The Spectator

Wednesday

The Spectator

Britain has led the way on migration

Human trafficking is a multi-billion-pound global industry. It is fuelled by the desperation of migrants seeking a better life and the cynicism of those who are now adept at identifying and exploiting loopholes in western border controls. One of Germany’s proposals is to explore copying the British model and process asylum applicants elsewhere As ever larger waves of migrants cross the Mediterranean, Rishi Sunak has told European leaders that their efforts at policing illegal migration are ‘not working’ – because there is no shortage of poor people willing to pay smugglers for their ‘barbaric enterprise’. He has raised difficult questions about how the rich discharge their duty to the poor in a world with about 100 million displaced people.

The Spectator

What is the loneliest life form?

I want to be alone An animal described as ‘Britain’s loneliest sheep’ was ‘rescued’ from the bottom of a cliff in Easter Ross where it had been living for the past two years, presumably after clambering down the steep coastal slope and finding it impossible to climb back up.   Some other lonely life forms: – All albatrosses live in the southern hemisphere – except one. ‘Albie’, or ‘Albert’, is believed to have made a navigational error in around 2014 and has since been living in Europe, dividing his time between Germany, the Yorkshire coast and the east coast of Scotland, where he tends to hang out with gannets.

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Letters: Israel/Gaza isn’t the time for fence-sitting

Ill-judged Sir: Professor Carl Henegan’s authoritative demolition of the Covid Inquiry (‘The Covid whitewash’, 4 November) prompts the question of why judges are normally appointed to chair public inquiries. Lady Hallett has clearly had a distinguished law career, but has no apparent expertise in government, public health, epidemiology, medicine or science. Her first move on being appointed was not to remedy these deficiencies but to spend more than £100 million hiring other lawyers – and the only possible explanation for the inquiry’s behaviour is that they believe they’re in a court of law and having already stated their positive view of lockdown, see themselves as acting for the defence.

The Spectator

Books of the year II: more choices of reading in 2023

Ruth Scurr In Ways of Life (Jonathan Cape, £30), Laura Freeman channels the spirit of the art critic and collector Jim Ede. She traces the origins of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge – not a museum, nor art gallery, more a cabinet of curiosities – through Ede’s own life, his work for the Tate, the other houses and countries he lived in and the artists he cared for and wrote about. In Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations (Simon & Schuster, £30), Simon Schama argues that ‘all history is natural history’, and introduces a rich cast of protagonists who pushed forward the frontiers of science for the good of humanity, regardless of national, territorial boundaries.

Monday

The Spectator

The poll that sent Democrats running

From our US edition

We’re almost exactly one year out from what increasingly looks like another Trump v. Biden showdown. Former president Donald Trump leads his second-place opponent by more than forty percentage points nationally, and has a thirty-point advantage in Iowa. President Joe Biden avoided a primary challenge from RFK Jr., who is now running as an Independent, and no one thinks Representative Dean Phillips’s campaign is serious, especially considering his refusal to acknowledge the objective reality that he’s even running against Biden. Although Phillips doesn’t seem to be the guy for the job, more Democrats are waking up to the idea that Biden doesn’t have what it takes to win a second term. Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Democrats don’t want Biden to run again.

Friday

The Spectator

Democrats revise their own party history

From our US edition

The political left isn’t content to secretly smelt statues of Robert E. Lee or remove a plaque honoring the Confederate general’s horse, Traveller. Apparently, the Democratic Party’s own history is too problematic to bear.  Over the years, the Democratic Party’s official website has undergone some curious changes. The Spectator previously reported on the Democrat logo changing from sky blue to royal blue after President Joe Biden took office. It seems the “Our History” page is also getting whitewashed.  Since 2019, the history page has neglected to mention anything about the Democratic Party prior to the 1920s.

democratic party

Wednesday

The Spectator

Racial politics infect Kentucky governor’s race

From our US edition

On Tuesday, Kentuckians will vote in the state’s highly publicized — and very expensive — governor’s race. Democrat incumbent Andy Beshear is facing off against current Republican attorney general Daniel Cameron. Polls throughout the race have shown Beshear leading by double digits, but GOP consultants I’ve spoken to are cautiously optimistic about Cameron’s chances, noting that his numbers have been rising over the past couple of weeks and that many Kentucky voters remain undecided, which is usually bad news for the incumbent. Trump also reupped his endorsement of Cameron this week in an attempt to disrupt Beshear’s relatively high approval rating among Trump supporters.  Cameron’s recent rise has inspired some late-stage nastiness.

The Spectator

We have more to fear from social media than AI

For once, Nick Clegg had a point. At the start of this week’s Artificial Intelligence summit at Bletchley Park, our former deputy prime minister spoke about the need to get priorities right. ‘My slight note of caution,’ he said, is that we ‘don’t allow the need to focus on proximate challenges to be crowded out by speculative, sometimes futuristic predictions’. He’s quite right. The most immediate threat is not the prospect of dysfunctional AI but the power wielded by Mark Zuckerberg, Sir Nick’s boss at Meta, and the extent to which the companies it runs, Facebook and Instagram, control the news. On its own, Facebook has a stunning concentration of power: it’s now the UK’s third biggest news source after BBC1 and ITV, according to Ofcom surveys.

The Spectator

How dangerous is ice hockey?

Sporting danger An ice hockey player died in Sheffield after his throat was cut by an opponent’s skate blade. How dangerous is ice hockey? – There were 7,668 visits to US emergency rooms as a result of ice hockey-related head injuries in 2018. This compares with 51,892 for American football, 24,516 for baseball, 38,898 for basketball and 26,955 for football. These figures are not adjusted for the participation rate. – An analysis of 13 seasons in the US found that an average of 3.17 ice hockey players per season suffered from concussion – A 2013 Canadian study claimed 44.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Gaza deaths, Covid chaos and looting in Mexico

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, chaired a Cobra emergency committee meeting on the effects in Britain of Israel’s war against Hamas: his spokesman described videos and pictures on social media at the weekend as ‘extremely concerning’. A large pro-Palestine demonstration had again been held in London. Andy McDonald MP had the Labour whip suspended after using the phrase ‘between the river to the sea’ during the march. Paul Bristow MP was sacked as a Conservative parliamentary private secretary for calling for a ceasefire. A tornado tore the roof off a house in Littlehampton, West Sussex. Plans to close ticket offices at railway stations were cancelled. The government granted 27 licences for oil and gas exploration and development in the North Sea.

The Spectator

Letters: policing pro-Palestinian rallies isn’t an exact science

Call for common justice Sir: Rod Liddle’s piece on the true desires of Palestinians was rare in its acceptance of the complexity of aspiration (‘What Hamas promised its electorate’, 28 October). People cleave to those who stand for their best hopes. They voted for Hamas. Rod ends saying only Israeli Arabs in his experience did not loathe Jews. Why would they? Presumably being the right side of the ‘peace’ wall, they had no fear of losing their birthright to illegal settlers acting in defiance of UN resolutions with official acquiescence. If the Israeli rule of law could have extended to the occupied West Bank Arabs, then there would be no indefensible double standard. It is clearly a missed opportunity and did not need a ‘two state solution’, just common justice and sense.

The Spectator

Books of the year I: a choice of reading in 2023

Andrew Motion Something old made new: The Iliad in Emily Wilson’s muscular and moving new translation, the first by a woman, is truly what it claims to be – a version for our time (Norton, £30). And something new made immediate: Hannah Sullivan’s second collection of poems, Was It For This (Faber, £12.99), ambitiously extends the already considerable range of her first book, Three Poems. She’s the cleverest poet of her generation and also one of the most deep-feeling. Clare Mulley Vulnerability, strength and defiance this year, starting with Daniel Finkelstein’s Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad (William Collins, £25), which caught me up in its humanity as it testified to the importance of bearing witness to extremism.

Monday

The Spectator

New Hampshire tells Biden to pound sand

From our US edition

President Joe Biden has put himself in an awkward position as the 2024 Democratic primary inches closer. The Democratic Party voted last February to change its primary calendar, honoring South Carolina as the first state to vote and demoting Iowa and New Hampshire. The DNC spun a yarn that South Carolina should vote first because it has a larger black population, but that seems a neat excuse to cover up the fact that really they are rewarding South Carolina for being the state that revived Biden’s 2020 campaign after humiliating defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire.Either way, the new primary schedule may come back to bite Biden and the Democratic establishment.

joe biden new hampshire

Friday

The Spectator

A new Biden challenger enters!

From our US edition

Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota has thrown his hat into the 2024 presidential election ring, challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.   Phillips’s candidacy is being heralded by many outlets — and acknowledged by Phillips himself — as a “long shot,” with the New York Times noting Biden’s “significant financial advantages.”   Still, Biden isn’t exactly the obvious choice to represent his party in 2024: Axios reported last month that a CNN poll showed “two-thirds of Democrat-leaning voters say the party should not nominate President Biden for a second term.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Democrats and the media unite against new GOP speaker

From our US edition

It took a few weeks, but Republicans got their act together and did the impossible: elected a new speaker of the House, Louisiana’s Mike Johnson. Johnson and his team have an incredible amount of work ahead of them — from funding the government to fundraising for House Republicans. What’s particularly noteworthy to me in the hours ahead of Johnson becoming speaker is the all-out effort Democrats and their media mouthpieces are making to define him — mostly by spreading provable misinformation.  Johnson’s Democratic counterparts on the Judiciary Committee immediately lashed out at him for being a member of the Freedom Caucus, which is an outright lie.

The Spectator

Who has the best side hustle?

Side hustles David Solomon, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, said he would stop DJing in clubs, following criticism from the bank’s board. For years he had performed under the alias D-Sol, playing electronic dance music. Some other unlikely side hustles: – In 2017 King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands revealed that for the past 21 years he had been a co-pilot for KLM. – While prime minister in 1971, Edward Heath both captained the British yachting team to victory in the Admiral’s Cup and conducted the London Symphony Orchestra. – Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross has worked as a referee and linesman in the Scottish football league.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: Tory by-election misery, ‘jihad’ chants and emergency aid

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, on his return from Israel (where he spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister) and to Saudi Arabia (where he spoke with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince), told the House of Commons: ‘Hamas is not only a threat to Israel, but to many others across the region. All the leaders I met agreed that this is a watershed moment. It’s time to set the region on a better path.’ Twelve Britons had died in the Hamas attack, and five were missing. Of the blast at Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital on 17 October, which killed numbers of people into the hundreds, he said it was likely to have been caused by a missile fired from within Gaza. He announced £20 million extra in emergency aid to Gaza.

The Spectator

The Tories are slowly turning the tide on immigration

For years the government has appeared to be setting itself up for failure with its promises to crack down on illegal immigration. The plan to process asylum claims in Rwanda was always going to excite immigration lawyers. Sure enough, it remains mired in the legal process. Even if the government wins its case in the Supreme Court, there remains the vast obstacle of the European Court of Human Rights. The promise to ‘stop the boats’ was a hostage to fortune. The boats continue to arrive; it is not possible to patrol every square inch of the English Channel. The discovery of legionella bacteria on the Bibby Stockholm, the barge on which the government is planning to house asylum seekers, seemed at the time to be the final straw for the hapless Home Office.