Society

Sunday

Jim Lawley

The Bazball experiment has failed

England’s cricketers have lost the Ashes, after being defeated in the third Test match in Adelaide by 82 runs. The Adelaide defeat follows humiliating routs by eight wickets in both Perth and Brisbane, leaving us 3-0 down; after barely 11 days of cricket, the five-match series is now a dead rubber. We lost the previous three Ashes series ‘down under’ 5-0, 4-0 and 4-0. Apparently England’s cricket management learned nothing from those reality checks. The Bazball experiment has just been stress-tested, found wanting, pulverised and buried And to make it all worse, we’d been told that this tour would be different. Regaining the Ashes was to be the culmination of

Terry Barnes

What winning the Ashes means for Australia

This has been a week when Australia could no longer deny the dark stain of anti-Semitism on our national soul. When our Prime Minister, faced with the horror of Bondi and Islamic jihadist fanatics, failed to rise to the crying need for genuine national leadership. When all Australians, not just our Jewish brothers and sisters, are lost, bewildered and angry. But there has been something that has at least provided a modicum of comfort after the raw emotions: the Ashes cricket Test in Adelaide. As former England bowler and BBC commentator Phil ‘Tuffers’ Tufnell says, touring teams don’t just play an Australia XI; they play an entire country. If there

Laurie Wastell

Why weren’t the grooming gangs treated as race-hate crimes?

After months of turmoil, the chair and the terms of reference of the government’s national grooming gangs inquiry have at last been announced. The inquiry will be led by Baroness Anne Longfield, a Labour peer and former children’s commissioner. She will investigate the ‘systemic, institutional and individual’ failures to deal with these gangs and to protect their victims. It is unclear still what shape the inquiry will take, and whether or not it will be a whitewash. Some survivors have already criticised the decision to make the inquiry chair a Labour peer.   The failure to treat these offences as racially aggravated points to a systemic problem in our institutions

Meghan Markle, as told to Julie Burchill

My Christmas round robin

Happy Holidays, friends. Think about that word for a moment. Hold it in your sacred space. Surely that’s what the Holidays are all about? Friends. Like family – only better. Friends – the family we choose. People who are respectful and loving towards us. Like Oprah. (Hi, Oprah!) Or like people who are proficient at hair and makeup and are keen to gift their gift. Friends. Let’s dissect that beautiful word. It comes so close to being fiends – but narrowly avoids it by the felicitous presence of the letter R. Note also that it contains ends –which is what must happen to the relationship, regrettably, if fiendish behavior is ever displayed by the

James Graham

How sustainability stole Christmas

The glitz and glow of the Christmas period, from gently twinkling lights to the fireworks of New Year, is something we look forward to every year. Yet through the years, the season seems to have lost a little of its magic. Things sparkle a little less than they once did. Is it just nostalgia to think so? Everything looks more impressive as a ten-year-old, after all. That our Christmas loses a little sparkle is a small price to pay in the corporate central planners’ march towards a ‘circular economy’ But the now annual denunciations of Quality Street suggest otherwise. For those unaware, in 2022 Quality Street abandoned its shiny crinkle

Heddwen Uruska

Why Gen Z is relying on death to pay for life

What’s wrong with planning a once-in-a-lifetime holiday? Or dreaming of buying your first home? Nothing, of course – unless it hinges on the death of your elderly mother. Increasingly, it seems, many people’s future plans depend on such family tragedies. The sorrow of losing a loved one, soothed by an inheritance pay cheque. Friends speak openly about moving into a bigger house once their inheritance ‘comes through’ There is something unpalatable about the idea of using a deceased relative’s estate to repay a loan you chose to borrow, or finally booking the cruise that has been sitting in your Tui basket since your father’s first dose of chemo. But more

Dominic Sandbrook

Christmas Out Loud II: Dominic Sandbrook, Philip Hensher, Steve Morris, Christopher Howse, Michael Hann & Mary Killen

41 min listen

On this week’s special Christmas edition of Spectator Out Loud – part two: Dominic Sandbrook reflects on whether Lady Emma Hamilton is the 18th century’s answer to Bonnie Blue; Philip Hensher celebrates the joy of a miserable literary Christmas; Steve Morris argues that an angel is for life, not just for Christmas; Christopher Howse ponders the Spectator’s enduring place in fiction; Michael Hann explains what links Jeffrey Dahmer to the Spice Girls; and, the Spectator’s agony aunt Mary Killen – Dear Mary herself – answers Christmas queries from Emily Maitlis, Elizabeth Day, Rory Stewart and an anonymous Chief Whip of Reform UK.  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Saturday

Mike Jakeman

The circus of the Joshua-Paul boxing fight

‘The numbers are putrid, to say the least,’ harrumphed commentator Maura Ranallo at the start of the fourth round of last night’s fight between British boxer Anthony Joshua and American YouTuber Jake Paul. For the first three rounds, Paul skittered around the edges of the unusually large ring, evading Joshua’s every attempt at a setup. Paul had no interest in trying to hit Joshua. Stepping in would have risked being clobbered himself, given the Brit’s far longer reach. Instead, he put his mind towards provoking Joshua by dropping his hands, sticking his tongue out, coming in for a clinch whenever he could. By the end of the fourth, the referee,

Terry Barnes

A gun crackdown is easier than confronting Australia's Islamist menace

It’s hard to disagree with the verdict of former Australian cabinet minister Josh Frydenberg on the Bondi Beach attack. ‘Guns may have stolen the life of 15 innocent civilians,’ he said, ‘but it was radical Islamist ideology that pulled the trigger’. Despite that furious denunciation of Australian government inertia on antisemitism since 7 October – and ex-prime minister John Howard labelling gun control a ‘distraction’ – Anthony Albanese is determined to focus on cracking down on firearms. But is he ignoring the Islamist elephant in the room? Cracking down on guns is sensible, but it won’t defeat the Islamist and antisemitic hate pulling the trigger The Australian leader has announced

Thomas Colsy

How the English Reformation nearly finished off Christianity in Japan

Christmas is for the Japanese, rather miserably, a regular working day. This might easily not have been the case. The Japanese were once on the verge of adopting the Christian faith at every strata of society, from peasant to ruler. The English Reformation had a surprisingly significant role in ensuring this didn’t come to pass. By the eighteenth century, organised Christianity had disappeared from public life When St Francis Xavier arrived in Japan in 1549, Christianity was entirely unknown there. Within half a century, it had become the fastest-growing religion in the country’s history. By the early seventeenth century, contemporary missionary estimates placed the number of Japanese converts at over

Friday

Kristina Murkett

Misogyny lessons for schoolboys will backfire

All parents and teachers of teenagers will know two things. The first is that teenagers are the human equivalent of seismometers when it comes to perceived unfairness: they are acutely sensitive to any injustice or unequal treatment, and if they feel they are not being treated the same as their peers, this can quickly erupt into an outburst of outrage or denial. The second is that, try as we might, parents and teachers are not cool. We are not cool at the best of times, but we are definitely not cool when we are telling teenagers not to do something – and there is always the risk that lecturing them

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill

What the word ‘intifada’ really means

Finally the left is showing an interest in freedom of speech. And all it took was a police clampdown on cries for violence against Jews. They turned a blind eye when cancel culture ran riot on campuses. And when gender-critical women were gagged for telling the truth about biology. And when people lost their jobs after dissing Islam. But stifling Jewphobic speech? That’s a step too far. They’re up in arms now. Let’s be clear: ‘Globalise the intifada’ is a call for anti-Jewish violence This is the news that the Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police have promised firmer action against chants like ‘Globalise the intifada’. In the aftermath of

Duncan Gray

How to really save the BBC

Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC has accidentally done Britain a favour. One ‘fake news’ moment involving the US president has turned what would normally be a media-page squabble into a question on the doorstep: should every household in the UK continue to pay to receive a live television signal, enforceable by law, to fund the BBC? In a world of monthly subscriptions for global streamers, the licence fee has never felt more like an anachronistic tithe. The British public are fed up with the licence fee BBC Charter renewal – due at the end of 2027 – has become an election issue. There’s a chasm that needs

Mike Pitts

Why did scientists think the Beachy Head Lady was African?

A human skeleton found in a box in the basement of Eastbourne town hall in 2012, has, not for the first time, caused some controversy. Known as the ‘Beachy Head Lady’, her remains were discovered during a study of 250 skeletons in the council’s collection. She was found to be a Roman woman with recent sub-Saharan African ancestry, leading to her being called the ‘first black Briton’ and ‘one of the earliest Africans in Britain’. Now a new study has found that she was, in fact, a light-haired native Briton. The African claim was always controversial. Archaeologists hailed it as evidence that Britain has always been multicultural. Others, who felt

Iain Mansfield

Why should British taxpayers fund students’ European Erasmus jollies?

Half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money will be spent on rejoining the EU’s Erasmus+ student exchange programme. With libraries closing, criminals being let out of jail early and funding for maths and classics in schools slashed, it is the clearest indication yet of where this government’s priorities lie. Rejoining Erasmus+ simply means that working people will now be funding these young people’s excursions The decision to re-enter the Erasmus+ is widely touted as ‘permitting’ UK students to access study opportunities on the continent. The reality is that many university courses have always offered students the opportunity to spend some time studying abroad, whether in the EU or elsewhere. Rejoining

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The crackdown on 'globalise the intifada' chants is too little, too late

Protesters chanting ‘globalise the intifada’ will now be arrested, according to the heads of Greater Manchester Police and the Metropolitan Police. The announcement has been framed as a response to a ‘changed context’. But what it actually represents is an admission, belated and heavy, that the authorities spent years refusing to see what was directly in front of them. The chant was never opaque. The intifadas were not metaphors or moods The chant was never opaque. The intifadas were not metaphors or moods. They were campaigns of organised violence: shootings, stabbings, bombings, lynchings, buses torn apart, cafés turned into graves. And each individual terror attack, each ‘isolated’ act of violence

Wednesday

Madeline Grant

An unhappy Christmas PMQs for Keir Starmer

Thank God! Today was the last Prime Minister’s Questions before Christmas and so Sir Keir and Mrs Badenoch began their speeches with seasonal greetings. Was a Christmas truce about to break out? Unlikely; Sir Keir couldn’t resist a poke at Reform’s Russian problems. ‘If wise men from the East come bearing gifts, this time report it to the police’ he scoffed. Today, Nigel Farage, Sir Keir’s very own Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, loomed down on proceedings from the Commons viewing gallery. Even he chuckled at this opening gag. The death of Tiny Tim is genuinely more likely to bring about a smile than the Prime Minister’s gags Things got

David Shipley

The anti-Muslim hate definition will be bad for free speech

After a long wait, the government’s Islamophobia definition has finally taken form. There has been  plenty of criticism of the idea, and many warnings of the dangers it would pose to freedom and our ability to fight crime. But fear not, the state has come up with a brilliant solution: rebranding. Instead of ‘Islamophobia’ we are to be given a definition of ‘anti-Muslim hatred’. The draft text, apparently submitted to the government in October, reads: ‘Anti-Muslim hostility is engaging in or encouraging criminal acts, including acts of violence, vandalism of property, and harassment and intimidation whether physical, verbal, written or electronically communicated, which is directed at Muslims or those perceived to

Matthew Lynn

We don’t need a stealth tax on rotisserie chicken

It depends on whether you re-heat it when you get home, apparently. Or whether it is sold in a bag labelled hot food. The supermarket chain Morrisons has lost a fiendishly complex court battle over whether its rotisserie chickens should be subject to VAT or not. It will have to stump up an extra £17 million to the Treasury. But hold on. This is crazy. The last thing the UK needs right now is what amounts to a stealth tax on spit-roasted poultry.  This is crazy. The last thing the UK needs right now is what amounts to a stealth tax on spit-roasted poultry The tax lawyers will no doubt

Rory Hanrahan

It's no surprise that the Bondi Beach attackers are related

The sun had barely set over Sydney’s Bondi Beach, when horror unfolded at the Hanukkah celebration. A father and son, armed with licensed firearms, opened fire on a crowd of hundreds gathered for the Jewish holiday, killing at least 15 people and injuring more than 40 others. The perpetrators have been identified as Sajid Akram, 50, who was killed by police at the scene, and his 24-year-old son Naveed Akram, who remains in a critical condition in hospital after being shot by police. The father-son dynamic here is no coincidence; it speaks to how hatred is often inherited The attack is Australia’s deadliest mass shooting in nearly three decades, a stark