Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.

Reform wants the Tories destroyed

There was a very excitable young man on Sky News last week, talking about the Sky/YouGov MRP poll which suggested that the vast majority of Conservative MPs would lose their seats on 4 July and that those who didn’t would be stung to death by invasive killer Asian hornets which, reputedly, can eat up to

Let the Lemon Twigs pour warm syrup into your ears

Grade: A If you enjoy the sensation of having warm, jangly syrup poured directly into your ear, then this is probably the summer album for you. You might think that syrup cannot, by definition, be jangly. But imagine treacle with popping candy in it – poured into your ear in a kindly manner by a

Rod Liddle

Vote Rod!

It suddenly occurred to me that I need to stop dressing like a radical lesbian bag lady if I am going to ingratiate myself with the voters in the constituency in which I am, perhaps unwisely, standing for the SDP. ‘Always look better than them’ is the injunction made by Steve Martin in the underrated

Obesity isn’t an ‘illness’

About 20 years ago, Burger King stopped selling its magnificent Double Mushroom Swiss burger, an act of corporate vandalism matched only by the decision of Heinz to discontinue its exciting range of Toast Toppers. The Double Mushroom Swiss clocked in at 910 calories, to which you could add another 150 or so by requesting a

Fat White Family’s new album is much, much better than I had feared

Grade: A- The irresistibly catchy – if you are not quite right in the head – ‘Touch The Leather’ was probably my favourite single of the previous decade, aided by a video which was simultaneously marvellously seedy, threatening and infantile. ‘Left-wing skin on the right-wing leather – touch the leather leather…’ Well it did it

Rod Liddle

Migration reality is biting in Ireland

Iwas trying to work out which event gave me a greater sense of euphoria and contentment – the fall of Humza Yousaf or the birth of my daughter – when suddenly the Irish got themselves into a most terrible paddy and easily eclipsed both for sheer, untrammelled glee. This is turning into a very good

Why the Cass report won’t change a thing

The Liberal Democrat candidate in the Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland constituency recently released a video clip of herself sitting in a car and saying just the following: ‘As a Liberal Democrat, I believe that women can have a penis.’ When I’m feeling depressed or under the weather, I play this clip to myself over

Are Stonewall and Mermaids charitable?

Iwas once asked by a colleague to sponsor him on an undertaking designed, he said, to raise money for a very good charitable cause. I can’t remember what the cause was – cancer, maybe, or mental kids – but I do remember the nature of the undertaking. He intended to walk a number of miles

A new survey that may be of interest

My favourite opinion polls are those which elicit enormous shock in the population for stating something everybody knew for ages, or could have guessed. Such as those headlined ‘People in Torquay are happier than people in Rotherham’ – goodness me, etc. Surely we are reaching the time when bland, deceitful shibboleths should be replaced by

Rod Liddle

Labour’s Gaza problem

The district of Pendle in Lancashire has a long history of dissenters, nonconformists, witches and murderers. Perhaps because it is so sodden and bleak and northern: life is nothing but an impoverished struggle against everything, accompanied by the occasional maniacal cry of the curlew and the demented smoke-alarm call of the lapwing. The Pendle Witch

British families deserve a tax break

I am delighted to report that some £800,000 of taxpayers’ money is to be spent ‘remediating’ the works of Robert Louis Stevenson to show what a racist bastard he was. 70 per cent of Irish mums say they would stay at home to look after their kids if given the opportunity I assume the decision

The greatness of Steve Harley

You may have noticed by now that the airtime devoted to dead popstars bears scant relation to their actual importance in the genre, or indeed their popularity. So, for example, the death of the smackhead rapper Coolio was headline news on the BBC and the subject of a fawning feature on the PM programme, despite

Does anyone actually like Reform?

‘Alastair, it’s been absolutely fascinating talking to you. Thank you for your honesty.’ And thus ended Kirsty Young’s interview with Alastair Campbell, broadcast to the nation on BBC Radio 4 on Monday. This was part of the series Young Again, in which Kirsty interviews left-of-centre people, agrees with them and makes them feel better about

The Last Dinner Party are sadly rather good

Grade: A- There is something decidedly fishy about this convocation of terribly well-bred young ladies who became a kind of sensation two years ago, before they had even recorded a single song – and now have their first album at number one, a sell-out tour in the US and a Brit award. All a bit

Rod Liddle

Who fact checks the BBC’s fact-checkers?

Idon’t suppose it will surprise many Jewish people that BBC Verify – as staffed by people with ‘forensic investigative skills’ – used a rabid pro-Palestinian with links to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps when adjudicating on an alleged Israeli attack against a Palestinian aid convoy in Gaza. Verify – a new unit which is, of

How to write a modern screenplay

I watched a film last week about a town in Swedish Lapland where a mine collapsed and caused lots of misery. I won’t tell you the name of the film in case, out of curiosity, you watch it yourselves and then later blame me for having alerted you to it. The plot was simple –

Why Britain stopped working

50 min listen

Welcome to a slightly new format for the Edition podcast! Each week we will be talking about the magazine – as per usual – but trying to give a little more insight into the process behind putting The Spectator bed each week. On the podcast this week: the cost of Britain’s mass worklessness. According to The Spectator’s calculations,

Rod Liddle

Ban smartphones for kids!

I understand the allure of smartphones, if you’re the parent of an adolescent (or younger) moron – which I believe many of you are. You have booked a nice table for Sunday lunch and would appreciate not having to engage your offspring in a dialogue of inanities regarding the things which most concern them at

Labour still has an anti-Semitism problem

Then there’s the other candidate, or ex-candidate, for the Rochdale by-election, the one nobody is talking about. The Green party hopeful, Guy Otten, had his party’s support withdrawn last week and he decided to pull out over tweets he had written, some of them up to ten years ago. The one which really narked his