Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.

Why Boris is wrong about burkas

From our UK edition

Were you aware that men who transition into women can suffer period pains, despite not having a uterus? Oh, they can, apparently. There is of course no scientific explanation for this phenomenon, nor could there be, other than perhaps that the transitionee is mentally ill. But it is no longer enough simply to accept that

Bigots of the world, unite!

From our UK edition

If Jews would get out of Israel and also stop drinking the blood of gentile children, perhaps the rest of the world would like them a little more. That seems to be the fairly broad view among the Hamas groupies on the white British left as well as throughout almost the entire Islamic world. But

Rewriting Kipling for the modern age

From our UK edition

It is often said that we should worry about the world we are leaving to the younger generation. I am a bit more worried about the poor world, given the state of the younger generation who will soon have custody of it. Last week, for example, the students of Manchester University have decided that Rudyard

Why are middle-class football fans so racist?

From our UK edition

It’s middle-class commentators – not supporters – who seem obsessed with the number of black players There were altogether too many darkies in England’s World Cup Squad for me to take any pleasure in their moderate achievements out in Russia. They did not represent me. I learned this via the Guardian in an article by a man called Steve Bloomfield who

I was wrong about Boris Johnson

From our UK edition

Boris Johnson – an apology. His speech today was a very fine one and correct in each and every aspect. A week back, I took a shot at Johnson for what seemed to me the self-serving nature of his political manoeuvrings. They may still be intrinsically self-serving, I suppose. But it is nonetheless laudable that

Matthew Parris is right: Theresa May’s Brexit plan is terrible

From our UK edition

On Brexit and the visit of Donald Trump, there has not been a better article than this by Matthew Parris in The Times today. I make him right on every point and, given that we view Brexit from polarised positions, that makes it a little worrying. But the so-called ‘yellow paper’ really does give us the

Why England’s part-time fans will be hurting the most

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My lovely, wonderful wife was disconsolate. She went to bed, desolated. This is the problem with people who tune in for six matches every four years. They can’t believe defeat. If she came to Millwall a little more often she would become inured. By a little more often I meant “ever”. Defeat hurts more when

This is Brexit in name only to keep the plebs happy

From our UK edition

My wife has decided she likes Dominic Raab, the latest poor sap to be despatched from a hamstrung, spasticated government to negotiate our exit from the European Union before a plethora of sniggering pygmies from the Low Countries. I think it’s the sound of his surname, those consecutive vowels, because I’ve noticed she also likes

My World Cup plea to Putin

From our UK edition

Here is a letter which I sent today to the Russian Embassy. Please keep your fingers crossed for me. To: His Excellency Alexander Vladimirovich Yakovenko Dear Mr Yakovenko, I hope you are well. As you are aware, the World Cup is in progress and both of our sides are doing unexpectedly well in what has

Should people be forced to be gay?

From our UK edition

At last I have found a summer festival I can attend in good faith without the possibility of Jeremy Corbyn turning up. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there seemed to be no festive gatherings planned which Corbyn wouldn’t attend, with his retinue of Trot imbeciles. In response, the philosopher Roger Scruton very

Ignore Lily Allen’s sub-adolescent politics – her new album is brilliant

Grade: B+ Here we go again, then, I thought — another gobbet of self-referential, breast-beating respec’ me bro sputum against a backdrop of the usual overproduced r&b pop schlock. What used to be called ‘indie’ singer-songwriters are always moaning about how utterly useless they are, taking Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ as a kind of self-flagellating worldview. Chart

My World Cup plea to Putin | 2 July 2018

From our UK edition

Here is a letter which I sent today to the Russian Embassy. Please keep your fingers crossed for me. To: His Excellency Alexander Vladimirovich Yakovenko Dear Mr Yakovenko, I hope you are well. As you are aware, the World Cup is in progress and both of our sides are doing unexpectedly well in what has

The bad points of England’s 6-1 victory against Panama

From our UK edition

But on the down side…… 1. Still too little quality and threat from open play. 2.  Raheem Sterling is very short of confidence for someone with a bad muthafucka AK47 tattooed on his leg. 3. The defence can still be horrendously dilatory and loose. As we saw with the Panama goal and three times in

VAR is rapidly becoming a farce

From our UK edition

Flies, millions of them, vast swarms of them, spawned in the filthy Volga river: mutant flies, probably. Gathering in clouds around each player on the pitch (one crawled into a Tunisian’s ear), the footballers suddenly resembling 22 Simon Schamas, flapping their hands about in outrage. Bitey Russian flies. As a trope for this tournament, and

Father John Misty: God’s Favourite Customer

From our UK edition

Grade: A+ While the young bands plunder the 1980s for every last gobbet of tinny synth and hi-hat, the singer-songwriters remain happily anchored in that much more agreeable decade which came directly before. The 1970s was the era of the introspective, self-pitying, prolix, hairy and winsome singer-songwriter — both the good ones (Young, Martyn, Buckley)

The stupidity of good intentions

From our UK edition

I have been scouring the internet trying to find a right-wing festival to take the family to this summer. I don’t necessarily mean a kind of Nuremberg affair; just some sort of gathering where we won’t be hectored about the refugees and the NHS by simpering millennials with falafel between their ears. A place where

Women, women everywhere

From our UK edition

We had a long drive back from the north-east last weekend. Six hours or so, including a stop halfway, just past Britain’s most crepuscular town, Grantham. My wife does the driving because she thinks I’ll kill us all. My job is to feed album after album into the car’s admirably old-fashioned CD player. I rarely

The madness of murdering badgers

From our UK edition

Buoyed by its huge popularity in the opinion polls and the fact that it is managing Brexit so well, the government has decided to further endear itself to the voters by shooting hundreds of thousands of badgers. Its cull of these creatures, previously limited to a few specific areas (where it has been staggeringly unsuccessful),