The Spectator
10 February 2018 Aus
Eyeballing DFAT
Australia
To stay or go?
Senator Lucy Gichuhi’s decision to sit with the Liberal Party is a small but important step militating against the fragmentation…
Australian Columnists
Brown Study
My colleagues and I in the noble profession of investigative journalism have now spent 12 months poring over the goldmine…
Australian notes
Turnbull’s 18C on steroids Rahm Emmanuel, one-time Chief of Staff in the Obama Administration, once said: ‘You never let a…
Australian Features
Burdens of proof and blatant bias
The non-lawyer readers of this fine publication may not be aware of a key premise (really it is a trade-off…
Abusing the Holocaust
This year’s commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, was at once illuminated…
Eyeballing DFAT
In republican Canberra, admiration for British tradition is thin. But in one respect it’s alive and well. Our career mandarins…
Down the rabbit hole into Trump’s America
A curious discovery at this year’s Australian Open tennis showed how America’s President Trump trauma is filtering into the most…
Business/Robbery etc
Small businesses and individuals income-earners beware! Now that Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan’s successful five-year multi-billion dollar campaign against tax dodging…
We must not go down the Corbyn path
Perhaps because of its outrageous early ‘70s sexism, one of Britain’s most important ural films, The Rise and Rise of…
Mr President, look beyond the swamp
Not since Ronald Reagan has the reaction to a State of the Union address been so optimistic, anticipating the return…
Features
This is the stock market crash we needed
Since the crash ten years ago, stock markets the world over have been steadily recovering. The Dow Jones, a bellwether…
Violent crime in Sweden is soaring. When will politicians act?
January was a particularly violent month in Sweden. A 63-year-old man was killed in Stockholm by a hand grenade lying…
Michael Moorcock: Why banning opioids has been a disaster for me
Returning to the United States a short while ago I received a stern talking to from an immigration officer. Why…
Jordan Peterson doesn’t go nearly far enough
Now that I seem to have become a prophet of doom, I wonder whether I should have been a guru…
17 reasons why we should love Brexit
‘But what are you going to do with the powers?’ the minister asked, while I negotiated devolution of powers to…
Is it okay to laugh at dwarfs?
You’re planning a party. You’ve hired the vaults of a former bank, Le Caprice is doing the catering, and a…
Abbaye Saint-Michel, a little corner of England that’s forever France
‘A little corner of England which is for ever France, irreclaimably French.’ That is how the Catholic priest Monsignor Ronald…
The Week
This crash is just a return to normality
It is easy to mock the most strident critics of capitalism, like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn. It’s harder to…
Civil partnerships for all and the Queen’s swans dying of bird flu
Home Stagecoach and Virgin could only manage to run the East Coast rail franchise for a few more weeks, Chris…
Joan Collins: Want to know why all the Oscar films are boring? I’ll tell you
I’ve been meaning to write a Spectator diary since the summer but as a Gemini with Aries rising I find…
Corbyn is the master of ‘raising issues’ – with no result in sight
Jeremy Corbyn is the master of ‘raising issues’. He received an obscure prize last year for his ‘work for disarmament…
Dire warnings of a Brexit university brain drain? They’re a myth
How to sell snake oil Ex-cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell accused Brexiteers of ‘selling snake oil’. How do you sell snake…
Letters: Leave Theresa May alone – she’s doing her best
Stop knocking May Sir: I find this knocking of Theresa May increasingly depressing (‘Theresa’s choice’, 3 February). She has a terrible job…
Columnists
Women’s suffrage was just part of a huge shift in the idea of who should vote
A reader writes: ‘In my last letter, I called you a numbskull. However I should have qualified this with “sometimes you…
Brexit belongs to the Tories — whether they like it or not
The Tory party is the party of Brexit, whether it likes it or not. The referendum was called by a…
Sometimes men deserve to be paid more
It is 100 years since women got the vote and I have been joining in the celebrations, on public transport…
There is no housing crisis. It would be easier if there were
Britain does not have a housing shortage. We have a problem with the cost not the availability of homes. This…
Extreme pain, of the purest intensity, changes everything
Since my pulmonary embolism a couple of years ago, I have become something of a connoisseur of pain. The agony…
Falling US shares tell us only that investors were too excited in January
If you were the incoming or retiring chairman of the Federal Reserve, you might be quietly pleased to see stock…
Arts
Are cruise liners the solution to the housing crisis?
Looking at the sketchbook of William Whitelock Lloyd, a soldier-artist who joined a P&O liner after surviving the Anglo-Zulu War,…
Lemons and pebbles are as important to Kettle’s Yard as the art
When I first visited Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, I was shown around by Jim Ede, its founder and creator. This wasn’t…
Channel 4 marked women’s suffrage with an episode of the Secret Life of Five-Year-Olds
To mark the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage — if a little oddly — Channel 4 on Tuesday brought us…
Yet another dud Un ballo in maschera: Opera North’s new production reviewed
A chaste act of adultery and a silent conversation: these are the encounters at the heart of Un ballo in…
Bold, in its way, but Ben Whishaw is ill-suited to Shakespeare: Julius Caesar reviewed
Nicholas Hytner’s new show is a modern-dress Julius Caesar, heavily cut and played in the round. It runs for two…
Devastating but also more involving than you’d ever think possible: Loveless reviewed
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless is, indeed, devastatingly loveless, as well as devastatingly pitiless, which does not sound hopeful. Yet it is…
BBC Arabic’s version of Woman’s Hour is rather different to Radio 4’s
When the BBC’s Arabic-language network went out on air for the first time 80 years ago, on 3 January 1938,…
Rod Liddle finds his inner SJW listening to Justin Timberlake
Grade: B– Hey, here comes Justin, the ‘President of Pop’ and ‘one of the greatest all-around entertainers in the history…
Railways and the Raj
Many of our acquaintances now rarely watch 7.30, partly out of irritation with the succession of whingers and trade union…
Life
Taki: Where’s Norman Mailer when you need him?
Gstaad For some strange reason there have been no #MeToo complaints around these parts. Some locals have grumbled about yours…
Seeing Nelson in a new light
I picked up my grandson from his mother’s flat and noticed the change in him the second I clapped eyes…
My horse is a psychopath — and you’d better believe it
Why do people find it so hard to believe that a horse can be a psychopath? Not an obvious, screaming…
Cold Comfort Farm comes to Kenya
Laikipia I woke with the breath of a leopard a few feet from me as I lay in my bed.…
Chess on the Rock
The Armenian Grandmaster Levon Aronian has won first prize of £25,000 in the important Tradewise Masters which has just finished…
no. 492
White to play. This position is from Wang Hao-Howell, Gibraltar 2018. What opportunity did White overlook? Answers to me at…
Occasional verse
In Competition No. 3034 you were invited to provide a poem written by a poet laureate present or past on…
Counterclaim
The first line of a 4 (two words) consists of 7A and the puzzle’s 3 41; the second line is…
to 2342: Decorative
The key terms are ART NOUVEAU (12) and JUGENDSTIL (19). One indicates 24 and 28D, and the other can be…
In today’s brave new world, fat is a high-tech issue
I have a confession to make: I’m a yo-yo dieter. For the past ten years, I’ve lost a bit of…
This Six Nations could be anyone’s – and it couldn’t be more exciting
‘It’s never easy going to Rome,’ observed Anthony Watson after the traditional mauling of a hard-working but outgunned Italian side…
Dear Mary: What do you do when your secretary accuses you of not making a pass?
Q. I am at the age where parts of the body start to go wrong, and I have a minor…
A new addition to north London’s underwhelming restaurants: Café Hampstead reviewed
Café Hampstead is a new café in — big reveal! — Hampstead, the gaudiest of the old villages on the…
Jejune
A range of book reviewers’ clichés was held up to mockery 60 years ago, in a letter by Jocelyn Brooke…



























































