Society

Wednesday

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Who cancelled Miss Japan?

Karolina Shiino, a 26-year-old naturalised Japanese woman originally from Ukraine, has been obliged to give up her Miss Japan title after confessing to an affair with a married man. Shiino, whose parents are Ukrainian and who came to Japan aged 5, was awarded the title just two weeks ago. As the first non-ethnically Japanese woman to be crowned Miss Japan she had already generated a certain amount of controversy but the revelations about the affair, published in one of Japan’s weekly magazines, has brought her brief tenure to an inglorious end. The pageant organisers had initially defended Shiino by claiming that she didn’t know her lover (who is an influencer

Jawad Iqbal

Pakistani politics is like a Monopoly game

The levels of cynicism and disillusionment surrounding the upcoming parliamentary elections in Pakistan – due to take place tomorrow – are remarkable, even for a country with a chequered democratic tradition. Few people believe the vote will be free or fair, with widespread speculation that the country’s all-powerful military has already decided the result and will stop at nothing to get its way. Put simply, the election is a charade.  This is how things stand. The country’s former prime minister, Imran Khan, is in jail. More on him later. Another former leader, Nawaz Sharif, who was in exile after his own spell in jail, has returned home, and all outstanding cases against

Tuesday

Nigel Jones

King Charles’s openness about his health marks a change for the Royals

The great ages achieved by King Charles’ mother, the Queen (96), and maternal grandmother, the Queen mother (101), show that the modern British Royal family generally enjoy rude good health. But their royal status and excellent medical care are no guarantee against the illnesses that beset all mortal men and women. In the contemporary era, the most common condition, now afflicting one in every two people, is cancer. King Charles’ decision to share news of his diagnosis with the world at large – though holding back from disclosing exactly where the cancer was discovered – is a major departure from the reserve and secrecy that has previously marked the Royals’

Alexander Larman

Now is the time for Harry to reconcile with King Charles

Amidst the news of King Charles’s cancer diagnosis, there have been any number of reactions, including the sincere sorrow and compassion felt by most of his subjects. Yet, for all of his wealth and privilege – as a certain sneering part of the internet felt the need to point out, few would envy the King the sorrows and turbulence of the past years. This has included the loss of both of his parents, estrangement from his youngest son and now the revelation of a serious illness.  Nevertheless, adversity can lead to reconciliation. So it was that almost immediately after the tidings of Charles’s cancer broke, it was revealed that Prince Harry had spoken to his

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Why can’t Peter Tatchell leave Cliff Richard alone?

Leave Cliff alone! Peter Tatchell has weighed in on Cliff Richard’s refusal to declare his sexual orientation. Tatchell was spurred on by the reemergence of a video clip of Cliff declaring on Loose Women: ‘I don’t mind talking about things but there are things that are mine, that will go with me to my grave…I don’t talk about my family, I certainly don’t talk about my sexuality.’ This interview, from 2016, rattled Tatchell’s cage. As ever he can’t keep his nose out of anybody else’s business. ‘Sure, it is up to him,’ said Tatchell, ‘But –’. (As usual, everything after the ‘but’ is nonsense.) ‘Hiding his sexuality colludes with the

Monday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Why shouldn’t Tucker Carlson interview Vladimir Putin?

In September, 1934, William Randolph Hearst, the most famous journalist and publisher in the world, visited Berlin and interviewed Adolf Hitler. At the time, Hearst admired Hitler, and was rather taken aback when the Fuhrer asked why he was so ‘misunderstood’ in the English-language press. Hearst replied that Americans love democracy and distrusted dictatorships, to which Hitler answered that he had been democratically elected by a vast majority of Germans.  Unlike Hearst, Carlson does not think that his job is to talk to world leaders away from the cameras in order to decide what’s best for democracy Hearst then said that Americans were concerned about the treatment of a certain

Sam Leith Sam Leith

How do we draw the line between gambling and gaming?

‘Skins gambling,’ anyone? No, until yesterday, me neither. It’s nothing to do with strip poker or 70s bovver boys. It’s the name given to a completely unregulated gambling industry, aggressively promoted to teenagers and estimated to be worth multiple billions of pounds a year – yes, billions with a b. One reason this isn’t a major scandal, I think, is that it will sound too far-fetched and too obscure and confusing to the sorts of people who we might hope would be scandalised into doing something about it. But so it was, too, with credit default swaps. So let’s try to explain. (I’m largely indebted for my own understanding to

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Casting an able-bodied actor as Richard III isn’t ‘offensive’

The row over Richard III rumbles on. Disability groups have objected to the Globe’s forthcoming production in which Michelle Terry will take the lead. The able-bodied Terry, who happens to be the Globe’s artistic director, has apologised ‘for the pain or harm that has been caused by the decision for me to play Richard III.’ This carefully worded statement gives the impression that some external authority reached ‘the decision’ to award her the role but was that really the case? Casting decisions at the Globe, she goes on, are made ‘rigorously’ and ‘always in dialogue with members of our many communities.’ One of the ‘communities’ she seems to have ignored

Sunday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Can Trump ever get a fair trial?

15 min listen

Last week Donald Trump was ordered to pay more than seventy million dollars to E. Jean Carroll, the writer who accused him of sexual assault. Freddy speaks to Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver about some of the oddities of this case against the former president. 

Colin Brazier

Why Britain’s farmers aren’t revolting

Europe’s ablaze, but not on this side of the English Channel. Paris has been besieged. Dutch politics turned upside down. Yet in the country that gave history the Peasant’s Revolt, the only thing British farmers are flailing is hedgerows. As tractors blockade the chancelleries of Belgium and Germany, why is it that the only traffic gridlock caused by British agriculture is the queue of cars outside Jeremy Clarkson’s café? Partly, it’s who we are. Battlefields of industrial strife like Peterloo and Orgreave aside, our culture of protest is different. As the comedienne Victoria Wood put it, the British do not have revolutions, preferring instead to write to ‘Points of View’.

Jawad Iqbal

The trouble with Marcus Rashford

What a week it’s been for Marcus Rashford, who divides opinion like almost no one else in football. The Manchester United striker has been making headlines of the non-footballing kind after pictures emerged of him in a Belfast nightclub last week, a night out that apparently consisted of drinking tequila non-stop. When he returned home to Manchester, he called in sick, meaning he was unable to play in last Sunday’s FA Cup tie between Manchester United and Newport. After Rashford finally returned to first team action on Thursday evening, in Manchester United’s away game against Wolverhampton Wanderers, he was first on the scoresheet, a cooly taken goal in the opening minutes of the

Sean Thomas

The world would be a better place without Facebook

It’s sometimes difficult to remember a time before Facebook, isn’t it? It’s like trying to remember a time before the espresso martini (invented by mixologist Dick Bradsell in Soho in 1983) or a time when people smoked on planes (amazingly, that was allowed until the late 1990s), or that time, many ages past, so long ago it is lost in the fogs of ancient memory, when the Tories were relatively popular (2022). However, there was a time before Facebook and it was 20 years ago today: 4 February 2004 was the date when a young Mark Zuckerberg launched the site from his Harvard dorm. His second stab at the idea,

Saturday

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver, Angus Colwell and Toby Young

32 min listen

On this week’s episode, Lionel Shriver asks if Donald Trump can get a fair trial in America (00:39), Angus Colwell speaks to the Gen-Zers who would fight for Britain (08:25), Matthew Parris makes the case for assisted dying (13:15), Toby Young tells the story of the time he almost died on his gap year (20:43), and Harry Mount tells us about the grim life of a Roman legionary (25:38).

Joanna Williams

Labour’s ‘trans inclusive’ conversion therapy ban will be a disaster

Keir Starmer has a reputation for changing his mind. But on one issue at least, the Labour leader remains worryingly consistent. Addressing an LGBT+ Labour meeting in Parliament this week, Starmer declared, ‘Labour governments and the LGBT+ movement have a history of achieving incredible things together.’ His own contribution to this long march of progress has already been determined. Starmer yet again pledged that a Labour government will outlaw all forms of conversion therapy. Sir Keir is adamant that, on his watch, a conversion therapy ban will be ‘trans inclusive’. In other words, it won’t just outlaw attempts to turn homosexuals straight but, crucially, it will most likely make it

Julie Bindel

Why does the NHS care what Stonewall thinks of it?

One might reasonably assume that NHS employees would consider biological sex to be extremely important. After all, there are huge differences in male and female bodies and their functions. The type of illnesses we are prone to can be affected by whether a patient is male or female. Women and men also have different reproductive organs and, as a result, fertility issues may vary depending on a patient’s sex. But this knowledge of male and female physiology can sometimes appear to matter less than being patted on the head by Stonewall, the gay rights charity turned transactivist cult. How much more harm can Stonewall do before it finally gets the

Alexander Larman

Netflix rides to the rescue for Meghan and Harry – again

After a catastrophic 2023, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have taken some time to regroup and rethink. Now they have decided to grace us with their decision on to how to re-enter the public sphere in glory once again. Send for Netflix! Not that they’ve put it quite like that. Instead, Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, has announced that their $100 million (£78 million), five year deal with Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Productions will continue through 2024. Speaking at an industry event in Hollywood, Bajaria commented that the pair ‘have a bunch [of projects] in development’. These are expected to include a mixture of features, potentially including an

Friday

Andrew McQuillan

Sinn Fein’s rise to power is nothing to celebrate

The resumption of devolution in Northern Ireland – scheduled for tomorrow after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) reached a deal with the UK Government earlier this week – marks a big moment: for the first time in the history of Northern Ireland, there will be a nationalist First Minister. Sinn Fein, a party still viewed by the security services as being in lockstep with the IRA, became the largest party at the 2022 Assembly Election. As a result, their leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, is entitled to be nominated as the Province’s First Minister. Irish nationalists and republicans are now masters of a state designed for their exclusion.  Sinn Fein

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

What was the Clapham chemical attack suspect doing in Britain?

Here’s my question about Abdul Ezedi, the suspect in the Clapham chemical attack: what the hell was he doing in this country? He came here from Afghanistan by illegal means. He was twice turned down for asylum. And in 2018, at Newcastle Crown Court, he was found guilty of sexual assault. And yet despite all that he was later granted asylum, after a priest vouched that he had converted to Christianity. Now this supposed Christian stands accused of repaying the witless charity of our nation by allegedly carrying out one of the grimmest crimes imaginable: dousing a mother and her two daughters with a corrosive substance. The injuries sustained by

Thursday

Steven Barrett

The Northern Ireland Brexit deal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Rishi Sunak’s new Brexit deal is an end to any dreams of a UK that runs itself. Much of the focus has been on Northern Ireland, with the government hailing the legislation as a means of halting post-Brexit checks on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But there are far bigger – and more troubling – implications for the UK as a whole. Sunak’s deal makes it clear that our laws are still, in some cases, second to EU laws. So ignore the fanfare that the new deal, agreed with the DUP and called ‘Safeguarding the Union’, is something to celebrate. A large, dramatic, sleight of hand is

Patrick West

Why is the civil service being given lessons on ‘microaggressions’?

Civil servants are being given lessons instructing them not to roll their eyes or look at their mobile phones while dealing with members of staff. Such behaviour can be deemed evidence of sexual or racial discrimination, examples of ‘microaggressions’. As the Times reports today, more than £160,000 has been spent by the government since 2021 on hiring public sector consultants to train staff to recognise ‘perceived slights’ in the form of microaggressions. Complaints of microaggressions are even being brought to employment tribunals after Acas, the arbitration service, decided to include them in its guidance against discrimination. Elsewhere, in the same time period, the Education and Skills Funding Agency has spent