Lionel Shriver is a columnist at The Spectator and author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, among other books.
January is the ideal month for gaining a sense of perspective. I’m increasingly convinced that the ‘climate emergency’ is another social mania we’ll look back on with: ‘J-eez, what was that about?’ Why? The paradigm displays the classic anthropocentrism of our era. As organised religion declines, we replace God with humanity. Arrogating to our species
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Welcome to a special festive episode of The Edition podcast, where we will be taking you through the pages of The Spectator’s Christmas triple issue. Up first: our review of the year – and what a year it has been. At the start of 2024, the outcome of the US election looked very different, the UK had a
I adhere to a pretty iron-clad rule: not only do I avoid the bumper cars of social media, but I don’t read the comments after my columns. Many other journalists avidly lap up reader responses to their work, and there’s certainly something to be said for confronting detractors, thus learning to anticipate counter-arguments and to
Curiously unobserved about last month’s US election: how astonishing it was that the candidates’ policy positions during the pandemic played a role in neither the campaigns nor the results. It may feel as if Covid was a long time ago, but do the math. It wasn’t. In the US and UK, medical hysteria gravely blighted
Right after Donald Trump’s landslide, I opined on YouTube that this turning point could sound the death knell for Woke World – an observation that decayed to hoary cliché within hours. I also supposed that Trump’s triumph might signal to the UK that all that diversity, equality and inclusion/systemic racism guff is totally yesterday –
It’s always intimidating to write for a readership more clued up than you are. I file this on the very Tuesday the international commentariat have relentlessly claimed is the most consequential election day in American history. Now, in my ignorance, I suspect this superlative reflects the blinkered vanity of the present, and I’ve braved expressing
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News that Kamala Harris has called Donald Trump to concede defeat means that the US election is all but over. Of the seven crucial swing states, Trump has so far won North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Republicans have taken the Senate back from the Democrats. How did things go so badly for Kamala
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With just days to go until the American election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s respective campaigns continue to ramp up, with rallies and gimmicks, and even advertising on the Las Vegas Sphere. Despite this, Spectator contributor Lionel Shriver declares she is America’s ‘last undecided voter’. Why? Is it the candidates’ characters that put her off
This is the last column I’ll file before the American presidential election, and I’ve dreaded writing it for months. (The next one, filed on election day itself, may prove impossible. Perhaps that’s when I’ll choose to share my recipe for parsley as a side vegetable.) Meanwhile, I’ve watched fellow ‘double haters’ squirm in print. There
Spectator TV viewers may recall that in last week’s Americano podcast, Freddy Gray interviewed the University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, whose wrist had just been smartly rapped by the administration for her unfashionable generalisations about race and sex. While Professor Wax spoke ably on her own behalf, Amy, as I know her, has
For many readers, my absence from these pages may have gone unnoticed. Those few who’ve detected my disappearance might have idly concocted theories: maybe Shriver crossed a line in her opposition to uncontrolled illegal immigration such that she finally got the sack. The explanation is more quotidian. Six years ago, I was diagnosed with the
About five minutes ago, the one Democrat more certain to lose to Donald Trump than Joe Biden was his widely ridiculed vice president. Party wonks despaired that their elderly candidate was handicapped by a veep whose prospective ascendence to the presidency terrified voters. Dems anguished about needing to sideline an unpopular ‘woman of colour’. Remember
Believe it or not, I planned to write the gist of this column before Saturday night. However, a caveat. Unlike the newly christened Republican VP pick, J.D. Vance, I don’t directly blame hyperventilating Democratic rhetoric for last weekend’s attempt on Trump’s life. Responsibility rests with the would-be assassin. Nevertheless, the party’s off-the-charts argumentation has rankled
The dullest assertion you can make about Donald Trump is that he’s a narcissist who has no interest in the American people and only cares about himself. Competent pundits don’t waste wordage on such an over-obvious observation. Less obvious, though more so since last week’s dog’s dinner presidential debate – in the aftermath of which
For progressive onlookers abroad, the Labour landslide now projected next month will seem a cheerful counterweight to the EU parliamentary elections’ lurch rightwards and will represent a huge, refreshing popular shift in Britain to the left. Yet according to at least one recent poll, this perception would be statistically mistaken. Add the Conservative and Reform
Last Thursday evening a companionable London dinner party was just wrapping up when our hostess returned to the table brandishing the New York Times headline on her phone: in giant letters for such a tiny device, ‘TRUMP GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS’. Three American Democrats and one British Democrat-by-marriage, my fellow diners were exhilarated. One guest
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It’s a bumper edition of The Edition this week. After Rishi Sunak called a surprise – and perhaps misguided – snap election just a couple of hours after our press deadline, we had to frantically come up with a new digital cover. To take us through a breathless day in Westminster and the fallout of
This year, several articles in mainstream papers have sounded the alarm that the global human fertility rate will soon cross below the point needed to keep the population constant. Anxiety that our species is about to die out seems a bit premature, given that we’re still predicted to add another three billion to the world
I originally intended to observe that American universities’ anti-Israel protestors and Hamas terrorists deserve each other, because they’ve so much in common. They’re both vicious, authoritarian, fanatical, powered by antipathy and focused on either unachievable or pointless aims (even if Columbia did divest from Israel, the pittance withdrawn would have no effect on financial markets,
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: reporting from St Helena, Douglas Murray reflects on the inhabitants he has met and the history of the British Overseas Territory (1:12); Lionel Shriver opines on the debate around transgender care (9:08); following a boyhood dream to visit the country to watch cricket, Mark Mason reads his letter from India
