Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
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Poor Tony Abbott. It would seem being prime minister of Australia doesn’t bring you to the attention of the British media. To come into its sights you must be put forward for a role as UK trade adviser. Then they will discover your existence and aim to destroy whatever reputation they didn’t know you had
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You sometimes wonder whether we live in an adult country anymore. For the last two days the broadcast media has been obsessing about whether Tony Abbott is a fit and proper person to be a trade envoy for the United Kingdom. Since he is a former Prime Minister of Australia, a distinguished statesman and a
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‘This city is not going to stop burning itself down until they [the protestors] know that this officer has been fired.’ Thus spoke Whitney Cabal, a leader of the Kenosha chapter of Black Lives Matter, in response to the latest police shooting in Wisconsin. The use of the passive in that sentence is revealing. As
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As readers of The Spectator know, Sir Roger Scruton died in January this year at the age of 75. Before his death, he agreed to the setting up of an institution that would bear his name and seek to continue his legacy. The Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation is that institution and it has now launched. As
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Last Friday the UN Security Council rejected any extension of the arms embargo on Iran. That embargo — imposed in 2007 — began to get phased out after the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. But a ‘snapback’ provision was put in place intended to allow the return of all such sanctions should Iran violate the terms
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19 min listen
On this week’s episode, Douglas Murray reads his column on how if everything is racist, then nothing is; Reverend Steve Morris campaigns for the return of the British holiday camp; and Toby Young on his new dating website for lockdown sceptics.
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Hearing that Dawn Butler MP had been pulled over by the Metropolitan police, I briefly hoped the taxpayer might get back the whirlpool bath she charged us on her parliamentary expenses. But the officers skipped the boot and went straight to the passenger side, where they found the member for Brent Central recording them with
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26 min listen
On the episode this week, Freddy Gray, editor of the Spectator’s US edition, reads his cover piece on the real Joe Biden. We also hear from Douglas Murray on the trial of Amber Heard and Johnny Depp – and about allegations that can’t be proved or disproved. At the end, Katy Balls relays the government’s
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The case of Johnny Depp vs the Sun, heard over recent weeks at the High Court in London, certainly gives fresh life to the old warnings about dirty linen and its public laundering. Whatever the results, I would be surprised if it didn’t provoke others to think again about the wisdom of reverting to the
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A book about breaking confidences, not to mention friendships, rather begs the same in return. Reading Anne Applebaum’s brief memoir of the world going mad around her sparked a memory of my own. It is a couple of days after the Brexit vote, and several hundred of us have gathered in London for the memorial
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The only memorable argument I have ever heard in that tedious debate about whether Shakespeare was a Catholic came from the poet Tom Paulin. I remember him claiming in a lecture that the ‘bare ruin’d choirs’ sonnet must have been written by someone who had seen the despoiled monasteries, desecrated churches and ravaged holy places
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Earlier today, Bari Weiss resigned from the New York Times and published a devastating letter of resignation on her website (also available here). There will be those who try to pretend that this is no big deal, or that it is just a storm in a journalistic tea-cup: they would be wrong. For several generations
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25 min listen
Douglas Murray writes in the Spectator this week that Trump’s speech at Mount Rushmore defended all the right bits of American history. He joins the podcast with Freddy this week to talk cancel culture and how Trump is taking on the left in the right way.
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Ahead of Independence Day last week, CNN went live to its correspondent Leyla Santiago. Here is how she described the upcoming celebrations: ‘Kicking off the Independence Day weekend, President Trump will be at Mount Rushmore, where he’ll be standing in front of a monument of two slave owners and on land wrestled away from Native
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28 min listen
On this week’s episode, James Forsyth talks about Boris Johnson’s impossible mission – to rewire Whitehall (01:00), Douglas Murray on woke books (09:00), and Leaf Arbuthnot on the underground world of lockdown speakeasies and theatre (17:15).
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Of all the people who have made cash in the past month, few can have raked it in like Robin DiAngelo. Since the death of George Floyd, the white American academic and author of White Fragility has been absolutely milking it. A term I probably shouldn’t use, since Peta last week declared milk a symbol
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Imagine if on Saturday evening a white neo-Nazi had stabbed three men to death. Imagine, furthermore, if in the wake of the killings it had turned out that all three of the victims were gay. Or ‘members of the LGBT community’, to use the lexicon of the time. And then imagine if two days later
We’re experiencing an unhealthy overcorrection in racial politics
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Since the whole world is in crisis, a crisis in the world of publishing might seem like a niche issue. But something that has been going on at the publishers Hachette is worth noting. Not least as it may be a portent of worse things to come elsewhere. Earlier this month the publishing house was
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During these months of inertia, I confess to having on occasion made illicit trips to churches in the English countryside. Enjoying the frisson that surely accompanies all law-breaking, I have often gone so far as the church door, there to examine not only the locks and bolts but also the laminated notices which adorn so
