James Vitali

James Vitali is an Officer in the British Army Reserves

Sunday

James Vitali

The truth about Sandhurst

My friends were baffled. Why, at the age of 30, was I going back to school? And, worse, to an institution where your days are longer, your freedoms more limited, and being shouted out is a common occurrence? But last year, that is exactly what I did. It was the best decision of my life. In the spring of 2025, I passed the Army Officer Selection Board. From September through December, I left my civilian life behind and embarked on the intensive short commissioning course at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. It was the least ‘free’, least comfortable, least independent place I have ever lived. But, somehow, I had never felt more liberated or content.

Wednesday

James Vitali

Why are young Christians returning to tradition?

41 min listen

Today’s Holy Smoke is a curtain-raiser for ‘Recovering the Sacred’, a Spectator event at St Bartholow-the-Great in the City of London in which a panel of experts will explore the rediscovery of traditional worship and theology by young Anglicans and Catholics. The event will be held on Tuesday 8th July; for more details, and to book tickets, go to: spectator.co.uk/church In today’s episode Damian Thompson talks to Anglican James Vitali and Catholic Georgia Clarke, two Generation Z professionals bursting with enthusiasm for their faith. It’s an exhilarating discussion; don’t miss it.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Saturday

James Vitali

Israeli students aren’t troubled by ‘microaggressions’

Jerusalem’s Shalem College should have been brimming with life when we visited last month. But this leafy campus was oddly empty. The reason, of course, is that a large contingent of its students are currently serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as part of the war effort against Hamas. Away from campus, the young Israelis that we met on our trip were of similar age and appearance to the undergraduates I taught in Cambridge as a doctoral student. But the similarities stopped there. For these young people were about as different to their contemporaries in the West as it is possible to be. We met a girl in her early twenties who was serving in a female observer unit at the Gaza border on October 7 and had witnessed the murder of many of her friends by Hamas terrorists.

Thursday

James Vitali

Rachel Reeves’s Budget plan is much worse than you think

'No plan for the economy' is the charge being made against the government, as Conservatives take to the airwaves following the Budget. The problem is that, in this case, the charge is simply untrue. Labour do have a plan for the economy. It is called securonomics: a worldview set out in some detail by the Chancellor herself in the Spring during her Mais Lecture. And as Paul Mason put it earlier in the year in this magazine, securonomics constitutes a 'coherent, well founded' plan for the economy, rooted in a 'clear political philosophy'. Securonomics will make Britain more lethargic, more risk averse Securonomics, at its most basic level, is a theory about the relationship between the state and the market.