Columns

Thursday

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 year, although I daresay my permasmirk will be wiped clean towards the end of it. It is rare in politics for policies to have such an immediate effect that one can justifiably say: ‘See? Told you.’ But that is what has happened with the Rwanda stuff. Those who have argued that sending illegal asylum seekers to Rwanda is not a deterrent no longer have a leg to stand on.

Thursday

Matthew Parris

Donating to charity is too easy

It’s been a torrid few weeks for anyone who knows anyone who was running in the London Marathon. In have come the emails sent by the sender to himself or herself, and BCC’d no doubt to a very long list of the sender’s friends: ‘I’m running the London Marathon on 21 April, for [insert name of charity]. I’d be so pleased if you could sponsor me for this worthy cause. You’ll find my page on [JustGiving, or other similar websites]’ and a link is supplied. There’s no way of getting yourmoney back if your friend wobbles out of the marathon after five miles I’ve received a few of these and in fact been pleased to help. I know what runners go through, and I wholeheartedly approve of charitable giving. So, you may ask, what’s not to like about this growing practice?

Douglas Murray

Following Napoleon: my exile in St Helena

St Helena In an attempt to escape from the world, I have come with friends to St Helena. It is quite a good place for the exercise. Until a few years ago the only way to get to the island was a five-day boat voyage from Cape Town. Shortly before Covid, an airport for this British overseas territory was finally completed at UK taxpayer expense. To protect some local insects the runway was put at a slightly wrong angle, making it difficult – sometimes impossible – to land. The weekly flight from Johannesburg therefore refuels in Namibia in case landing is impossible and the plane has to about-turn. A lifesize statue of Napoleon stands on the balcony.

Lionel Shriver

It rarely pays to be ahead of your time

Following the release of the Cass report deprecating NHS ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors as reliant on rubbish medical research, the number of comment pieces disparaging the cult of transgenderism has exploded. Such columns would never have been published even a couple of years ago. Finally, pushing disturbed children and adolescents into damaging and sometimes gruesome treatment in the service of adult fanaticism is starting to look, um – iffy. For outliers who’ve been frantically signalling, ‘Hey! Maybe a society that’s mutilating its own kids has lost its way!’ this watershed should constitute satisfying vindication. It does. That’s the good news.

Rod Liddle

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 and over and it never fails to put me in a better frame of mind. It is less the bovine stupidity of the message that amuses than the fact that Jemma Joy – yes, yes, I know – felt the need to recite it, as if there were people out there determined to believe that she thought that women couldn’t have penises and might victimise her for this heresy.

Katy Balls

Kemi and Gove’s Cabinet clash on Rwanda

When the Rwanda Bill had its second reading in the House of Commons just before Christmas, there was a revolt on the right of the Tory party. A group of legal experts, with the self-appointed ‘Star Chamber’ title, were convened by Eurosceptic MPs. They declared that Rishi Sunak’s plan was not ‘sufficiently watertight’ to allow deportations to take place, with too many legal loopholes vulnerable to exploitation. They said they would vote against the bill unless changes were made. In the end, Sunak faced down the rebels; only a small number came out against him. Soon after the vote, the cabinet met.

Thursday

Douglas Murray

The triumph of Katharine Birbalsingh

There are two questions that need to be asked of any society: what is it that is going wrong; and what is it that’s going right that should be done more? It’s only natural to focus on the first question – not least because it is easier. But it is the second question that should be asked more. Whenever I think of the few things that are going well in Britain, I think of the Michaela Community School in Wembley, London. I have visited the school a couple of times. It sits in one of London’s most deprived communities. Set up under the era of Michael Gove’s free schools scheme, it is the creation of Katharine Birbalsingh. Pupils are almost all from non-advantaged backgrounds.

Mary Wakefield

Clean up the MoD graffiti!

When I first saw the Ministry of Defence building splattered in blood-red paint, I assumed that it had only just happened. There were no police or protestors about but the damage was so extensive and so shocking, I felt sure it was recent. No decent government would put up with that for long. I was east-bound in a car at the time and as we drove past I craned out of the window for a last look. The Whitehall clean-up crew would arrive soon, I assumed, and I gawped because I wouldn’t see it again. I cannot for the life of me understand why it’s all right to leave the MoD looking like an abattoir But I did. The next day, there it still was, and the day after that, and the one following. I’ve been back every day since just to check.

Freddy Gray

The Democrats have a Joe Biden problem

The Democrats dare to hope that this week will be a study in contrasts. On their side stands President Joe Biden, the veteran statesman, using all his diplomatic experience to stop a third world war breaking out in the Middle East. On the other, in the dock in Manhattan, sits Donald Trump, facing 34 criminal counts in a case relating to porn stars, adultery and hush money. As Biden urges Israel to ‘think carefully’ as it considers how to respond to Iran’s attack last weekend, Trump is, as ever, ranting away about himself. This speaks to Biden’s 2024 re-election pitch: it’s democracy (him) vs chaos (you know who).

Rod Liddle

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 down the Great Rift Valley in Kenya. Why not, I suggested, just donate the enormous amount of money such a trek would cost direct to the charity? It would easily outweigh the amount raised, not least because miserable bastards like me would probably decide it was not a charitable act at all but first-world grandstanding with a smug hubris masquerading as kindness.

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

Is Trump or Biden a bigger threat to democracy?

When more than two-thirds of the American electorate doesn’t want to vote for either major party’s nominee, a third party should have a chance. Polls have demonstrated that whichever party chucked its front-runner would win –even if it nominated a cloned sheep. Yet last week, having failed to convince a prominent politician to sign up, No Labels closed shop. Whichever wretched candidate wins, we’ll just have slightly different problems The centrist project was doomed from the start. The formation of a successful ‘unity party’ is inherently unlikely in an era of rabid polarisation.

Douglas Murray

Israel is running out of options

There are many misunderstandings about Israel in the international media, but one of the most bewildering is the suggestion that if it weren’t for the presence of Benjamin Netanyahu the war would end. It is one of those mistakes that at best mixes up hope with analysis, and at worst displays a dumbfounding ignorance. Let me give you an example. In recent months I think I’ve interviewed everybody in Israeli politics who might some day replace Netanyahu. It doesn’t matter if they’re from the right or the left of the political spectrum, not one would be doing anything different from what he is doing now. No one, left or right, would be doing anything different from what Netanyahu is doing now You might ask why. The answer is obvious.

Matthew Parris

What is there left to say about the Tories?

Spare a thought for us political commentators. We stare into the void between now and a (presumed) decisive Labour victory in a (presumed) autumn general election, haunted by the need to say something significant on a weekly basis at least. Yet there seems so little left to say. Readers don’t need to be told that the Tories are in an unholy mess, or that nobody likes them Until recently we could perhaps speculate that the election might be next month but it’s surely too late now even for that surprise. So ‘autumn’, we say: no surprise there. We think we know the winner too: Labour, easily. I struggle with betting terminology but a glance at online odds suggests to me that if you bet £5 there’ll be an election in October-December 2024 and win, you’ll get £6 back.

Rod Liddle

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 reality The polls that always occasion the gravest shock, however – despite the fact they come out every year or so – are those dealing with the views of the British Muslim community. In the lacunae between these reports their findings are completely ignored in favour of the approved set of lies with which the rest of the British population is fed to keep it amenable.

Katy Balls

Is Cameron upstaging Sunak?

The logic behind Rishi Sunak’s decision to make David Cameron foreign secretary was that he would be a ‘big beast’ on the world stage and wouldn’t need much instruction. Six months on, that plan is going reasonably well, insofar as Cameron appears to be setting his own agenda. It also means he’s making his own mistakes. In February, his foray into US politics misfired when, in an article for the website the Hill, he appeared to lecture Americans about support for Ukraine, telling them not to show the ‘weakness displayed against Hitler’. A key Donald Trump ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene, responded that ‘David Cameron can kiss my ass’. This week, the Foreign Secretary has been on something of an apology tour.

Thursday

Douglas Murray

The game’s up for ‘anti-racist’ racism

There are only a few rules to column-writing. One of the strictest is never to waste time bouncing off the effluent of morons. So, for instance, it is a rule among British columnists not to use the term ‘Owen Jones’ in an article. It is too easy. Every couple of hours there will be another gaseous eruption. For example, this past week Jones, a YouTuber, has been engaged in campaigning to persuade a ‘queer’ British entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest to withdraw from the competition because of Gaza. It is by no means clear how much the citizens of Gaza care for the ‘solidarity’ of a couple of gay blokes in the UK.

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 Trials of 1612 are famous and many locals have campaigned to have the seven women and two men who were hanged posthumously pardoned. I don’t know if they were witches, but they certainly sounded hugely irritating – especially Alice Nutter, who lived up to her name.

James Heale

Could Sadiq Khan lose London?

With Labour 20 points ahead in the national polls, a lot of Tories have already written off next month’s mayoral contest in the capital. London, they maintain, is a Labour city that occasionally votes Conservative. But supporters of Sadiq Khan and his Tory challenger Susan Hall agree: it’s going to be closer than many think. The mayor’s image is as likely to be found on Conservativeleaflets as on Labour ones Three factors are held by both camps to be at play. The first is the incumbency factor versus ‘time for a change’. Khan’s re-election team has consulted other campaigns which won three in a row; all agreed this was the hardest contest to win. A hat-trick eluded Ken Livingstone, who lost in 2008 despite nearly a decade of prosperity for the city.

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

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 was taken because, as a nation, we are absolutely awash with cash at the moment and need somewhere to dispense of it. This project, funded by the quango UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will be carried out at Edinburgh University. I hope that, aside from clobbering Stevenson for having been born during a different time period, they also have a go at him for his stereotypical portrayal of the disabled – and indeed pirates.

Lionel Shriver

Going electric requires electricity. Who knew?

A lead article in the sober-sided New York Times is seldom funny. Yet ‘A New Surge in Power Use is Threatening US Climate Goals’ earlier this month cracked me up. Check out this sternly dramatic first paragraph: ‘Something unusual is happening in America. Demand for electricity, which has stayed largely flat for two decades, has begun to surge.’ Personally, I’d have headlined that article ‘Well, duh’ – perhaps with the subhead ‘Aw, shucks’. Lo and behold, when you push people to electrify everything in their lives – cars, cookers, heating systems – while bribing them to go all-electric with lavish government subsidies, it turns out they use more electricity. Who would have thought?