Columns

Thursday

Douglas Murray

The trouble with defining genocide

Like a number of ‘anti-colonialists’, William Dalrymple lives in colonial splendour on the outskirts of Delhi. The writer often opens the doors of his estate to slavering architectural magazines. A few years ago, one described his pool, pool house, vast family rooms, animals, cockatoo ‘and the usual entourage of servants that attends any successful man in India’s capital city’. Either the Israelis weren’t committing genocide, or they tried to commit genocide but are bad at it. Which is it? I only mention Dalrymple because he is one of a large number of people who have lost their senses by going rampaging online about the alleged genocide in Gaza.

Mary Wakefield

The NHS says trans women should breastfeed babies. This is unforgivable

There are a fair few trans women – men who want to be seen as ladies – who long to breastfeed real babies, and some who actually give it a good go. A few years ago this would have seemed unthinkably surreal, but I’m afraid this is the new reality and you’ll just have to get used to it. A man who wants to breastfeed first takes hormones to grow breast tissue. Then he uses a technique adapted from something called the Newman-Goldfarb protocol, which was designed to help adoptive mothers breastfeed: he takes hormones and a hefty dose of an anti-nausea medication called domperidone and then begins an intense breast-pumping routine after which, if he’s lucky, he produces something a bit like milk.

Katy Balls

Could Britain have a farmers’ revolt?

Nine years ago, when Rishi Sunak was campaigning to be the Conservative candidate for Richmond in Yorkshire, he knew his background wouldn’t work in his favour. Here was a millionaire City slicker – fresh from a spell in Silicon Valley – standing in a rural safe seat against local rivals. William Hague, who was retiring from the seat, told him he’d need to do a crash course in country living. Sunak replied that he’d milk some cows right away. Now, the Prime Minister takes great pride in his familiarity with rural issues. He cites hill farming as a passion and boasts to friends of his ‘deep knowledge of sheep’. The Prime Minister cites hill farming as a passion and boasts of his ‘deep knowledge of sheep’ The hope in No.

Thursday

Douglas Murray

I’ll soon be the only commoner I know

It is starting to dawn on me that I will soon be the only commoner I know. I am racking my brains trying to think of anyone I have even met in recent years who has not been ennobled, and at present I am drawing a blank. Each time I am out of the UK I return to find another honours list and another batch of peers. By the time the magazine has gone to press this column’s sub-editor will probably have been called to the Upper House. Should the Upper House really be a chamber filled with failed MPs, council leaders and spads? This is not – I would like to stress – sour grapes. I have no personal desire to be in the House of Lords. Indeed it always surprises me that anyone would. They can’t have ever been there.

Lara Prendergast

Beauty tips every man should know

British men are getting into ‘beauty’. ‘Now it’s men’s turn to hog the bathroom,’ reports the Times, as spending increases 77 per cent year on year. Beauty industry types argue that all men should want to look more groomed, even Anglo-Saxons. What’s wrong with some light fluffing up here, a bit of patching up there? It’s a lucrative business and celebrities are, of course, cashing in. Harry Styles flogs nail varnish; Idris Elba’s skincare line S’Able is ‘powered by modern science’. Even Richard E. Grant has a range of smellies, ‘an exploration of his lifelong love affair with scent’. It’s a long way from Marwood scrubbing essence of petunia into his boots to cover up the odour of lighter-fluid-induced vomit.

Lionel Shriver

Are bad parents criminals?

In 2005 my seventh novel, about an unloving mother tortured by whether her son’s high-school mass murder was all her fault, designated me the go-to girl for commentary about school shootings. Consequently, the overweight, tremulous, flush-faced Jennifer Crumbley belongs to me. Known for arguably overloaded character names, I couldn’t have invented a better surname for an iconic Bad Mother. Hitting harmonics with ‘crummy’ (lousy) and ‘crumby’ (untidy), ‘Crumbley’ also suggests unsoundness, dereliction and collapse. In 2021, Jennifer’s son Ethan, then 15, killed four of his classmates and injured seven others at his Michigan high school with a handgun his father had bought him for Christmas. After pleading guilty to 24 charges, Ethan was sentenced to life without parole.

Rod Liddle

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 Green colleagues, apparently, was this: ‘The Quran is full of war, slaughter, rape and pillage, with genocide and slavery as well. It’s not fit for the 21st century.’ Hmm. How to put this? I have to say, as a description of the gorier bits of the Quran it’s not terribly wide of the mark, is it?

James Heale

Can Sunak find the common touch?

A former Tory minister likes to tell the tale of a recent charity dinner in his constituency. The organiser began by stressing that the occasion had to remain ‘a strictly non-political event’. The MP rose to reply: ‘Not to worry, ladies and gentlemen – I belong to a strictly non-political party.’ That question of Rishi Sunak’s political instincts – or lack thereof – is preoccupying Tory MPs. Three recent encounters are held up as examples. An ill-judged bet with Piers Morgan was followed by a warm embrace with the Sinn Fein First Minister Michelle O’Neill. Images of this latter encounter went down badly with Tory MPs who served in the military.

Thursday

Mary Wakefield

XL Bullies deserve to be banned

Sometimes the realisation that you’ve been completely wrong for decades creeps up on you slowly, and at other times it’s a revelation, a light illuminating the entirety of your foolishness all at once. I had a revelation of this second sort on the London Overground train. I’ve been on the Bullys’ side but seeing one nose-to-nose with your child helps clarify things no end It was just days before poor 68-year-old Esther Martin was mauled to death by two XL Bully dogs in Clacton-on-Sea. Beauty and Bear, the dogs were called. The train had just pulled out of Haggerston station and my son was with me. He was hanging from an overhead bar and I was pretending not to notice, so as to be with my phone.

Douglas Murray

I’m embarrassed by modern Britain

I’m not sure I recognise this country any more. Characteristics that I grew up with have been eroded to the point of disappearance. What were those characteristics? I’d say they included a certain doggedness – an indefatigability, a quiet strength and resilience. Where did they go? We have decided that the men of violence are winning and we must just keep our heads down A little over two years ago, when Sir David Amess was murdered, I remarked here on the appalling ‘tribute’ that his colleagues paid in the parliamentary session given over to eulogies to their recently butchered colleague. Of course the MPs all spoke warmly of the man, but you might have come away with the idea that he had died of natural causes.

Rod Liddle

Do asylum-seekers really want to convert to Christianity?

Slightly bored last Thursday afternoon, I converted to Islam to see what it was like. All I had to do was intone the Shahada – ‘La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadun Rasul Allah’ – and then have a nice shower with some Head and Shoulders to wash away the deluded Christian filth that had hitherto cloaked my physical being, the musty detritus of a decadent creed. I have to say, once converted, it didn’t feel terribly different inside but on the plus side I was immediately offered several senior posts with the BBC and the Arts Council which I may or may not take up.

James Heale

Keir Starmer’s Gaza gamble could cost him votes

Just before the last general election, the Muslim Council of Britain released research which calculated how many seats could be decided by Muslim votes. The answer was 31, enough to swing a tight election. It’s debatable how many of these voters would realistically switch party: traditionally, Muslims have been more likely to back Labour than almost any other electoral group. But it’s the kind of statistic that could make Keir Starmer nervous. In his quest to demonstrate that he has vanquished Corbynism, the Labour leader has been steadfast in his support for Israel, to the dismay of many within his own party. In November, he lost ten frontbenchers who protested Labour’s stance on Gaza. Others privately fear the loss of the Muslim vote.

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

Can Trump ever get a fair trial?

I’m an unlikely defender of Donald Trump. Politically, he’s not my boy. Most of the former president’s hyperbolic rants make me cringe. Yet last week, I had to agree with DT that a jury’s award of $83.3 million of his assets to E. Jean Carroll for defamation was ‘absolutely ridiculous’. Keeping track of all the cases against Trump can be challenging, so let’s review. In 2019, while Trump was still president, Carroll went public with the accusation that back in 1995 – or was it 1996 – he raped her in the lingerie dressing room of Manhattan’s upscale clothing retailer Bergdorf Goodman. Trump denied the encounter had ever occurred and claimed he’d never met the woman; she was ‘totally lying’ and besides, she was not his type.

Matthew Parris

Ignore the reactionaries who oppose assisted dying

‘If I’d known where it would take me I might never have started.’ This need not be an expression of regret. There are journeys where the final destination is best hidden from the traveller, due to the psychological difficulty he may have in embracing the future until we’re nearly there. This column will move on to assisted dying, but I start with a look back at the fight for equal rights for same-sex couples. I played a minor part in this. We played down the idea of noisily assertive gay pride, knowing it would hinder our campaign Ever since the 1950s, brave souls – at first just a few – fought for the repeal of 19th-century laws criminalising male homosexual behaviour. They were joined by others, finally even politicians.

Douglas Murray

The Tory party has nothing to run on

These days I think often of Doctor Faustus. Not because I am contemplating selling my soul to Mephistopheles, but rather because I take a moderate interest in the Conservative party, and there is one detail of Doctor Faustus – at least in the Christopher Marlowe version – that arises often in my mind. That is the detail of what Faustus does after selling his soul. Part of the moral of the play, I suppose, is the disparity between what the Doctor imagines he will do with the time given to him and what he actually ends up doing with it. For, as readers of the play will know, Faustus ends up wasting his time in a pretty big way. One thinks: you plotted to dislodge your boss and then spent multiple evenings debating Liz Truss – for this?

Rod Liddle

Ban smartphones for kids!

News that almost all young people have gone mental will not surprise anybody who has met any of them recently. However, my suspicion is that while they were probably quite mental to begin with, they have been rendered even more so by constant warnings regarding their mental health by teachers, the mainstream and social media and quite probably their awful parents. It is probably true that 40-odd years ago we rather neglected mental health and became embarrassed when we talked about it – and were apt to use horrible words like ‘mental’ and ‘loony’ when doing so.

Katy Balls

Inside the fight over Labour’s green spending plans

Who’s afraid of the Green party? Within Labour, the answer varies depending on which member of the shadow cabinet you speak to. Some laugh off the idea that the Greens present an electoral threat from the left, because of the two-party system. As one party veteran puts it: ‘Labour has two opponents. In England, it’s the Tories. In Scotland, it’s the SNP. It’s that simple.’ The prevailing view among many of Keir Starmer’s disciples is that left-wing voters – Green or not – will be so desperate to oust the Tories that they will vote for Labour no matter what.

Thursday

Mary Wakefield

Is it wrong to track my child?

One evening a few weeks ago, I was pottering about alone when I became aware of a feeling of great relief, of joy almost, without quite knowing why. When you spend every waking moment with a seven-year-old, it often feels euphoric to be alone, but that wasn’t it. By mistake, I’d left my phone behind, but that wasn’t quite it either. It wasn’t that I couldn’t be contacted, I realised, so much as that I couldn’t be tracked. My iPhone, with its inbuilt GPS, was at home logging only its own dismal existence. The ‘Find My Friends’ function, which, at my family’s request I keep switched on, was defunct. I was unfindable. It was joyous.

Douglas Murray

The Trump circus is back in town

Well that’s that. It now looks certain that Donald J. Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president this year. At the time of writing, Nikki Haley is still hanging on in the primaries, but the contest is essentially over. Even if Haley stayed around and hoovered up the votes of every other Republican candidate who has dropped out, she still wouldn’t arrive at the dominant position Trump has occupied since the start of the race. This will be a cause for either alarm or rejoicing. What nobody should be is surprised. Ever since the race for the 2024 nomination started, it has all been about the man who wasn’t there.