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Rory Sutherland: The world according to the Wiki Man

United kingdom

Friday

Francesca Peacock

Americans should be proud of their Poet Laureates

From our US edition

It isn’t often I’ll say this — and, in fact, I hope this is the only time — but as a Brit, I’m jealous of you Americans. It isn’t the fact that you have a notionally more functional government than us, or even that you have unrestrained access to things like Pop Tarts and peanut butter cups. No, the answer lies, as it always does, in poetry. Over on this side of the Atlantic, we’ve had a Poet Laureate since 1668 — when John Dryden was given a position in the royal household by Charles II. We could claim to have had one even earlier, given that the versifier, playwright, and scribbler Ben Jonson was given a pension by James I in England way back in 1616.

Thursday

Roger Kimball

Why we’ll all miss Boris

From our US edition

I think that Thomas Babington Macaulay had the last word about Boris Johnson’s forced resignation as prime minister of the UK: “We know no spectacle so ridiculous,” Macaulay wrote, “as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.” Macaulay’s line needs to be slightly adjusted, it is true, because, ridiculous though public displays of puritanical moralism are, in this case it was mostly Boris’s colleagues in Parliament, not the public at large, that suffered that unbecoming fit of morality. Indeed, throughout it all, Boris — a politician with more élan than any prime minister since Margaret Thatcher — remained popular with the public. He was especially popular, I think, with the American public. And why not?

boris johnson trade

Monday

James Snell

Boris Johnson saved by his hollow party

From our US edition

Boris Johnson has survived the attempt by some in Britain's Conservative party to remove him as prime minister. The margin not quite close. But by being so publicly called into question, both the prime minister and his party have been weakened. Dogged by real and performative public disapproval, Johnson will have difficulty remaining in power for the rest of the parliamentary term, and more performing to do in the next election to remain in office after it. In the fabled axioms of British politics, two things are meant to be clear. One is that the Conservative party is the natural party of government. The country is slightly right-of-center, the logic goes, and it is a rare Labour challenge which can defeat this innate advantage.

Thursday

Doug Stokes

America’s ‘techwokery’ is infecting its allies

From our US edition

America’s racial angst is transforming the politics of the West. The world is watching as Biden’s ambitious “whole-of-government equity agenda” actively repudiates key elements of the American creed. The “equity” agenda conflates equal outcomes with equal opportunities. “Justice” is thus imposed by technocratic elites who, like the apparatchiks of the empire the US defeated in the Cold War, are a class with special privileges. As Vice President Kamala Harris explains, under the new “equity” regime, all Americans will “end up in the same place.” An unholy alliance of technocratic management and the woke sacralization of historically oppressed groups is creating a new form of American governance: call it “techwokery.

techwokery

Monday

Matt Purple

What’s so ‘progressive’ about abortion?

From our US edition

From the UK Spectator this week comes a pair of essays by Douglas Murray and Melanie McDonagh praising the American abortion debate. That debate can be difficult to admire when you're standing at the bottom of a culture war looking up. But as both Murray and McDonagh note, at least here in the States it's expected that we'll disagree about abortion, whereas throughout much of Europe it's regarded as a settled matter. Why is abortion in America still such a live issue? One reason, I think, is that in most other first-world countries it's been the subject of democratic deliberation, with people finding middle ground through their legislatures or referenda.

Friday

Monday

Daisy Dunn

Et in Arcadia ego

From our US edition

"Oxford I do not enjoy,” wrote T.S. Eliot to Conrad Aiken in February 1915. “The food and the climate are execrable, I suffer indigestion, constipation, and colds constantly.” The poet was clearly having one of his bad days. Since arriving at the university the previous October, he had found himself in and out of love with the place, which was hardly surprising, given the timing. Most of the undergraduates at Oxford had either left or were on the verge of leaving to fight for their country, meaning that the lecture and tutorial rooms were almost empty, the sports fields green through lack of use, and the centuries-old traditions stalling like motor cars on the long stretch of the High.

Oxford

Monday

Alexander Larman

Getting ready for Queen Camilla

From our US edition

"The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen." This isn’t quite the announcement that will be made when Elizabeth II finally dies; the crown will be passed onto Prince Charles. But the Queen’s public statement over the weekend that the Duchess of Cornwall will become Queen Consort, and will therefore be referred to as Queen Camilla, is a remarkable vote of confidence. It suggests she believes in her daughter-in-law’s ability to offer a stable, successful public face to the monarchy that has been disrupted so dramatically by the antics of Prince Harry and Prince Andrew in recent years. The Duchess’s public standing has been carefully managed over the decades, thanks in part to the PR expert Mark Bolland, who served as Charles’ Deputy Private Secretary from 1997 to 2002.

camilla

Friday

John Fund

Is Boris Britain’s answer to Arnold?

From our US edition

As the political stage that Boris Johnson stands on continues to shrink and become more unstable, I am reminded of how much his career resembles that of another larger-than-life celebrity. Last month, Arnold Schwarzenegger rolled his large black Yukon SUV over a red Prius in Los Angeles. The former California governor was uninjured, but the other driver suffered serious injuries and was hospitalized. Law enforcement sources told TMZ that "they believe the accident was Arnold's fault." They think Arnold made an illegal left turn at an intersection. There’s no word if he will be charged. The incident got me to thinking how both Boris and Arnold have a history of ignoring rules and creating mayhem around them.

boris arnie

Wednesday

Stephen Daisley

To save the Union, ignore Gordon Brown

As he blasts his way through the remaining support beams of the UK constitution, Gordon Brown is doing more to deliver Scottish independence than the SNP. The former Prime Minister is reportedly poised to recommend that Labour adopt ‘devo max’ as a policy, which would see the SNP-run Scottish parliament handed yet another tranche of powers. Only defence and foreign policy would remain in the hands of Westminster: everything else would be at the whim of Nicola Sturgeon. The theory is that by increasing the powers of Holyrood, the Scots' appetite for independence will be sated. But is no evidence for this, and 23 years of evidence against it.

Sunday

Dominic Green

Antony Blinken’s soundtrack to failure

From our US edition

Antony Blinken, the secretary of state and first guitarist, has broken with the tired protocols of the past, faced the complexities of the multipolar twenty-first century world, and issued a Spotify playlist. This may be a better way of reaching new audiences than bombing them. But shouldn’t public figures be judged on their records, not their record collections? “The thread that runs throughout my life is probably music,” Blinken told Rolling Stone last year as he meditated his mixtape. Hitler would probably have said the same about painting had Rolling Stone been around to profile the Viennese amateur who was turning the art world upside down.

Friday

Alexander Larman

What’s wrong with Queen Elizabeth?

From our US edition

Is Queen Elizabeth II unwell? Rumors have been circulating through the British and American media for over two weeks, and the British public are worried. First came the ninety-five-year-old’s unprecedented use of a walking stick public. Then came an overnight hospital stay, which royal retainers tried to cover up. And now she has canceled her appearance at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow on her doctors’ orders, and will be sending a recorded video message instead. Buckingham Palace has released a photograph showing the queen in her usual good spirits. Yet the frailty of the recently-widowed queen and her Glasgow no-show send a worrying message. Queen Elizabeth is dedicated to her duty.

queen elizabeth ii

Monday

Timothy Jacobson

In defense of the English original sandwich

From our US edition

Hannah Moore’s June Spectator piece on sandwiches made me hungry. Then it made me think. Ms Moore makes a sound distinction between modern Britain’s plastic-boxed, triangular ‘sandwich’ and the custom-made, piled-high, endlessly imitated, seldom-matched product of a good New York or Chicago delicatessen. Why, one wonders, do the Brits put up with it? Landing in countless foreign ports over the years, for business or pleasure, I’ve always wondered, pretty much before wondering about anything else, ‘What’s the food like?’ Almost always, I’ve liked what it was like. In the age of real borders and undiluted ethnicities, food was a powerful expression of locality.

sandwiches
waugh
Chilton Williamson, Jr.

Why we should venerate Evelyn Waugh

From our US edition

Evelyn Waugh is popularly known today as a comic author, despite the fact that Brideshead Revisited, made famous by the eponymous 1981 television series, is certainly not a comedy. Not everyone agrees. Years ago, a well-read friend of mine remarked to me that he was not fond of Waugh’s work. When I asked why, he replied, ‘Because I don’t think he’s that funny.’ I answered that the way to appreciate the exquisite wit of Evelyn Waugh is to approach him in the expectation of something other than humor, in which case the absurd incongruities, outrageous juxtapositions and ludicrous extremes that occur throughout the novels are in fact supremely funny. Waugh never set out to write comedic stories in the manner of P.G.

scotland
Benjamin Riley

Scotland by sleeper

From our US edition

Traveling internationally these days is a bit like how Dicky Umfraville, a character in Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time, describes aging: being punished for a crime one hasn’t committed. After taking my pre-departure COVID test, alerting the British government to my whereabouts for the next week (no small undertaking given I’d be in a different bed every night), and proving all this plus my vaccination status to the British Airways check-in desk at JFK, I finally settled in my seat and supplemented my mandatory mouth-muzzle with an eye mask as though bound for Gitmo, not Heathrow. An hour into the flight, the woman in front of me started bawling: a panic attack brought on by mild turbulence.

Sunday

Matt Purple

Why European criticism of the US Afghanistan pullout is so refreshing

From our US edition

You actually can spell ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organization’ without ‘America’, as it turns out. You can also, however, spell ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organization’ without, say, ‘European Union commissioner Ursula von der Leyen’. And right now, that seems like the more pressing of these two anagrammatical bombshells. Both the United States and Europe have spent the last week reprising what by now ought to be played-to-death roles. America made another clumsy move in the Middle East without cluing in our Nato allies, and the Europeans complain about it into the roar of a C-130 engine.

european
art
Laura Freeman

The art of politics: what ministers hang on their walls

From our US edition

If I am ever appointed to one of Britain’s Great Offices of State — stranger things have happened to Spectator hacks — the first thing I’d do is furnish my office. A raid on the Government Art Collection is a perk of being a minister, and better than the car and the driver. A few Hogarth engravings, a set of David Jones’s ‘Ancient Mariner’ etchings, Cedric Morris’s ‘Irises and Tulips’, Edward Bawden’s ‘The Coal Exchange’...I’d have liked to nab Winifred Nicholson’s ‘Flower Piece’, if only Carrie, the new Mrs Boris, hadn’t got there first. A Freedom of Information request from The Spectator has lifted the little red velvet curtains on which works of art ministers have got from the vaults.

Tuesday

Joanna Rossiter

The Isles of Scilly, a botanist’s paradise

From our US edition

'You can get away from everything,’ said Harold Wilson of the Isles of Scilly, ‘not only in distance but also in time’. During the parliamentary recess, Wilson would frequently catch the sleeper from Paddington to Penzance before making the notoriously choppy crossing to Britain’s most westerly archipelago. There he would unwind in his cottage on St Mary’s. This family of five islands 28 miles off the nose of Land’s End has always enjoyed a somewhat secretive coterie of admirers — Jude Law and Michael Morpurgo to name but two. Deserted beaches with a Caribbean palette are surely part of the draw, as are hedgerows festooned with wild garlic, pink bells and exotic aeoniums.

scilly

Monday

Dominic Green

Football is more than a religion to the English

From our US edition

London All is fair in love and war, and nothing is fair in sport. England rode their luck to their first final in a European Championship in London on Sunday night. They scored a stylish goal in the second minute, too — but then their luck ran out. Italy, always the favorites, regained control of the game. They equalized with only 23 minutes of normal time to run, forced a penalty shootout, and won. You make your own luck. England had the host nation’s home advantage. They had an off-pitch assist from their fans, too. For weeks the words 'Football’s coming home’ have echoed around this green and pleasant, small and crowded land. England’s game rose as the tournament progressed, until an entire nation waited on tenterhooks for Sunday night. For what?

football

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh

Carrie and Jill: the real summit

From our US edition

All eyes today are on…Carrie and Jill, as the remainder of the G7 summit is effortlessly overshadowed by the leaders’ spouses. The First Lady of the US is having tea today with Carrie Johnson — this being Cornwall, it will be a cream tea, with scones. This is pretty well obligatory when you visit Cornwall. Mrs Johnson is not actually first lady of the UK, since no such role exists, and the only First Lady is the Queen, but irritatingly the British media have adopted the Americanism, so stand by for headlines along the lines of 'First Ladies Meet’. Thank goodness, then, the British prime minister got round to marrying his girlfriend just last Saturday, before the summit — in fact, one wonders whether the nuptials were timed precisely to avoid any awkwardness.

carrie