Wine Club

Our merchant partners – Armit Wines, Brunswick Fine Wines, Corney & Barrow, FromVineyardsDirect, Mr Wheeler, Private Cellar and Yapp Bros – represent the cream of the UK’s independents and boast centuries of experience between them. They all have particular areas of expertise and stock wines that you would never be able to find on the supermarket shelves or local off-licence.

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill

What Jon Snow meant when he talked about ‘white people’

Jon Snow has had a lot of flak for his ‘white people’ comment at the tail end of his report from the Leave Means Leave march on Friday. But in my view he hasn’t had enough. Because it seems pretty clear to me that he wasn’t simply disparaging whiteness and openly commenting on the racial make-up of a protest, which would have been bad enough — since when was it the job of newsreaders to point out people’s skin colour? No, he was also being classist, a bit of a snob.

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill

Don’t call Corbynistas ‘cultural Marxists’

Suella Braverman, the Conservative MP for Fareham, said yesterday that the radical left is increasingly hostile to open debate and is now obsessed with ‘snuffing out’ freedom of speech. And how did the radical left respond to her comments? By trying to snuff out her freedom of speech. It was almost too perfect: a politician says lefties are easily offended and determined to shut down opinions they don’t like, and lefties respond by stamping their feet and saying, ‘I’m offended! Shut her down!’ Self-awareness isn’t the new left’s strong suit.

Robert Peston

A snap election simply cannot happen – and yet it might

Here are the reasons why there must be and cannot be a general election. First, the drivers of a general election: 1) Tomorrow, MPs will start the process of identifying, via so-called indicative votes, a route through the Brexit mess that a majority of them can back. 2) This process is likely to continue next Monday, when a range of Brexit or no-Brexit options should be whittled down to one. 3) There will then be a vote, maybe the following day, compelling the prime minister to negotiate with Brussels whatever MPs have decided. It is too early to say what option MPs will coalesce around. And maybe they are too fractious and divided to coalesce around any practical solution.

Ross Clark

The shame of Jacob Rees-Mogg

Until this morning Jacob Rees-Mogg had had a remarkable Brexit. From being an obscure backbencher he had risen, without any formal position, to being just about the most powerful figure in the Conservative party after the Prime Minister. He controlled a party within a party, influencing the votes of seventy or so MPs. He became the most lucid of all MPs on Brexit, speaking with a logic and clarity which disarmed his opponents. He introduced a term to the debate – vassalage – which identified perfectly the weakness of Theresa May’s deal, and emphasised how the EU had successfully driven the Prime Minister into a corner. But this morning, all that has gone.

Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 30 March

I’m acutely aware that we rarely offer champagne in these pages, other than the occasional treat from our beloved Pol Roger (the Speccie house pour), largely because I’ve never found one that’s good enough or well-priced enough. Well, crikey, thanks to Esme Johnstone of fromvineyardsdirect I’ve finally now found one. The Arlaux Champagne Premier Cru, Brut Grande Cuvée NV (1) fair knocked my socks off. Produced by the Arlaux family from insecticide-free Premier Cru vineyards in the Montagne de Reims, it’s first-rate fizz and no mistake. And don’t just take my word for it.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Why the DUP are worried about Tory succession

It is the morning after the Bercow before, and it seems pretty much certain that there won’t be a meaningful vote 3 until after the European Council. Whatever is decided there on an extension, should be enough for the government to say that the package is different enough to justify bringing it back for another vote. But there is no point in the government bringing it back for another vote unless it has a chance of winning that vote, and it won’t have that without the DUP. I understand that these negotiations are going relatively well.

James Kirkup

The journalist investigated by police for ‘using the wrong pronouns’

Here we go again. Another woman is facing a police investigation – and potentially, a jail sentence -- because she wrote things online about sex, gender and a person who changed gender. So far, so familiar, but this tale has a significant feature. The woman is a journalist. A British police force is investigating a journalist over words that she published. Caroline Farrow, 44, is the subject of an investigation by Surrey Police over tweets she sent referring to the adult child of Susie Green, head of Mermaids, a charity concerned with transgender children. Farrow says the investigation arises because she 'misgendered' the child, who was born male but now identifies as female. Farrow is a columnist and occasional TV commentator.

Douglas Murray

Who should we blame for the Christchurch atrocity?

A frequent complaint heard from Muslim communities in recent years has been irritation and anger over any suggestion that Muslims – as a whole – need to apologise for attacks carried out in the name of their religion. I have sympathy for this irritation, tying as it does innocent people to the actions of guilty ones. But since the attack in New Zealand was carried out by a non-Muslim who was targeting Muslims, whether or not it needs to be said still it should be said – indeed must be said – that non-Muslims abhor, are disgusted, outraged and sickened by somebody going into a place of worship and gunning down innocent people. We condemn it in the most fulsome and unreserved terms.

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh

The death of Shamima Begum’s baby is a tragedy – but not Sajid Javid’s fault

It would take a heart of stone – and occasionally I possess just such an organ – not to feel sympathy for Shamima Begum after she lost a third baby, her son Jarrah, barely three weeks old, in a Syrian refugee camp. But should we feel guilt as well as compassion for leaving the child – all unbeknown to him, a British citizen and possibly Dutch too – to fester in the camp occupied by IS refugees? More precisely, how responsible should the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, feel, having deprived Miss Begum of her British citizenship? The BBC news all day long has linked him to the death: criticism of Javid as child dies. That’s its line. Diane Abbott has been keen to draw a link.

Douglas Murray

The false equivalence between ‘Islamophobia’ and anti-Semitism

I have been travelling in the Middle East for the last few weeks and slightly regret returning to the maelstrom of ancient animosities and unbridgeable sectarianism that is modern Britain. But in my absence I see that one of the worst tropes of our time has been stalking unhindered across the land. That is, of course, the latest push to make an equivalence between anti-Semitism and the crock term ‘Islamophobia’. It is not just in the UK that this play has been made. In America over recent days people have been able to follow the progress of the new Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar, with her supporters deciding to deflect attention from her expressions of anti-Semitism by claiming ‘Islamophobia’.

Alex Massie

The Brexiteers have blown it

If, as Rod Liddle says, Brexit has been killed there is no shortage of suspects. 75 of them, in fact. That’s the number of Conservative MPs who voted against the Government in last night’s second – but not necessarily final – meaningful vote. They wanted Brexit and then, when they were given it, they decided it wasn’t the kind of Brexit they wanted after all. Fanaticism invariably devours its adherents and so it is with Brexit. The Brexiteers wanted the ball but once they had it they decided they did not actually want it after all. They had their chance and they blew it. All they had to do was vote for the withdrawal agreement. Now they have rejected that, there is little reason to pay them any further attention.

Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 16 March

My old chum Jason Yapp is never less than chipper. Indeed, his ebullience is boundless. In springtime, this innate effervescence fair bubbles over and his enthusiasm for his wines and his distaste for spittoons are dangerously infectious. It took an age to whittle this selection down to six and I trust you enjoy my choices as much as I did and do. The 2017 Saint-Pourçain ‘Cuvée Printan-ière’ (1) comes from the upper Loire Valley and, in typical regional French style, there’s bugger all information on the front label and no label on the back to speak of. It’s only because JY insisted on wafting it under my beak and wouldn’t take no for an answer that I took any interest at all.

Thursday

Daniel DePetris

How Steve Bannon tried – and failed – to crack Europe

When Steve Bannon was ousted from the White House as president Donald Trump’s chief strategist, the populist provocateur and former Hollywood executive was back running staff meetings at Breitbart less than 24 hours later. The rumpled, grizzled, grey-haired Bannon – who has a fondness for philosophy, history, political bloodsport and green camo jackets – is constantly on the move for a new project. In the United States, the big project was getting Trump elected and ensuring the New York billionaire never forgot about the part of America that loved him and the part that cringed at the mention of his name.

James Kanagasooriam

The Brexit paradox that spells doom for the Independent Group

When I quit investment banking in search of daylight in 2014 I thought my life was going to be little easier crunching numbers for political campaigns. It wasn’t to be. Over the last few years, I’ve worked on the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, the 2015 general election, the Scottish Holyrood election in 2016, the EU referendum and the 2017 snap election. What I’ve never been able to wrap my head around through all these campaigns is why we’ve seen so many political upsets. Just why has the political consensus been wrong so often these past five years? When I worked on the Remain campaign, the upending of the consensus – against my own expectations – was a painful experience.

Nick Cohen

Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis can never be solved under Corbyn

If racism is to succeed in corrupting institutions and countries it needs authorisation from the elite. The popular caricature of the racist as a white working-class man, or superstitious east european peasant, or shabby paranoid academic, shows not only class bias, but a lack of understanding that what transforms extremism from poisonous men muttering in corners to political movements with the power to ruin lives, is the authorisation given by leaders and intellectuals. A party can have racist members – as the Conservative party undoubtedly does. But because its leadership is not anti-Muslim their effect is constrained to personal abuse. I don’t mean to diminish it. If my experience is typical, race-based insults are something you never forget.

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill

Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit betrayal is complete

Let us consider the gravity of Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement that Labour will push for a second referendum. In siding with the so-called People’s Vote lobby, Corbyn has betrayed Labour’s traditional working-class base, who tend to favour leaving the EU. He has betrayed his party’s own manifesto in the 2017 general election, which promised to respect the outcome of the referendum. He has betrayed his old Labour mentors, most notably his hero Tony Benn, who was the left’s most articulate critic of the EU. And he has betrayed himself. He has betrayed his own longstanding and correct belief that the EU is an illiberal, undemocratic, anti-worker outrage of an institution. Has any politician ever betrayed so many people in such a short space of time?

James Kirkup

What MPs are still getting wrong about the trans debate

I am a little late in coming to the recent report on community cohesion by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Hate Crime. It was published earlier this month but drew little attention at Westminster: yet another example of Brexit smothering the domestic policy agenda, I suppose. The report has lots to say about lots of different types of nasty behaviour. Among the topics it covers is the gender debate, the discussion of trans rights and their potential impact on the rights of others. One one level, this is a good thing. It is the job of MPs to debate and discuss matters of contention and controversy. This is one such issue, yet it has not been fully debated in Parliament, not least because a lot of MPs are too scared to enter an arena where passions run very high indeed.

Julie Burchill

In praise of speaking ill of the dead

There’s quite a few writers who are sensitive souls, and the worst are those who like to dish it out but reach for the smelling salts and swoon when anyone so much as gives them a funny look. Luckily I was born with the Sensitivity Gene missing, especially when it comes to dissing, and I find that like with gifts, I’d just as soon receive than give. Say nasty things behind my back, to my face – or both ways in bed – and not only will I not get upset but I’ll derive a mild kick from it. Just a little one, mind you – I’m not kinky!

Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 2 March

Chateau Musar is beloved of Spectator readers, thanks largely to my sainted predecessors — Messrs Waugh and Hoggart — both of whom adored its wines. As a result, the Speccie has forged a bond with this Lebanese winery and, owing to the diplomatic exertions of our partners at Mr Wheeler, we are in the enviable position of being able to offer the latest Musar vintages exclusively to readers before anyone else has even had a sniff or a whiff of them. The 2010 Chateau Musar White (1) is nothing if not quirky, produced from ungrafted old vines grown in the Bekaa Valley that were first planted almost 5,000 years ago. A blend of Obaideh and Merwah (and when did you last bump into them?), it’s fermented and aged partly in oak and partly in stainless steel.

Thursday

Alex Massie

In praise of the Labour splitters

The first thing to note is that it’s not about policy. The not-so secret seven MPs who left the Labour party this morning have not changed their policy preferences. They have not become Tories. Nor have they even become liberals. They could, with little difficulty, endorse much of the Labour party’s 2017 manifesto without compromising themselves in the slightest. Because this break, this rebellion, this journey into exile, is not about policy. It is about character and values and so many of the other things the Labour party believes it holds dear to the extent it often behaves as though it thinks it owns a monopoly on these things.