The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: the war on smoking, Trump’s trial and O.J.’s death

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said that British fighter jets had shot down ‘a number of drones’ fired at Israel from Iran. Additional RAF jets were deployed over Iraq and Syria, where Britain was already taking part in Operation Shader against the Islamic State group. Some people decided not to attend the annual Downing Street Eid party in protest at the government’s support for Israel; the Prime Minister was not there because he was making a statement to the House on Iran’s attack. A Muslim pupil at the Michaela School in Wembley, whose head teacher is Katharine Birbalsingh, failed at the High Court in challenging its ban on prayer rituals.

The Spectator

A smoking ban is pointless and illiberal

Why is Britain poised to ban cigarette smoking, when the habit is already dying out anyway? Smoking is seen by the young as disgusting and outdated. A generation ago, 50 per cent of school pupils said they had smoked at some point. By the time David Cameron came to power, this was down to 25 per cent. It has since halved again, to 12 per cent – of whom just 1 per cent smoke regularly. Vaping among the young presents its own challenges, but smoking cigarettes (at £15 a packet) is in terminal decline. So naturally the state has decided to intervene. Smoking is dying out among the young because they are choosing not to smoke, not because it is banned Politicians of all parties united this week to usher in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which will create two categories of consumers.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Senate dismisses Mayorkas impeachment trial

From our US edition

The Senate kicked off its impeachment trial for Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday as Democrats quickly dismissed the charges.House Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas in February for failing to enforce federal immigration law and lying to Congress when he said the border was secure. The two articles of impeachment were finally delivered to the Senate yesterday, and although Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell argued that the body has a duty to hold a full trial, senators voted along party lines just a few hours after the start of the trial to dismiss Mayorkas’s alleged “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law.” They dismissed the second charge — “breach of public trust” — in short order, as well.

Monday

The Spectator

A president on trial

From our US edition

A week after the death of O.J. Simpson, America has a new Trial of the Century — perhaps the first of many. Jury selection is currently underway in a Manhattan courtroom as presidential candidate Donald Trump faces charges from New York County district attorney Alvin Bragg of faking business records to conceal payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels says that she was paid $130,000 by Michael Cohen in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election in order to not talk publicly about having sex with Trump a decade previously, shortly after his third marriage to Melania and the birth of their son Barron. This is the first trial of a former US president.

Friday

The Spectator

Does Biden’s gun grab pass the smell test?

From our US edition

Forget closing the porous southern border: the Biden administration has decided instead to take aim at gun owners, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding, by moving one step closer to closing the so-called “gun show loophole.” The “loophole,” as I’ve written before, refers to the federal law that originally prohibited people convicted of certain violent felonies from owning firearms. Over the years, the law has, unsurprisingly, been expanded, and by 1994, firearm buyers purchasing from a dealer (with a Federal Firearm License, or FFL) have been required first to receive permission from the government to do so via a federal background check.

Thursday

The Spectator

Who uses Grindr? 

Meet market Who uses the gay dating app Grindr?  – The site claims 27m users worldwide, 80.5% of whom identify as gay. – 13m users are active on a monthly basis. Some 923,000 are paid users. – 80% are younger than 35. – 39% are single. – 48% are in the US. – The average user is on the site for 60 minutes per day. – The ‘explore’ feature – which allows users to see who on the app lives in a particular town or city – is accessed more in London than any other city in the world. – Grindr accounts for 3% of global use of dating apps. The most popular is Tinder, which accounts for 27% of global use. Source: grindr/businessofapps.

The Spectator

Letters: the real problem with a Labour super-majority

Good trade-off Sir: I applaud your excellent editorial (‘Trading in Falsehoods’, 6 April) – a succinct and insightful essay on the role of Great Britain in the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. All are agreed that slavery in any form was and is reprehensible. As a white and proud Barbadian, initially educated there, I contend that some of my ancestors, who were probably slave owners, did not believe that they were involved in anything immoral or sinful, but were serving the economic interests of the Empire as they saw it at the time. You rightly point out that the huge cost in treasure and lives incurred by Britain and the Royal Navy in ending the slave trade is largely ignored.

The Spectator

Common sense prevails in the gender debate

The publication this week of the Cass Review into gender-identity services for young people marks a welcome return to reason in an area of medicine which for the past few years has been driven by identity politics. No one is denying that there are those who deserve psychological – and in some cases physical – help to cope with their condition. But the explosion in the number of children treated on the NHS for gender-identity issues (and in many cases being given powerful drugs with severe side effects) should have set alarm bells ringing long before it did. The NHS first set up its Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock Clinic in 1989, and for the first two decades of its existence it was a small outfit with a low profile.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: Tory phishing, tension over Rafah and Cameron in America

Home The review by Dr Hilary Cass of gender-identity services for people under 18 called for an end to prescribing powerful hormone drugs; warned that children who change gender may regret it; and found that many had experienced trauma, neglect and abuse. More than 150,000 patients had to wait more than 24 hours in A&E before getting a hospital bed last year, a tenfold increase on 2019. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, suggested that Labour could plug the gap in its spending commitments by getting more taxes sooner from non-doms. Five Bulgarians admitted in court to stealing more than £50 million in fraudulent claims for Universal Credit. Britain held talks with the European Commission on making Gibraltar part of the Schengen area.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Arizona brings abortion back into play

From our US edition

An Arizona Supreme Court ruling upheld a 160-year-old law that criminalizes all abortions with the exception of those where a woman’s life is at stake this Tuesday. The “brutal, backwards and barbaric” ruling, as Democratic representative Shontel Brown colorfully puts it, relied on a law passed before Arizona was a state and women had the right to vote.Just a day before the ruling was made, presidential candidate Donald Trump made his “leave abortion policy to the states” announcement. The move, which was seen as morally bankrupt by some pro-life organizations, was hailed by others as strategically savvy. Making the election less about abortion and more about immigration and the economy, to put it simply, helps Trump.

Monday

The Spectator

Trump strikes a deal on abortion

From our US edition

Former president Donald Trump announced on Monday that he believes abortion policy should be left to the states to decide and reaffirmed support for exceptions for rape and incest, declining to endorse much-discussed national limits on the procedure.The statement, which was shared on Truth Social, is set to disappoint pro-life organizations throughout the country. Many feared the Trump campaign would continue to move further away from traditional pro-life positions, including refusing to back policies such as a fifteen-week ban. Susan B.

Friday

The Spectator

Biden’s plan to save the ‘deep state’

From our US edition

The Biden administration is bracing for a second Trump term by rolling out a rule that would complicate Donald Trump’s pledge to fire tens of thousands of federal workers if he wins in November. The new rule is also a huge gift to the public-sector unions that Joe Biden needs firmly in his corner.The latest edict, issued by the US Office of Personnel Management, is an almost direct response to Trump’s stated plans to purge the bureaucracy. That’s not how the OPM is framing it, of course; instead, OPM deputy director Rob Shriver said it “is about making sure the American public can continue to count on federal workers to apply their skills and expertise in carrying out their jobs, no matter their personal political beliefs.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: screens in schools are not a problem

Screen tests Sir: As somebody whose teaching career coincided with the digital revolution, I must take issue with Sophie Winkleman’s well-meaning but blinkered views on screens in schools (Actress’s Notebook, 30 March). I shall ignore the several familiar yet unsubstantiated opinions presented as facts, but I cannot let ‘straight back to books, paper and pens’ go unchallenged. Adults involved in education have often, lamentably, seen it as their job to prepare children for the world they themselves grew up in, rather than the one that awaits the next generation. The comment, ‘Well it worked for me!’ boils my blood.

The Spectator

How many people sleep rough?

Ballot points Michael Gove hinted that the general election could be on 14 or 21 November.     Have we had a November election before? – General elections were held on 15 November 1922, when the Conservatives won a 74 seat majority and on 14 November 1935 when the National Government won a majority of 242. – There have been no general elections in November since then. – Prior to the first world war, general elections were not held on one specific day but were spread over several weeks.     General elections spanned November in 1806 (Whig victory), 1812 (Tory), 1868 (Liberal) and 1885 (Conservative). Raw facts How many times was sewage discharged into rivers and the sea in 2023?

The Spectator

How Britain smashed the slave trade

It was bound to happen sooner or later: a guest on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow presented an artefact which derived from the slave trade – an ivory bangle. One of the programme’s experts, Ronnie Archer-Morgan, himself a descendant of slaves, said that it was a striking historical artefact but not one that he was willing to value. ‘I do not want to put a price on something that signifies such an awful business,’ he said. It’s easy to understand how he feels. The idea of people profiting from the artefacts left over from slavery is distasteful. Yet, as Archer-Morgan said, it is not that the bangle has no value: it has great educational value.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: hate crimes, surprise knighthoods and flaming rickshaws

Home The Hate Crime and Public Order Act came into effect in Scotland, making it a crime to communicate or behave in a manner ‘that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive’, with the intention of stirring up hatred based on age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. The Scottish government offered online training to 500 Police Scotland ‘Hate Crime Champions’. The author J.K. Rowling named ten people who call themselves women that she called men. Police Scotland said complaints had been received about her, but that but no action would be taken. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said: ‘We should not be criminalising people saying common sense things about biological sex.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Who thinks Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than Trump?

From our US edition

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seemed to shock a CNN reporter when he said in a recent interview that he could make the argument that President Joe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than former president Donald Trump. “Him trying to overthrow the election clearly is a threat to democracy,” Kennedy said about Trump. “But the question was, who is a worse threat to democracy and what I would say is... I’m not going to answer that question, but I can argue that President Biden is.”Kennedy pointed out that he recently won a court case in which he accused the Biden administration of weaponizing federal agencies to censor the political speech of Americans.

Monday

The Spectator

Biden’s sloppy Easter message

From our US edition

As believers around the world observed the holiest day of the Christian calendar yesterday with traditional Easter celebrations, the administration of the self-proclaimed “devout Catholic” president of the United States issued a proclamation acknowledging Sunday as “Transgender Day of Visibility” and banned religious-themed art from the White House Easter egg decorating contest.President Biden is evidently proud of his Catholic heritage, as he frequently touts his faith and attends Mass. Yet many of his policies, on abortion and LGBQTIA-related issues, for instance, directly contradict Catholic doctrine.Biden is receiving all kinds of flack in response to the White House proclamation.