not just the champagne bars that will be doing well for themselves, though. The nation’s bookies also benefit hugely from today’s Grand National race; it’s estimated that a quarter of the UK’s adult population will have a punt on it. The thing with the National is that with so many horses taking part, how on earth can you choose a winner? When there are 12 or so in a flat race, the probability of picking a winner is much higher. But with 40 horses to choose from, and the

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Red Rum: the horse who saved the Grand National

My first ever goldfish was called Red Rum. I won it (him?) at a point to point, so to a seven-year-old me, the name seemed utterly logical. I didn’t know anything about Red Rum ­– only that he was a racehorse. I did know his name however; and I don’t think I could have named many, or even any, other racehorses. That’s the power of Red Rum – arguably this country’s most famous race horse – and this year marks the fortieth anniversary of his historic third win in the Grand National. He’s the only horse to ever have won the race three times, and when, aged 12, he returned

Friday

Damian Thompson

Are you scared to talk about your faith at work?

Religious believers feel nervous about expressing their faith at work – either by wearing symbols or talking about religion. They’re worried they’ll be mocked by secular bullies. And employers aren’t aware of the situation. Or don’t care. That’s the implication of a new ComRes report, which I’m discussing on this week’s Holy Smoke with my new co-presenter Cristina Odone. As you’ll hear, we don’t agree. She thinks religion is becoming the love that dare not speak its name in the workplace. I think we’re in danger of being dragged into a PC grievance culture. There are also some very sharp observations from Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain. Anyway, here’s our

Thursday

Charles Moore

The National Trust is compromised by its own success

Cadbury and the National Trust stand accused of taking the Easter out of Easter eggs. The Trust’s ‘Easter Egg Trail’ is now renamed the ‘Cadbury Egg Hunt’. My little theory about the National Trust is that all its current woes result from the tyranny of success: it has become so attached to ever-growing membership (now more than four million) that everything is skewed to this and the original purposes are neglected. No doubt the substitution of the word ‘Easter’ by the word ‘Cadbury’ seemed a small price to pay for big sponsorship. This decision is a symptom of the Trust’s problem. But for the fate of Easter itself, one need not

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Pepsi’s advert gives protesters exactly what they want: another opportunity to protest

No sooner had Pepsi skooshed open its latest ad campaign, the internet burped it back up.  The soft drink giant’s new commercial features Kendall Jenner (ask a young person) emerging from a crowd of protestors to offer a can of Pepsi to an officer on a police line. The advert is more sugary than the fizzy beverage it hawks. A parade of suspiciously attractive demonstrators march through the streets of a US city, powered only by air punches and smugness.  Their cause is unclear — but the placards bear such subversive slogans as ‘Join the conversation’. A confrontation with the least intimidating cops this side of a Keystone silent is mercifully averted when Jenner shows up and

Monday

Ed West

Forget fake news. The bigger problem is misleading news

The way that ‘fake news’ became an overnight crisis is telling; just as progressive ideas were being rejected by voters across the western world, the media suddenly discovered a glitch which explained why. Fake news is the new false consciousness. All democracies face the problem of uninformed voters. But in a reasonably educated society, this should not be critical, especially as the ignorant are far less likely to vote anyway. This has traditionally been a conservative and indeed ultra-conservative worry, but since the Anglo-Saxon Spring (or should that be Fall?), liberals have started to show more concern about it. The left-right axis is morphing into a globalist-nationalist one, and the majority of less

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The short path from censorship to violence

The news that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has cancelled her speaking tour of Australia due to ‘security concerns’ should concern anyone who believes in freedom. It is a dark day when a woman who fled to the West to escape the Islamist suffocations of Somalia, and precisely so that she might think and speak freely, feels she cannot say certain things in certain places. That even a Western, liberal, democratic nation like Australia cannot guarantee Hirsi Ali the freedom to speak her mind without suffering censorship or harm is deeply worrying. It points to the mainstreaming of intolerance, to the adoption by certain people in the West of the illiberalism that makes

Sunday

Charles Moore

Battersea Dogs’ Home’s political advocacy is a step too far

Battersea Dogs and Cats Home is running a poster campaign to increase sentences for cruelty to animals. The current maximum is six months. It is probably popular — almost all campaigns for higher prison sentences are. But I doubt if the public interest would be served by locking up offenders for five years, as Battersea demands. The prisons are already full to bursting, increasingly by elderly people accused (in some cases, falsely) of ‘historic’ child abuse. Each prisoner costs the taxpayer more than £30,000 a year. One should be prepared to listen to the arguments, however. My real point is different: why should a dogs’ home campaign on public policy?

Tuesday

Brendan O’Neill

The golden rule for Daily Mail hysteria

Here’s a cast-iron law of the media in 21st-century Britain: the hysteria about a Daily Mail article will always be worse than the Daily Mail article itself. It will be more silly, shrill, over-the-top, reactionary and potentially harmful to public life than the polemic or editorial or sidebar shot of a half-dressed celeb it is raging and spluttering against. You can hold me to this. Go through the archives of Twitterstorms about the Daily Mail — they number in the gazillions — and you will see it’s the same every time: every bad thing the Mail has said or done has paled into insignificance in comparison with the hot, mad

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Forget ‘virtue signalling’ – ‘empathy patrolling’ is the new moral phenomenon

I’ve had just about enough of being told how to feel about what happened last Wednesday.  I feel angry. I still feel shock. I feel a keen ache for the families of those murdered, especially the loved-ones of PC Keith Palmer.  I feel that cold spite that works its way into your heart at times like these, vengeful cruelty passing itself off as hard-headedness. When I remember this, I feel ashamed to have given in to it.  I feel scared of an ideology that crashed into the 21st century in an outrageous spectacle but has now made its choreography more low-key.  I feel contempt for the demagogues who seek to exploit