Features

Thursday

George Bridges

Where it all went wrong

Management books often repeat the dictum: ‘If there’s one thing worse than making mistakes, it’s not learning from them.’ So let’s apply that smug little idea to Brexit. Before I start, a couple of housekeeping points. I voted Remain, but believe we must leave the EU and honour the referendum result. Second, as a former Brexit minister, writing this is a form of therapy for me. Failure no. 1 — from which many other failures flow — was a lack of honesty. Brexit is the biggest challenge we’ve faced since 1939. It’s complex, existential and will take years. It demands a sense of national endeavour, of ‘let us go forward together’.

Robert Jackman

No ID, no entry

In just a few weeks, the government begins its crackdown on porn. From April, all UK-based internet users will be required to prove their age before accessing adult websites. And if they can’t? As they say on the doors, it’s no ID, no entry. Since the arrival of the internet, and then the smartphone, parents have fretted about how easy it is for children to watch porn, and the impossibility of enforcing age restrictions. In 2015, David Cameron included an age-verification scheme in his election-winning manifesto and, after some delays, Whitehall is now ready to go. But is the plan too intrusive? And is it even remotely feasible? Potentially, say the experts — just with some big caveats. So how will consenting adults access pornography in a post-block world?

Paul Wood

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

 Washington REVERSE FERRET! When he edited the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie used to throw open his office door and bellow this at the newsroom when the paper had got a story wrong. It came from the northern endurance sport of ferret-legging: a pair of razor-toothed ferrets are put down your trousers — no underwear allowed. The Sun would call the ferrets off some hapless public figure and go into full reverse without apology or explanation. If we in the media have spent the past two years getting the Trump-Russia story wrong, simply pulling a reverse ferret now would not be enough. There would have to be something more. But is a mea culpa required? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Julie Burchill

Netflix and kill

Thumbing avidly through Heat magazine recently in a fevered search for the latest on the Cheryl/Liam/Naomi infernal triangle, I was startled to find a pull-out preview of a new true-crime magazine called Crime Monthly. It was aimed at an audience that is presumably satiated with seeing celebrities tormented and now wants to read about ordinary people being tortured. Heat magazine — once a bona fide pop-culture phenomenon — is often now found on free magazine stands, so the publishers, Bauer, are chasing the money. The self-important actress Kristen Stewart once compared being papped to being raped, but there’s obviously more profit now in flogging the real thing.

Owen Matthews

Ukraine’s reality TV

Servant of the People is a hilarious Ukrainian situation comedy currently running on Netflix. It opens with a young high-school teacher launching into a foul-mouthed rant against the corruption and venality of his country’s political class. ‘Why are all the honest people fools and the clever ones are thieves?’ shouts nerdy but honest history master Vasyl Holoborodko to a colleague. ‘What kind of people are we, that we keep voting for these mother--fucking liars knowing that they are crooks?’ One of Holoborodko’s pupils secretly films the rant through a window. The video goes viral. Millions of Ukrainians crowdfund the honest teacher to stand in an upcoming presidential election, which he unexpectedly wins.

Thursday

Ben Schott

Speaker-speak

Much has recently been written about the incumbent Commons Speaker, from (vigorously denied) allegations of bullying to (less vigorously denied) suggestions of Brexit-foxing chicanery. And to call John Bercow a ‘Marmite politician’ is to state the obvious. A little less obvious is his idiosyncratic style of address — the bizarre collision of a Dickensian clerk with aspirations to eloquence, a stern headmaster out of P. G. Wodehouse, and a contestant on Just a Minute desperate not to hesitate, deviate or repeat. Some of the Speaker’s vocal fireworks are plain to hear.

Stephen Daisley

The new banality of evil

‘Remember, lads: Subscribe to PewDiePie.’ With these words, the killer began broadcasting his slaughter of 50 worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, live on the internet — and a new form of terrorism was born. For those unfamiliar with internet subculture, PewDiePie is a Brighton-based videogames blogger whose YouTube channel, the largest in the world, is known for its politically incorrect humour. His crown is about to be snatched by T-Series, a Bollywood music channel.

J. Meirion

Wanted: UK doctors

For years, Britain has been failing to train enough doctors and has been importing them instead. This has been a well-known and much lamented fact, raising several ethical issues. Is it right for us to rob developing countries of their much-needed medics? Simon Stevens, the head of the NHS, said at the Spectator’s health summit this week that Britain should stop ‘denuding low-income countries of health professionals they need’. Quite so. Which makes it all the more shocking that last year, for the first time ever, the UK imported more doctors than it trained. And the problem Stevens highlights has, under his leadership, been getting steadily worse.

Katy Balls

They can’t all be right

Has there been a Brexit disaster? It depends on your point of view. When John Bercow ruled that the Prime Minister could not bring the same deal back for a third vote, there were a great number of MPs who seemed delighted. But they were at opposite ends of the Brexit debate. Needless to say, they can’t all be right. Dominic Grieve, who longs for a second referendum, welcomed the decision — thinking that the panic, and the government’s inability to answer the question, would mean the decision being thrown back to the public. Bill Cash, one of the longest-standing Eurosceptics, also seemed pleased — appearing to calculate that Britain is set to leave the EU on Friday next week unless parliament votes for something different.

James Forsyth

Will it never end?

The government has lost the ability to run the country. It is no longer in charge of its own destiny, let alone that of the nation. What makes this so humiliating is that power has been ceded not to parliament, but to the European Union. The immediate future of our country will be decided in Brussels and the capitals of the EU, not in Westminster. It will be the EU that decides whether or not to offer the UK an extension to the Article 50 process, and how long it will be. Once the extension has been agreed, then parliament — which has already voted against leaving without a deal — will rubber-stamp it. Not since Denis Healey was forced to ask the International Monetary Fund for an emergency loan in 1976 has this country been so humiliated.

Justin Marozzi

Horror show | 21 March 2019

OK, Archers fans out there. All five million of you. Ask yourselves a straightforward question. Why on earth do you — do we — listen to this show full of completely awful people? Why do we subject ourselves to this 13 minutes of daily torment, not to mention the Sunday omnibus, wallowing in the lives of fictitious characters who, let’s be ruthlessly honest, are almost universally loathsome? Don’t get me wrong. I love The Archers. I have lain in bed sweating with a fever in Mogadishu, glued to the comings and goings in Ambridge. In 2005, as al Qaeda’s bearded bombers did their worst in Baghdad, I hunkered down in my trailer hooked on Ed and Will’s fight over Emma.

Paul Wood

‘The Islamic State will never die’

 Beirut As I write, Isis is still holding out on a few hundred square yards of dirt in the village of Baghouz in Syria. This is all that remains of a ‘caliphate’ that was once almost half of Syria and a third of Iraq. The fighting has now gone on twice as long as the battle for Mosul, a city of a million and a half. Isis has just sent a taunting message to President Trump, saying he spoke too soon when he tweeted: ‘We have defeated Isis in Syria.’ But they know that the end is inevitable and coming fast. An Isis video apparently filmed in Baghouz shows people squatting in the open next to cars and trucks packed with furniture and blankets. A man asks the camera: ‘What is our fault? What is our crime? Why are we being bombed?

Thursday

Fiona Lensvelt

A modern mysticism

I first met a tarot reader in a hotel lobby in central London on my birthday four years ago. I was a book critic at the time and was aware that the cards had inspired writers from W.B. Yeats to T.S. Eliot and Italo Calvino — perhaps there’s a novel in this, I thought. This was serious research. I was less interested in my destiny than I was in the way tarot worked. That was just as well because no sooner had I sat down than my reader piped up: ‘This has been an especially trying time for you and I’m afraid that it isn’t going to get easier.’ She went on, at length, before I told her there wasn’t a great deal of drama in my life: I had a stable relationship, a good job, family and friends who supported me. Was she confusing my past with my present?

Katy Balls

Will there be an election?

When a British government loses control over parliament, the natural remedy is to hold a general election. Why prolong everyone’s agony? But despite Theresa May having now failed twice to pass her signature Brexit deal, there is no sign she is willing to go back to the country. Jeremy Corbyn is keen for an early election to break the deadlock and others are beginning to agree with him. Asked this week what would happen if the government’s deal was rejected for a second time, a cabinet minister replied: ‘an election in two weeks’ time’. It’s a sentiment shared by Charles Walker, the vice chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tories.

James Forsyth

It’s not over yet

Almost three years have passed since Britain voted to leave the European Union, and yet we are still no closer to a Brexit resolution than we were on that June morning. No one is in control and this country’s whole system of governance is creaking. We are in an interregnum that shows no sign of ending. What is remarkable about this moment in our history is that something must break the impasse. This means that, although Theresa May’s deal suffered the biggest defeat ever for a piece of government business and was defeated a second time by a three-figure margin, it is not dead yet. Many cabinet ministers, including several of those who are very critical of May, think there is a chance that the deal will pass at the third time of asking.

Isabel Hardman

A dose of understanding

What a baffling group of people anti-vaxxers are. They rail against one of the miracles of modern medicine, peddling scare stories about vaccines which had nearly eradicated many deadly childhood illnesses in the developed world. Baffling, of course, is too soft a word for many: they’re dangerous, because their anti-science views don’t just put their own children at risk, but wider society. The uptake of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in Britain is at 87.5 per cent. This sounds a lot, but isn’t close to the 95 per cent threshold that the World Health Organisation (WHO) says will ensure ‘herd immunity’ — which is when a disease cannot spread through a community.

Tom Goodenough

Bible bashers

Being a street preacher can be a thankless business. Since moving to Britain from Nigeria nine years ago, 64-year-old Oluwole Ilesanmi has toured the country reading aloud from the Bible, spending hours outside train stations, urging people to see the light. Sometimes he makes a convert; most of the time his preaching falls on deaf ears. Last month, it resulted in him being arrested. Saturday 23 February began like a typical day for Ilesanmi. He went to Southgate tube station in north London and preached for a few hours. His spiel included a disobliging reference to Islam, which seemed to rile a passer-by. To Ilesanmi’s surprise he was then accosted by the man.

Douglas Murray

Bloody liar

It is more than 15 years since the Bloody Sunday soldiers last appeared in public. For months I sat in the room with them to watch their evidence at Lord Saville’s inquiry. And while Lionel Shriver is right that the sight of terrorists benefiting from an immunity denied to our soldiers is grotesque, there are competing qualms. Not only because British soldiers should be held to a higher standard than terrorists. But because, having watched all of the Bloody Sunday shooters testify, I can say with certainty that they include not only unapologetic killers, but unrelenting liars. As one soldier after another appeared before Lord Saville, it became clear that the soldiers of 1 Para were intent on spurning this last effort to get to the truth of what happened that day.

Thursday

Toby Young

The rise of the woke corporation

New employees at the British headquarters of Accenture, a global management consultancy, were slightly taken aback during a recent induction morning when the head of human resources encouraged them to wear rainbow-coloured lanyards declaring themselves ‘allies’ — not just at the meeting, but permanently. In addition, they were given the option of adding the word ‘ally’ in the same rainbow pattern to the footers of their company email addresses. Anyone confused by HR language — a reference to the second world war perhaps?

Rachel Johnson

Publish and be damned

The other day Will Self unburdened himself on the state of fiction with crushing hauteur. ‘What’s now regarded as serious literature would, ten or 20 years ago, have been regarded as young adult fiction… in terms of literary history, it does seem a bit of a regression. If you consider that Nabokov’s Lolita was on the New York Times bestseller list for nine months, it’s a different order of literature…’ Stop right there! Will Self’s top pick was Lolita. This was the novel of the 20th century that stood the test of time. But would Lolita even be plucked from the slush pile in 2019, let alone be listed as one of the 100 best novels ever written by Le Monde, Time, and newspapers passim?