United kingdom

Yesterday

Cockburn

Raheem Kassam takes the National Pulse international

Nigel Farage has often talked about spotting and exploiting gaps in the market. So it is no surprise that one of his former aides is now doing the same. Step forward Raheem Kassam, the bomb-throwing onetime UKIP-per, who has made a name for himself in the US as the co-owner of Butterworths, a favorite hangout of "MAGA" in Washington DC. Word reaches Cockburn that Kassam is pitching up in London more frequently these days and intends to become a fixture of the media landscape for the foreseeable future. Get the smelling salts in... Kassam is expected to launch a new UK version of his site, the National Pulse. In the mid-2010s, Kassam edited the old Breitbart London site that was a favorite of right-wingers in Britain.

Thursday

Alexander Larman

The welcome downfall of Russell Brand

It is the verdict that countless people have been hoping for. The most deserving, of course, are the women who have been raped or sexually assaulted by Russell Brand, who was convicted of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault in court today. After a grueling and frequently ugly trial – in which their testimony was, inevitably, called into question by Brand’s probing defense lawyers – they have been believed over this preening popinjay, and justice has finally been done. A truly appalling man has been found guilty of heinous crimes Brand will be sentenced on Monday – a custodial sentence is inevitable. He has been remanded in custody.

russell brand

Friday

Michael Simmons

The British middle-class race to go private

Postwar Britain can be defined by a bargain made with its middle class: pay for public services but benefit from them too. Private education has always been the choice of a very small minority; private healthcare was reserved for the wealthiest and those whose employers paid for it. Middle England was content to send its children to the same schools as everyone else and use the same GPs, hospitals and dentists. This is no longer true. State spending continues to grow, yet large parts of the population now pay privately to supplement what their taxes have already provided. Eighty-four years ago, William Beveridge’s Social Insurance and Allied Services set out five “giants” standing in Britain’s way: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.

Vending Machine of non tax covered cost
andy burnham
Charles Moore

Does Andy Burnham really want an ‘honest discussion’ about free movement?

Andy Burnham says in a couple of interviews that he wants an “honest conversation” about free movement, and then Downing Street indicates that perhaps he doesn’t. Many interpret this as poor “message discipline.” I don’t think so. The key to Mr. Burnham’s behavior is to remember two things. The first is that, even after 100 days in office, he still wants to be as different as possible from Sir Keir Starmer. That means he must be seen at all times to welcome open discussion, talking like a human being not a robot. The second is that he wants to keep open the possibility of calling a general election next year. The “breathing space” he says the country needs is really what his party needs.

election
Tim Shipman

Is Andy Burnham preparing to call a December election?

What is the purpose of a Budget? To stabilize the national finances? To kickstart economic growth? If you’re John Healey, it may be to show the markets that you’re fiscally responsible and the public finances are safe in your hands. If you’re Andy Burnham, the goal is to show the public that you’re trying to do something about the rising cost of living – and to convince Labour MPs that they were right to give you the job. But Burnham also has big plans to transform the country and this was a Budget more about tinkering than transformation. Yes, defense will get £5 billion more by letting the National Wealth Fund borrow off the public balance sheet to invest in defense companies.

Friday

Mary Wakefield

Fentanyl, coming soon to a park near you

How do you explain to a child what “sharps disposal” means and why a “sharps disposal unit” for throwing out used needles is needed in a toilet next to the playground in our local park? It’s a nice park, actually, with tennis courts and trees, and the playground’s recently been redone. There are climbing frames, nets, a wooden castle and middle-class mothers repeating: “Good job, Oscar!” every time their child takes a step. Opioids make good business sense: more addictive and the highs are short so the customer’s always calling The toilets are all right too, clean with a surprising lack of smears, and there are little signs in Braille beside each feature: tap, soap, loo roll.

Tuesday

Bethel McGrew

Why does the internet hate the young man killed by a tiger?

If a predatory animal attacks a harmless human, do we root for the animal or the human? Not everyone holds that answer to be self-evident, as witnessed in the discourse around last weekend’s Yorkshire Wildlife Park tragedy in the United Kingdom. Details remain scarce about the delusional young man who vaulted into the enclosure with a Siberian tiger and was swiftly mauled to death. Whoever he was, the internet has declared the gene pool well rid of him.  By all accounts, the horrific scene unfolded too fast for park rangers on site to make a life-saving intervention. In the haze of early reports, some people (including myself) mistakenly thought there may have been an opportunity missed to intervene with a real gun.

Friday

Jane Stannus

Can you get a real pumpkin spice latte in London?

“Excuse me,” I said to the girl in the coffee bar on the Strand. “Do you have anything with pumpkin spice?” The signboard over the espresso machine was noticeably pumpkin free, though autumn was betokened both by the calendar and – come to think of it – the sudden coolness in the air. “I’m on a mission,” I added quickly, to save face. “Sorry, no,” she said with thinly veiled contempt and added brightly, waving me out the door, “Starbucks is just across the road!” I slunk out, chastised. But I didn’t go to Starbucks – not yet. Rumor had it the PSL, having turned the North American continent a seasonal orange, was flooding London, and it had fallen to me to find out the truth.

pumpkin spice latte
gambling
Rupert Hawksley

From Playboy pin-up to prohibitionist: the man taking on British gambling

The August 2004 cover of Playboy features a topless Eva Herzigova (“The supermodel is supernaked”) and promises a piece about “America’s 10 sexiest bartenders.” If that isn’t enough to excite you, another article is puffed, no less conspicuously: “Weird new casino games (and the men who invent them).” Turn to page 73 and a bald, bespectacled man, with “prominent ears on a frank, slightly frowning face,” stares out at you. This, we learn, is the “Bill Gates of card game inventors” and his name is Derek Webb. The Englishman made his money at the poker tables in Derby: “I could play three times a week with a £50 buy-in and make £8,000 a night.” From 1979 to 1994, Webb split his time between the East Midlands and Las Vegas.

Thursday

Rory Sutherland

How the triple lock became political kryptonite

It was early December 1973 and I remember my grandmother asking, “What would you most like for Christmas?” I knew in an instant: “One day, perhaps, it would be good if the weekly rates of my basic state pension were to increase by the greatest of three candidate measures, namely (a) the year-on-year growth in the average weekly earnings index; (b) the year-on-year change in the consumer prices index for the month of September; or (c) a fixed nominal floor of 2.5 percent – with the determination being a simple maximum function rather than an average, and the resulting uplift taking effect from the first Monday of the following tax year in April. Or, failing that, an Etch A Sketch.

triple lock
Joseph Morris

Inside the church of pipe smoking

I am a smoker. I can never be sure of the reaction I will get to those words nowadays, though I have hope that Spectator readers are more receptive than most. Anyway, in my case it’s somewhat of an understatement: I worship the goddess Nicotiana. Or, as J. M. Barrie put it: “My Lady Nicotine.” Compton Mackenzie had it, simply, as “Sublime Tobacco.” And for any vegetarians among you, there’s always Frank Zappa’s “my favorite vegetable."  I enjoy many forms of tobacco consumption, but having recently read Thomas Sydenham’s description of a tobacco smoke enema, I am convinced that not all methods are created equal. Cigars? Enjoyable, but exorbitantly expensive. Cigarettes?

David McCloskey

What the CIA and MI6 really talk about

The Special Relationship has seen more special days. Earlier this year, President Trump delivered his verdict: “How is the relationship? It’s the relationship where, when we asked them for help, they were not there. When we needed them, they were not there. When we didn’t need them, they were not there. And they still aren’t there.” Trump was referring to divisions between the US and UK over the wisdom and conduct of the war in Iran. (Even amid a spat, though, he can dish out praise. Just this week, following the arrest of five men outside RAF Fairford, used by American bombers to strike Iran, the President said the UK authorities had done an “amazing job.”) But his remarks landed at a moment of divergence in the US-UK relationship that extends well beyond Iran.

Douglas Murray

The game you are not allowed to win

Some years ago I heard a moving story about Roy Jenkins. An unpromising start to any anecdote but stay with me. It involved a croquet match during the late period of his life – as Chancellor of the University of Oxford – when Jenkins had become one of the grander, not to say more pompous, figures in Britain's public life. According to someone playing with him, his Lordship had appalling luck. Although he wielded his mallet with all requisite skill, his ball would not go through the hoops. Eventually the grand old man stormed off the pitch in a great huff. Only after he had left did the other players discover that the ball Lord Jenkins had been working was from a different croquet set, and too big to fit through the hoops.

Tuesday

Travis Aaroe

Why do we know so little about the RAF Fairford affair?

On Sunday, three suspicious trucks were spotted speeding toward the Royal Air Force airfield in Fairford, England. Shortly after, five masked men, later identified as British nationals, were detained under the Terrorism Act of 2006 and the Explosives Act of 1875. Had a bomb attack just been foiled? If so who planned it, and to what end? Then, on Monday, the five suspects were abruptly released on bail.  President Trump seemed nonplussed by the move. “I would not have released them,” he told reporters, but was full of praise for the conduct of the British authorities. The safety of RAF Fairford is a matter for the American President – it is operated by the US Air Force, the only airfield in Europe that can accommodate its heavy bombers.

raf fairford
Alexander Larman

When will Meghan Markle bring ‘As Ever’ to Britain?

As controversy continues to rage about the “he said/he said” dynamic in Earl Spencer’s damning memoir – and whether Prince Harry knew (and, crucially approved) of the allegations in the book – there is, at least, the opportunity to draw light relief from something rather less consequential. It might seem strange to remember this, given the various other disasters in the world today, but Meghan Markle – now, of course, a resident in Britain once again – is continuing to run her As Ever brand. Even though she no longer has the backing of Netflix and her cursed With Love, Meghan television specials to promote it, it continues to be a going concern. Now, we have been treated to Meghan's dinner party hosting tips. They are neither profound nor revelatory.

meghan
Paul Stott

Why did Britain give a Hamas chief’s bodyguard a passport?

The failure of the British state is long-term and corrosive. It emerged this weekend that Mr. X, a former bodyguard of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, was allowed to settle in the UK and given British citizenship – before going on to allegedly coordinate a Hamas terror plot in Germany. He also faces separate terror charges in this country. The case of Mr. X was quickly followed by the news yesterday that Britain's Home Secretary plans to launch a new resettlement scheme which prioritizes Afghan women and girls, and Palestinians of both sexes. By the time Mr. X arrived, a succession of Hamas exiles had already made England their home The chronology as it has emerged so far is well worth examining. From 2006, Mr.

Elisabeth Braw

Is the West ready for the undersea war?

Last spring, a Chinese icebreaker turned up in the tropical waters of Palau. That was after Chinese research vessels arrived uninvited in the waters off Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. In Europe, Russian research vessels and navy ships turn up uninvited too. The ships reveal nothing about the nature of their visits, but create fears of impending cable sabotage. These days, Russia and China are also building lots more submarines, and they’re impressive. Western countries, too, are building submarines, and all the while they’re trying to defend their cables and pipelines. Last week, the UK’s 12-meter Excalibur drone submarine used a testing range off the coast of Scotland to fire a torpedo.

Thursday

Fin Taylor

Should I be more like Bryan Johnson?

“Journaling” is now a good thing, which we know because it’s part of Bryan Johnson’s morning routine, sandwiched between eating algae and sauna-ing with a Bryan Johnson-trademarked ice pack on his crotch. It’s nice to check in with Johnson – the tech millionaire who wants to “defeat death” – every few hours. This week I embarked on my biggest ever stand-up tour, a tour whose scale makes it seem like a culmination of everything to this point. Venues you dream of playing, ones which seem so distant in the mud and piss of the UK’s comedy circuit. Twelve hundred people tonight, 1,500 the night before. “Only 680 tonight is it?” I shrug from the back seat of my tour manager’s Skoda, like a man used to four-figure wine rolling his eyes at a mere Château Lafite.

bryan johnson

Friday

Michael Gove

Can Reform reform?

Of all the uses to which Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne might put their money, there are few more innocent than giving it to a political party. Neither want, nor expect, preferment, honors or patronage. Both are idealistic by nature and philanthropic by habit. They have all the personal wealth they need to fund their lifestyles, and harbor hopes only for enriching Britain by their actions. I might not agree with all their ideas for how one might make this country stronger, or indeed how best to spend £72 million to improve our governance. But they have shown themselves a good deal shrewder than me in making money, and they should be entitled, within the law, to spend it as they wish.

reform

Wednesday

Gareth Roberts

Piddington and the idiocy of British middle-class progressivism

The Piddington result is in. Ninety-two percent of the voters in the tiny Oxfordshire village have voted to secede from the United Kingdom – 285 yes, 26 no. Why? Because the British government plans to dump hundreds and hundreds of small boat “asylum seekers” in a military base slap bang next to the Piddingtonians.  Of course, this is a symbolic gesture. There is no legal mechanism to actually achieve secession, which is perhaps just as well. As we know, it’s hard enough to get British politicians to acknowledge the results of an official national referendum, let alone a wildcat local one.

piddington