Society

Why did police handcuff Henry Nowak?

Britain's police are meant to police without fear or favor, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that they don’t – think of how they hold, or too often do not hold, the ring impartially between supporters of Israel and Palestine, Muslim and Christian preachers, supporters and opponents of trans rights, or whatever. Does all this matter? The Nowak case, with an obvious victim, shows clearly that it does There is a tendency for the great and the good to say this is no very big deal; the police are doing their best in difficult situations, complainants are normally tiresome culture warriors or enablers of hate speech. Events in Southampton Crown Court over the last two weeks show how wrong they are. Partial policing can potentially be deadly.

Jawad Iqbal

The unbearable smugness of Arsenal fans

Arsenal are Premier League champions after a 22-year wait: their first title since the famous Invincibles season under Arsène Wenger in 2004. The title was sealed after Manchester City (serial champions, let’s not forget) failed to beat Bournemouth last night, handing Arsenal an unassailable lead at the top of the table with one game remaining. The team deserves all the plaudits for winning the Premier League, but what is it with Arsenal and their fans when it comes to celebrations? Why do they always go so over the top? It is cringeworthy stuff, reeking of a certain smug sense of undeserved entitlement, and enough to bring out the “celebration police” mentality in every other fan across the land.

Gareth Roberts

My strange beef with Azealia Banks

It’s always fun when worlds collide – when two people whose paths should rightfully never intersect smash into one another like a car and train at a level crossing. I’ve enjoyed many such occurrences on the political scene over the years – like Mrs. Thatcher doing the video vote on Saturday Superstore with René from ’Allo ’Allo. But I never expected to find myself involved in one. I have to admit I never expected to get into the middle of a rap beef, let alone one connected to the Daily Telegraph That all changed on Saturday evening. There I was happily rolling pastry in the kitchen when suddenly my phone and other connected smart devices started flashing and pinging like a Chernobyl control panel.

Theo Hobson

Middlemarch is overrated

Middlemarch, which a Guardian poll of "experts" has named as the best novel ever, is overrated. I enjoyed reading it when I was seventeen. I probably re-read it in my twenties. Then I grew up. I became a bit more skeptical of the para-religious sentimentalism-on-stilts that defines George Eliot’s oeuvre, and this novel in particular. This is a pile of nonsense with a grain of truth in it Of course I was in love with Dorothea Brooke as a teenager. So high-minded, and considerate and so wisely accepting of her misfortunes, and rather pretty too. But nowadays she strikes me as a blue-stocking bore (I far prefer the feisty Gwendolyn from Daniel Deronda (partly thanks to Romola Garai’s portrayal of her). Let’s put it simply.

Friday

May 15, 2026

Peter Jones

The Romans would tax anything

When Nero committed suicide in AD 68, he left Rome deep in debt after military campaigns, building himself a fabulous “Golden House,” and the great fire of Rome (AD 64). His successor Vespasian, who fought his way to power in late AD 69, set to work at once. A hardworking man of humble origins and simple tastes, Vespasian was well suited to the task: “He got up early, even when it was still dark, and read the letters and the official breviaria” (“reports”; Latin brevis, “brief”). He sold off some imperial estates and nearly doubled provincial taxes, while extending Roman citizenship.

Toby Young

Can British democracy survive the ‘bad chaps?’

What is the greatest threat to British democracy? Zack Polanski’s call for “building a society” that “doesn’t include” people who “identify as right-wing?” Labour’s efforts to flood the Upper House with party apparatchiks? Islamist extremism? The correct answer is Reform UK. That, at least, is the conclusion of a new book called What If Reform Wins by the Times reporter Peter Chappell. Before I get to its flaws, I should acknowledge it’s an enjoyable read, with plenty of deft, comic touches. It imagines that Reform wins a majority in June 2029, and then gives a blow-by-blow account of the constitutional crisis that follows, with the informal rules and conventions underpinning our democracy being stress-tested and found wanting.

Chris Mondics

Our politicians need a trip to Maine

Unpretentious and tucked away, it is not easy to drive past the tiny hamlet of Allagash, population 237, in the far northern tip of Maine. That’s because the blacktop ends at the town’s western edge. Allagash is one of a handful of jurisdictions in the east above the 47th parallel. Beyond the paved road, to the north, west and south stretch more than one million acres of forest. To be sure, there are logging roads in the woods, but no towns, gas stations or supermarkets. Just miles and miles of boreal forest whose birch, pine, alder and spruce blanket the hillsides, lakeshores and river bottoms.

Ben Clerkin

The death penalty is still in decline – despite Trump’s best efforts

Donna Major was shot dead in 2017 by bank robber Brandon Council, who was convicted and sentenced to death. But Joe Biden – “guided,” as he said he was, “by my conscience” – commuted Council’s sentence along with 36 other men on federal death row in the twilight of his presidency. Was this pardon for Council an insult to Donna and her grieving relatives? Donald Trump thinks so. When he took office, he quickly rescinded Biden’s moratorium on federal executions and issued an executive order instructing states to seek new charges against the 37 killers Biden pardoned. South Carolina indicted Council for Donna’s murder again last year and so he could eventually be back on death row.

Roger Kimball

The benevolence trap

On May 12, the Canadian evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad published a book called Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind. It’s a smart book, immensely pertinent to a time, like ours, that is awash with this diseased form of self-infatuated fellow feeling. Dr. Saad is correct: “Suicidal empathy is a civilization malady that has entered every nook and cranny of our lives.” One of the peculiarities of the malady that Dr. Saad diagnoses is its persistence. Socialism – which is the generic name of this intoxicating and addictive drug – has failed everywhere it has been tried. No matter. The world manufactures new versions of Greta Thunberg, AOC and Bernie Sanders faster than they can be repudiated. Democrats, Dr. Saad observes, are the party of empathy.

George Weigel

Pope Leo knows what his job is

Pope Leo XIV had a relatively quiet first 11 months on the Chair of St. Peter. Then Mt. Trump erupted in April, with the voluble and volatile POTUS accusing the Chicago-born pontiff of everything from squishiness on crime to squishiness on Iranian nukes. The most absurd presidential claim was that, were it not for Trump, Robert Francis Prevost would not be Pope. The truth of the matter is that, had Cardinal Prevost been primarily thought of as an American papabile a year ago, he would never have been elected, Latin American opposition to a gringo Pope being one of the immutable human dynamics of a papal conclave. Twenty years of missionary work in Peru, and broad experience of the world church (thanks to two terms as prior general of the Order of St.

Thursday

May 14, 2026

Cressida Bonas

How to write a diary

A few gray hairs have appeared on our dog Budgie’s chin. She’s only seven and is part of our family. The silver streaks are a reminder that we are inching slowly to the inevitable day when she will no longer be with us. “Having dogs is a sad business,” my dad says. “You fall in love with them and when they go, they break your heart.” I once heard Ricky Gervais describe dogs as life’s greatest invention, the closest thing to something spiritual most of us will ever experience. As a joke, my husband asked me whether Budgie was my best friend. “Yes,” I replied, and I wasn’t joking at all. I write a diary and I try to think of something to say every day. Occasionally I stop myself: “You can’t write that,” I think. “What if someone reads it?

Dot Wordsworth

Why does everything now pivot?

“As the door turneth upon his hinges,” says the Book of Proverbs, “so doth the slothful upon his bed.” But today nothing turns, neither the door, nor the slothful, nor his ox, nor his ass. It pivots. I read in the paper that Meg O’Neill, the new CEO of BP, is “expected to double-down on the pivot back towards oil and gas.” Doubling down on a pivot must take some gymnastic skill. Saudi Arabia meanwhile is trying out a new snooker shot: “to pivot away from less lucrative projects” – such as snooker. Here the writer might as well have said “turn away,” as in the Bible. Pivot has the restrictive extra sense of remaining in one place as you turn. We English borrowed the noun pivot from the French in the 14th century, and they used it to mean “hinge.

Justin Marozzi

Who cares if fridge magnets are tacky?

Let’s dispense with the obvious question first. Are they common? While there’s a clear temptation to consult Nicky Haslam on such matters, I don’t think I can be bothered. Not least because first, I am a Prusso-Italian immigrant, second, I was born in Essex and third, I adore fridge magnets. We should be honest and admit that, like everything in life, they are signifiers. The aim is to show our friends how cultured, traveled, well-read, ironic and amusing we are. They are our lives writ in ceramic. Where to begin? One of my favorite magnets, designed to strike fear and dread into any intruder, dates back to Iraq circa 2004: “Caution Stay 100 meters back or you will be shot.” No punctuation, not even an exclamation mark!

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop my husband from interrupting?

Q. My husband worked in an office for 25 years and now works from home. As well as the interaction with colleagues, he clearly misses hearing the sound of his own voice. I sympathize, but during the day I obviously need to tell him various things, and almost as soon as I begin to speak he starts interrupting with fatuous prompts such as “And then what did he say?” or “And did you tell him you were wondering when he was going to ring up?” When he keeps interrupting, I lose the thread of my message. How can I keep things pleasant? – S.R., London W12 A. Next time you have some facts which need to be conveyed, open a file on your computer and type out what you would say were you not to be interrupted.

Rory Sutherland

The ‘airport effect’ that’s ruining modern life

The phrase “computer says no” now has its own Wikipedia page. The first recorded use dates back to a Stasi-era 1970s East German film segment titled Der Computer Sagt: Nein. However, its idiomatic use arose in 2004 via a series of sketches in Little Britain, each illustrating an example of technology--enabled bureaucratic intransigence, typically flying in the face of common-sense human judgment. It is perhaps the 21st-century equivalent of “jobsworth.” To behavioral scientists, the phrase illustrates something known as “defensive decision-making,” whereby the primary motivation for a decision is not the likely quality of the outcome but the decision-maker’s often unconscious urge to use any available means to offload accountability for his actions.

Melissa Kite

What really killed off the traditional B&B

To B&B or not to be B&B? That is the question. Whether it’s nobler to offer breakfast to a guest is not in question, but whether it’s possible has been my dilemma since I started my guest house. After reading Ross Clark on The Spectator website saying that he longs for the traditional B&B, all I can say is I’ve really tried to be that landlady he describes, in pink fluffy slippers, frying bacon in a house with Artex walls. I’ve tried to take people who roll up late at night, I’ve tried to put the second B back into the enterprise, and I’ve tried to cope with customers who, like Ross, want the option of a cooked breakfast but not a fry-up – porridge, made just the way they want it, which is different for every single customer.

Lloyd Evans

Man vs lobster

She was doing a postgrad course in a town by the sea, and a strange thing happened to us one afternoon. On the quayside we saw lobsters being sold from a trestle table. Only one of them remained and I squinted at it, close up. The sharp oval claws, like holsters, had been bound in elastic bands to stop them nipping customers. It seemed a small-minded precaution. These imposing pincers were cumbersome and useless on dry land. But in the sea, with the water’s buoyancy to give them mobility, they would be swift and lethal weapons. Yet the lobster-catcher had neutralized them with a pair of turquoise bands. What for? The beast was already defeated, plucked from its natural habitat by a giant human being, and yet the victor was fearful of the tiniest nip from his prisoner’s claws.

Max Pemberton

Is your wellness smoothie giving you cancer?

There’s a question I’ve started being asked at work. Given I’m a psychiatrist, it isn’t one I’d ever expected to hear: “Do I have cancer?” A young woman with anxiety wants to know whether the lump on her neck is sinister; she has been watching a great deal of TikTok. A man in his late thirties, in for a routine review, mentions in passing that his sister has been referred for a colonoscopy and wonders whether he should be too. At a dinner party a few weeks ago, a friend leant across halfway through her low-alcohol natural wine and asked me, in a small voice, whether it was true her generation was getting cancer in their thirties. Yes, I said, perhaps a little too bluntly. She looked rather panicked for the rest of her evening.

The Spectator

Which animals are older than David Attenborough?

Travel sickness Three people were reported to have died in an outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship returning to Europe from Antarctica. How likely are you to fall ill with an infectious disease on a cruise? A European study that analyzed US data on 760 cruises between 2010 and 2013 found an overall illness rate of 2.81 cases per 10,000 traveler-days, while 97% of cases involved norovirus. The rate of outbreaks was highest on ships which had a home port in Cuba or Egypt and lowest on ships with a home port in France, Greece, Italy or the UK. Local difficulties Does a governing party ever do well in local elections?

Rod Liddle

The unstoppable rise of stupidity

Hold the front page: I’ve found a very good contemporary novel to occupy my time. Such things have become vanishingly rare, even if one is grateful for David Mitchell’s metafiction, the occasional blast from Michel Houllebecq and Ben Marcus’s engaging lunacy. By and large, modern novels lack depth, originality of form and language, political unorthodoxy (i.e. freethinking) and a vaulting fictional imagination. Where, today, would you find the J.G. Ballards, the David Storeys, the Anthony Burgesses? In the sensitivity reader’s rejected pile, I suspect.

Charles Moore

Keir Starmer is downplaying the Islamist threat to Jews

At the anti-Semitism “summit” in Downing Street, Sir Keir Starmer achieved a personal first. He used the word “Islamists.” But in order to utter a word he had previously avoided in relation to the subject, Sir Keir had to approach it crabwise. Instead of identifying Islamists as the main ideological and physical threat to British Jews, he said: “We’re clear-eyed about the fact that anti-Semitism does not have one source alone: Islamists, far-left, far-right extremism, all target Jewish communities.” Islamists were thus inserted into the conversation but also downplayed. It is obsolete not to recognize that the far right in Britain – for the moment at least – more or less leaves Jews alone.

Simon Heffer

It’s time to uncancel Enoch Powell

Despite a career of nearly half a century in public life, Enoch Powell is generally remembered for one utterance only: the so-called "Rivers of Blood" speech he made in Birmingham on April 20, 1968, in which he voiced his opposition to the race relations legislation being taken through parliament by the then Labour government. Powell was the Conservative opposition’s defense spokesman. His speech threw the leader of his party, Edward Heath, into a profound panic, and he sacked Powell immediately, initiating decades of assertions that Powell was racially prejudiced. Powell always said – entirely honestly – that he never made a speech about race: just speeches about immigration policy and his profound disagreement with how it was usually managed.

Wednesday

May 13, 2026

Cockburn

WATCH: Keir Starmer declares himself a ‘gooner’

They say being honest in the face of adversity can help save your neck. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer this afternoon proudly told the House of Commons, “I am a gooner.” https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2054575703371153826 Cockburn must be charitable to Starmer (someone has to) and note that his word choice offers an example of two nations divided by a common language. In American English – very online American English – a “gooner” is someone who indulges in extensive bouts of self-gratification. Thanks to Harper’s magazine for making the term more widely known. In British English, however, “gooner” is a variation of “Gunner,” meaning “fan of Arsenal Football Club.” This is only slightly less embarrassing.

Lawrence Newport

Britain is sick of the Westminster psychodrama

The British Army has long lived by a simple maxim: “Prior preparation and planning prevents piss poor performance.” It remains as true today as ever. Disasters are rarely unavoidable or destined to occur. Usually, they are the consequence of decisions – or the refusal to make them – over several weeks, months, and even years. Any government would be wise to follow this advice before entering office. Yet Keir Starmer's Government, much like many of those that came before it, will fail because it lacked the prior preparation and planning to prevent the poor performance it subsequently delivered. Each time Westminster convinces itself that the problem was just personnel Living standards in decline. Industries leaving. Jobs going elsewhere. Wages stagnant. Communities fractured.