United kingdom

Thursday

Tim Shipman

‘Whose side are you on?’: how Keir Starmer alienated Britain’s allies over Iran

The American-Israeli attacks on Iran were publicly called Epic Fury, but behind the scenes it is Britain’s handling of the war which provoked that reaction – not just from Donald Trump but from the UK’s allies in the Gulf. A Labour peer was in Washington when the first missiles slammed into Tehran on Friday evening and Keir Starmer refused to voice support. A member of the Trump administration told the peer: “Britain used to not contribute that much, but you were a good ally. Now you’re contributing nothing and you’re not even a good ally.” A version of events has quickly become established: a Prime Minister with a near-religious belief

starmer

Thursday

Tim Shipman

Is the Trump-Starmer bromance over?

“The Special Relationship only exists when the Americans want something,” a former Downing Street aide observed after Donald Trump rejected the Chagos Islands deal. There are profound differences between London and Washington over military action against Iran while the fourth anniversary of the war in Ukraine this week has exposed further fault lines. The result is that Anglo-American relations are at their worst point since the general election. Keir Starmer’s team argues he should not be ousted at a time of huge international instability. But the reality of the Anglo-American relationship raises three questions. Where did things go wrong? Does the PM still have some kind of relationship with Trump?

starmer

Monday

Michael Simmons

Former UK ambassador Peter Mandelson arrested

Peter Mandelson, Britain’s short-lived ambassador to the US, has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.  In a statement to journalists, London’s Metropolitan Police said: Officers have arrested a 72-year-old man on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was arrested at an address in Camden on Monday, 23 February and has been taken to a London police station for interview. This follows search warrants at two addresses in the Wiltshire and Camden areas. Moments before the Met’s statement, Mandelson was photographed being led out of his house by police. The move comes days after the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, also under suspicion of misconduct in public office. The accusations

mandelson

Thursday

Alice Cockerell

The literary appeal of the English upper classes

“However British you are, I am more British still,” said the American expatriate novelist Henry James, explaining his fascination with all things aristocratic and Anglo. It’s a type of fascination that’s only gathered steam over the years. A grand representative of the establishment, Lady Anne Glenconner, sold thousands of copies of her first book, Lady in Waiting, in the US, and recently discovered that her (admittedly predominantly homosexual) American fanbase has taken to throwing Lady Glenconner-themed costume parties. Meanwhile, Carla Kaplan, whose biography of Jessica “Decca” Mitford, Troublemaker, went on sale at the end of last year, discovered that Decca, known as “the Queen of the Muckrakers,” has a manic

Monday

Michael P. Gibson

Is there a free-speech defense of Grok’s deepfakes?

There are scenes in blockbuster teen movies from the 1980s and 1990s that wouldn’t fly today. I think of Revenge of the Nerds, that classic raunchy coming-of-age tale about pocket protector-wearing geeks no woman would ever touch with a three-foot slide rule. You might recall the heroes of the story install hidden cameras in a sorority house in order to spy on naked, skinny, blonde cheerleaders. In triumph, the Byronic dirtbag yells, “We’ve got bush!” In our purportedly more enlightened age, Hollywood has forsaken making risqué teen comedies for vulgar imps; instead the vulgar imps have taken their raunch to the lawless internet. The powers of AI have multiplied their

grok

Friday

Virginia Blackburn

AI marketing is driving me to distraction

For years, retailers have been behaving like needy friends. My phone would ping. “Hi there!” an email would read, “We’ve missed you.” Who could this be? I would wonder happily, before realizing that the warm and loving message was from someone in the marketing department of the emporium from which I’d once bought a couple of pairs of expensive shoes. Emma usually, or Olivia. With the advent of artificial intelligence, though, personalized, over-the-top PR is getting much, much worse. At least in the past you’d needed an actual Emma to send these emails, some girl who’d gone into marketing, typing enthusiastic nonsense all day. There was at least a human

Thursday

Ian Williams

Inside the Cambodian cybercrime compounds run by Chinese gangs

The scrappy Cambodian border town of Poipet, long associated with vice and criminality, was shaken shortly before Christmas by the sound of F-16 fighter jets screaming overhead. The Thai Royal Air Force was, astonishingly, bombing a series of casinos. At least five fortified compounds were damaged, which were part of a vast industry that has conned millions of people across the world out of billions of dollars. This was “a war against the scam army,” Thailand’s army said. Scamming is a mainstay of Cambodia’s economy. The country earns an estimated $12 billion annually from online scamming alone, around half the value of its formal economy. Poipet is just one small

Preston Byrne

Will Congress shield the US from foreign attacks on the First Amendment?

Britain’s Online Safety Act is part of an escalating censorship war between Europe and the United States. It was sold to the British public as legislation that would protect children; in practice, it is a far-reaching internet censorship statute with explicit extraterritorial reach. The OSA purports to grant the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, the power to do what no one on Earth has the lawful power to do: compel US websites to censor themselves and their users. This affects everyone, not just tech firms. If the UK can impose British speech rules on US companies, then the First Amendment stops being law and becomes a suggestion. At least 29 nations,

Wednesday

Christopher Caldwell

European leaders have changed their tune on war

Ten days after Thanksgiving, news watchers were exposed to one of the more culturally incongruous images in recent history: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron beaming in front of the British Prime Minister’s house at 10 Downing Street, giving each other the locked-thumbs handshake familiar to African-American jazz musicians and professional athletes of the 1970s. Right on, brother! At that moment, according to Ukrainian media, thousands of Zelensky’s soldiers had been encircled by Russian troops near the city of Pokrovsk (or Krasnoarmiisk, as it may well soon be renamed). Large gaps were appearing in the Ukrainian front, desertions were rising and Russians appeared to be opening a

european leaders
Rod Liddle

The West has become ungovernable

My favorite opinion poll of recent times was the one which showed that Donald Trump is disliked by more than 90 percent of Danes. This is a glorious achievement and one of which the President should be proud, and perhaps boast about from time to time – averse though he may be to boasting, of course. This was the lowest favorability rating for Trump anywhere in Yerp and I suppose is partly occasioned by his determination to pry Greenland from the grasp of these ineffably smug Scandis because they have no idea what to do with it and have mismanaged its meager affairs for decades. A personal admission: I cannot

Rob Henderson and Theodore Dalrymple

What’s wrong with the West?

It is 25 years since Theodore Dalrymple published Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass. In this now famous set of essays, Dalrymple, who worked as a psychiatrist in British prisons, describes the damage done to the poorest in society by the West’s progressive middle-classes, who encourage criminals to see themselves as victims and cheer on the destruction of the traditions and norms that once guided working-class life. On the other side of the Atlantic – and the other side of the middle-class divide – the writer Rob Henderson came to the same conclusions as Dalrymple. Henderson grew up in foster care in working-class California and, as

Tuesday

Mary Wakefield

What England’s old folk songs can teach us

I grew up in the 1980s but in many ways it was more like the 1880s. We lived with my grandmother on the Northumbrian coast and the routine of our days echoed the routines of her youth, perhaps her mother’s and grandmother’s, too. We were like an elephant family in an African game park, following our matriarch around ancient migratory routes, oblivious to the rise and fall of regimes outside. Lunch (no elbows on the table), a walk to the sea, sherry time (Amontillado dry); then my grandmother and my clever younger brother would play Piquet while the children of lesser focus played with the open fire. And we sang

William Atkinson, Lara Brown and John Power

Peter Thiel predicts the future

Peter Thiel has been described variously as “America’s leading public intellectual,” the “architect of Silicon Valley’s contemporary ethos” or as an “incoherent and alarmingly super-nationalistic” malevolent force. The PayPal and Palantir founder, a prominent early supporter of Donald Trump, is one of the world’s richest and most influential men. Throughout his career, his principal concern has always been the future, so when The Spectator asked to interview him, he wanted to talk to young people. To that effect, three young members of the editorial team were sent to Los Angeles to meet him. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. WILLIAM ATKINSON: Following Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New

Saturday

Taki

Taki’s life as a writer

It was roughly 55 years ago, at the tail end of the 1960s, that I took the monumental decision to become a writer. It wasn’t exactly an agonizing one. By then I’d been on the European tennis circuit for a decade, and was kaput. Joining the circuit at 19, I traveled nonstop seeing the world. I was never tired or hungover no matter how much I partied – and I partied relentlessly. And, needless to say, there were constant thump-thumps in the heart, as at every opportunity I pursued beautiful women. I had a great advantage in this regard. As one of the worst players on the circuit, I was

Lionel Shriver

Immigration policy should discriminate

Many years ago, a friend described one of my serious literary novels as “clever.” I was offended – but I shouldn’t have been. The friend was from across the pond, where I now understand “clever” means smart. For Americans, cleverness implies a shallow, facile intelligence. Applied to people, it hints at sly, calculating deviousness or cunning. It has no positive moral qualities, as westerners understand them. Tax evasion can be “clever.” Let’s move on to “culture” – a big, fuzzy word we throw about with careless abandon, that often summons images of traditional clothing and cuisine. But parsed in its most profound sense, culture might best be defined as “what

Tuesday

Monday

Friday

Tuesday