Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
They say that death and taxes are the only certain things in this life. I would add BBC bias into that mix. It was probably about 20 years ago that I first went on Newsnight. In those days Jeremy Paxman ruled the roost and taught me an early lesson in live television. Jeremy asked me
In recent days parliament has been recalled on a Saturday to debate the renationalisation of the British steel industry. Then, after a month-long strike by binmen in Birmingham, army planners have been called in to help address the issue of large amounts of refuse piling up in the city. Absent a major ideological split on
A few years back, a friend from Newcastle was down in London and I was giving him a tour of the town. At various points I stopped and pointed out where various friends had lived. ‘That’s where my late friend X used to live.’ ‘That’s where my much-missed friend Y had his shop.’ Eventually my
Some readers may have noticed that it takes rather a long time to get anything done in Britain these days. For example, if you added them all together, I wonder how many hours of Prime Minister’s Questions and BBC Question Time – under consecutive governments – have been taken up by a discussion of HS2.
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The Spectator’s columnist Douglas Murray joins Freddy Gray to discuss his recent column on why the JFK conspiracies just won’t die. They also discuss the moon landing, the emergence of American self-hatred, and the return of the post-truth era.
One of the most controversial things that can happen at any American table is to start talking about the JFK assassination and then say: ‘I think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.’ Thanks to decades of theories, counter-theories and Hollywood movies, a majority of the American public have for many years believed that there was a
Almost every nation has a national poet. The Russians have Pushkin. The Persians have Ferdowsi. The Albanians have Gjergj Fishta. But it would be a very odd thing if any of these peoples had their national poet taken away from them or were forced to have their national poet insulted. Indeed, it might be considered
I was thinking lately of Robert Kilroy-Silk. For younger readers, and people who were never students or unemployed, a quick refresher course may be needed. From 1986 to 2004 Kilroy-Silk was the presenter of a BBC daytime television programme called Kilroy. It had something of a cult following because of its unintentional hilarity. The live
How can the right be so wrong? Or at least portions of the right – especially the American right – when it comes to Ukraine? To begin to grapple with this you have to go way, way back to Donald J. Trump’s first term in office. In that time Ukraine came to the public’s consciousness
The head of America’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (Doge) has written to all federal workers in the US asking them to explain in a brief email what they did last week. The exercise is intended to take no more than five minutes but has already lead to howls from many employees. How could anyone expect
In its infinite wisdom, the Labour government appears to be reconsidering the introduction of a blasphemy law in the UK. It has picked up this idea despite it being so idiotic that it was even rejected by the last Conservative government. That well-known theologian Angela Rayner has decided to set up a council to look
A poll out this week found that only 41 per cent of those aged 18 to 27 are proud to be British. Frankly I’m surprised the figure is that high. After all, if you add together the immigration of recent decades and the concerted effort to demoralise the population that has gone on, that is
The new administration in Washington has somewhat startled its critics by issuing a blizzard of executive orders during its opening weeks in office. So far the reaction from the American left might be summed up by the sentiment: ‘That’s not fair – it’s only us that are allowed to do things when we are in
How hard is your soft power? According to David Lammy, Britain’s soft power is so strong and underrated that he has decided to set up a ‘soft power council’ to show just how hard we are. Put aside such details as waste and futility for a second. Surely there is something rather embarrassing about boasting
Whatever way you voted in 2016, I suspect that many of us have the same image of post-Brexit Britain. It is easier to capture in a cartoon than in prose but it looks something like this. A chap tries to make a leap across a canyon, falls ever so slightly short and as a result
What’s in a word? ‘Equality’. ‘Equity’. It’s the sort of thing that Channel 4 newsreaders find impossible to understand. Surely they’re the same thing, aren’t they? And even if they aren’t then what kind of pedant would keep trying to point it out? What difference does it make anyway? Well, quite a lot. Potentially the
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This week: what does justice look like for the victims of the grooming gangs?In the cover piece for the magazine, Douglas Murray writes about the conspiracy of silence on the grooming gangs and offers his view on what justice should look like for the perpetrators. He also encourages the government to take a step back
It is always interesting to watch a dam burst. In the past week, as Elon Musk and other prominent Americans discovered the British ‘grooming gang’ scandal, British politics has suddenly had to face up to something it has spent a quarter of a century trying to ignore. One would hope that the claim that thousands
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Douglas Murray, Spectator columnist, joins Americano host and Spectator deputy editor Freddy Gray. This week, Home Office Minister Jess Phillips rejected Oldham Council’s request for a government-led inquiry into the horrific scandal of grooming gangs in dozens of UK cities. Her decision has led to real backlash – with X owner Elon Musk calling for
We’re closing 2024 by republishing our five most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 4: Douglas Murray’s article from August about the UK riots. As the days slip by, the likelihood that anything will be learned from the recent rioting looks ever more remote. And with that suspicion comes the inevitable sense of déjà-vu. Because
