Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
We were twice transported back to the early 1970s this weekend, our memories snagged on the deaths of Roberta Flack and David Johansen. One of the two was afforded quite a send off by the media, the other wasn’t. I think they got it the wrong way around. Flack, who died aged 88 on 24
The world order has shifted on its axis, having been given a peremptory boot by the US President. What is striking to me is the speed with which our government has accustomed itself to the new dawn, overnight, almost with a sense of relief. Listen to senior Labour figures today and they do not always
As happens with every issue, the world is now neatly polarised about Mr Trump. There are those who refer to him as a Nazi, a dictator, a fascist, a rapist and could not possibly discern anything beneficial about his regime even if he announced he was both joining Hamas and transitioning. And then there are
In January last year the European Union revealed that it had dreamed up a ‘secret plan’ to sabotage the economy of one of its member states. Brussels was growing impatient with the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who had shown the temerity to dissent from EU orthodoxy on a number of issues. In this particular
How do you like your members of parliament? Do you prefer them to be vacuous automatons devoid of wit, humour and anything one might call emotion? Or do you actually prefer them to be people, a little like yourself? Prone to human frailties from time to time, rather than being a deracinated good Boy Scout
Grade: A Hell, there’s a lot not to like, or even to be a little suspicious of, with this young woman. Her politics are, as you might have guessed, banal and stupid. She has been in a relationship with the ghastly Matty Healy of the 1975. But she has huge talent and is probably a
The number of people arriving here in small boats has increased since Sir Keir Starmer was elected Prime Minister on 4 July last year. The 20,000 figure was passed in December. Perhaps the increase is a consequence of these disparate individuals yearning to live in a country in which Angela Rayner is the Deputy Prime
Several women who worked with Russell Brand at the BBC have revealed that they were too scared to make official complaints about the lunatic’s behaviour. I dare say it will astonish you to learn that Mr Brand seemed to display a somewhat predatory sexual nature and was apt to touch young ladies inappropriately, though Brand
It is always upsetting to watch a woman enmired in distress and so I thought I might ride on my trusty charger to the assistance of Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, with a few suggestions as to where she might make spending cuts. Rachel needs these cuts because she can’t raise taxes and the British economy
When I first saw the headline I was highly optimistic. Sir Keir Starmer had identified the threat to society posed by ‘young men in their bedrooms’. What would follow, surely, must be a polemic in the style of Robert Baden-Powell or John Harvey Kellogg on the dangers of masturbation. It’s about time this was politicised,
Last Saturday I was making my way across the road from St Pancras to King’s Cross when I noticed a large bearded man blundering towards me, dodging the traffic, with a look of great urgency on his face. Assuming he was one of the 78 per cent of people in the capital who are mentally
People don’t like to use the term ‘vibe shift’, but I suspect it will turn out to be rather more than that. Certainly, I have never known opinion to change so rapidly – almost overnight. I’m talking about Donald Trump, or, more properly, how he is regarded. On Saturday morning, I was presenting my new
I can see one possible benefit of having a full inquiry into the almost exclusively Muslim grooming gangs who raped and assaulted and in some cases murdered young white girls and are perhaps still doing so in a selection of Britain’s ghastliest towns. The number of lawyers it would employ and the enormous salaries they received
Do you know, I have noticed a certain thawing in the BBC’s attitude to the American entrepreneur, Elon Musk. I wonder what might have occasioned such a sharp change in mindset of late? It is all a bit of a mystery. I never believed that Musk would bung Reform UK £100 million, and as the
Lying in bed pissed on Boxing Day night, I was visited by the ghost of Christmas Future, dressed in a grey jacket with a velvet collar, hovering over my pit cackling and in a similar state, alcohol-wise, to myself. It seemed very happy, this ghost. It led me to a graveyard where it pointed, in
Grade: A+ In a desperate wish to avoid the appellation of a derided genre, this young man from Asheville, North Carolina has been described by the press as Americana, slacker rock, indie and alt-country. But we at The Spectator will call it how it is: this is country rock, pure and simple. And if country
We are approaching the deadline for the prestigious ‘Most Odious Political Commentator of the Year’ award. Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart’s joint bid is so far out in front of the pack, that the result is surely a foregone conclusion. But this should not deter us from running through some of the other noble contenders.
71 min listen
Welcome to a special festive episode of The Edition podcast, where we will be taking you through the pages of The Spectator’s Christmas triple issue. Up first: our review of the year – and what a year it has been. At the start of 2024, the outcome of the US election looked very different, the UK had a
I suppose it is a mild surprise that Fifa didn’t choose Yemen to host the 2034 World Cup, as the bosses of that awful organisation seem determined to make football do a tour of the world’s most primitive and dangerous hellholes. Instead, it’s Saudi Arabia. Of course it is. Over the last ten years the
Please excuse the tone of jubilation, but I have been dancing around my kitchen for the past couple of days, in a state well beyond elation, at the removal from power of Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria and its successors who, I am convinced, are a little like our own Liberal Democrats, except with