Registered

It’s funny how the new left’s rule against speaking on behalf of groups to which you do not belong never applies to class. If a white man ventures his thoughts on the best way forward for Britain’s black community, he’ll suffer social death by a thousand tweets. Woe betide any bloke who holds forth on women’s issues. ‘Dude, let women speak for themselves,’ people will chide. Yet when it comes to the needs of working-class communities, everyone gets to have a say. So last week, Newsnight featured a discussion about the crisis of working-class representation in the media between Owen Jones of the Guardian and Sarah Baxter of the Sunday Times. Newsnight,

The atmosphere in Brussels has become, of late, reminiscent of the late Brezhnev era. We have a political system run by a bureaucratic apparatus which — just like the former USSR — serves to conceal important evidence. Especially when it comes to the health of its supreme leader, Jean-Claude Juncker. At the Nato summit gala dinner last week, videos emerged showing Juncker unable to climb the few steps leading to the podium. He hesitates at the bottom before being grabbed by the very sturdy Ukrainian Petro Poroshenko. He is then held up during the ceremony. Afterwards Juncker — who is only 63, hardly an old man — staggers and wobbles

Is it coming home? If it is, don’t expect all the home nations to welcome it. In Scotland, the dismal grunt of ‘Anyone but England’ (ABE) is the balm that soothes our aggrieved wee souls. It’s never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman watching England do well and even the most fleeting flicker of sunshine. Every four years — in fact, anytime England steps onto turf for an international — the worst kind of Scot is to be found cheering on the other side, whomever that happens to be. If the Three Lions drew Hannibal Lecter FC, chianti and fava beans would outsell Tennent’s and square sausages overnight. These bitter

Dear 2016 WriteNow mentees, Thanks so much for your open letter to me. It seems only good manners for me to write back. You’re rightly proud of having been admitted to a challenging programme at Penguin Random House that mentors gifted young minority authors and helps to cultivate their talents. My own publisher, HarperCollins, runs a similar programme, which enjoys my full support. Such proactive outreach is exactly the approach I endorse for helping to vary the voices on our bookshelves. That is why my column of a fortnight ago said not one discouraging word about WriteNow. Indeed, I made no reference to your programme whatsoever. Apologies to Spectator readers,

I have learned a lot since writing about gender laws here last week. I’ve learned that if you ever want to flood your Twitter timeline with people arguing about something, writing an article about gender laws is a good way to do it. I’ve learned that some people do indeed get very angry about this stuff, though not always the people you’d expect. The prickliest communication I had wasn’t from a Trans-Rights Activist or a Radical Feminist. It was from a parliamentarian. And overall, I’ve had nothing like the venom I’ve seen directed at other hacks who’ve written about this in similar ways; for some reason or another, people are

I have learned a lot since writing about gender laws here last week. I’ve learned that if you ever want to flood your Twitter timeline with people arguing about something, writing an article about gender laws is a good way to do it. I’ve learned that some people do indeed get very angry about this stuff, though not always the people you’d expect. The prickliest communication I had wasn’t from a Trans-Rights Activist or a Radical Feminist. It was from a parliamentarian. And overall, I’ve had nothing like the venom I’ve seen directed at other hacks who’ve written about this in similar ways; for some reason or another, people are

Last week I wrote in this space about Cathy Newman’s catastrophic interview with the Canadian academic Jordan Peterson. Since then a number of things have happened. One is that millions of people around the world have watched Newman’s undisguisedly partisan interview. The other is that Channel 4 has tried to turn the tables by claiming victimhood. Any fair-minded observer might think that if there was any ‘victim’ in this case then it was Professor Peterson, who accepted an invitation to an interview in which he was then serially misrepresented. It was Peterson who, whenever he said anything got the response ‘So what you’re saying is’, followed by something that he

In the magazine this week I have written a piece about the Canadian Professor Jordan Peterson. He has been in the UK over the last week to talk about his new book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Among many other things – much more of which I go into in the piece – his visit showed up the UK’s broadcast media in a very bad light. On Saturday morning, Peterson made an appearance on Radio 4’s Today programme. They gave him a hurried four minutes at the end of the show. They could have quizzed him on almost anything and got a point of view different from almost