The Spectator
19 January 2019 Aus
Taking back control: parliament’s plan for Brexit
Australia
The real dangers of Labor
Four months out from a likely election day, the Australian Labor Party is sitting pretty. The polls have Labor commandingly…
Australian Columnists
Brown study
As this is an election year, I would like to bring you up-to-date on the ground-breaking research that the Spectator…
Elvis diary
Everyone, at least once in life, should go to the Elvis Festival in Parkes, Central NSW.The Leftist elites would hate…
Australian Features
Here’s the recipe for success
After a family Christmas in Canada my wife and I are now in London for half a year. It’s been…
Western Civ: it’s not just for white people anymore
When the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation generously offered to fund ‘Western Civ’ courses at Australian universities, critics at the…
Business/Robbery etc
The omens for Australia point to a lousy 2019 – politically, economically, commercially and internationally. Fear that Coalition election defeats…
What I learned at the hand of Brother Joseph
If anybody used the term ‘religious freedom’ during my childhood, I would have assumed it referred to the times at…
Alice in Leftist-land
‘There’s no use trying,’ says Alice to the Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’ No? Clearly…
Aux bien pensants
The New York Times reports the truly shocking news that Australia punches below its weight. The NYT’s source, Lowy Institute…
Features
Taking back control: parliament’s plan for Brexit
Straight after the government’s epic defeat in the House of Commons on Tuesday night, the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, the Business…
Nick Boles’s plan is certainly crazy. But it just might work
At first, it seems fanciful. A backbench MP, Nick Boles, proposes to take power away from the government and place…
The truth about Trump’s shutdown? It’s not as bad as people make out
Washington, DC Washington is supposed to be recession-proof: when times are bad, the government just hires more. But the city…
The dangers of ‘neurodiversity’: why do people want to stop a cure for autism being found?
I’m an American man affected by the disability autism. As a child, I went to special education schools for eight…
If you’ve got taste, you don’t look at Instagram to decorate your home
You can tell something about national character from the way a country clears its cupboards. In the States they have…
Pirates of the Caribbean: How Venezuela’s near collapse is causing a crisis on the seas
Brian Austin, a fisherman from the small village of Cedros in Trinidad, is struggling to describe the men who robbed…
People who don’t live in council houses can’t see the appeal. Let me explain
On turning 50, I realised I’d never own my own home. What bank would agree to give a mortgage to…
In praise of Booths, the north’s answer to Waitrose
If you mention the word ‘Booths’ anywhere south of Knutsford, you will usually be met with a blank expression, followed…
The Week
Brexiteers’ faith in parliament is now being put to the test
An unexpected outcome of the tortuous process of Brexit negotiations has been the enhancement of Britain’s reputation as a parliamentary…
Portrait of the week: May’s historic loss, Brexit chaos and the US shutdown
Home Brexit threw politics into unpredictable chaos. The government was defeated by an unparalleled majority of 230 — 432 to…
It’s not communist buildings that are bleak – it’s capitalist budget hotel chains
A few of us on the Labour left decide to see if it is possible to conjure, from nowhere, a…
The rejection of the people’s mandate – then and now
The Transport Secretary Chris Grayling may be quite right (not words one often reads) to warn that failure to deliver…
Where does the expression ‘deep state’ come from?
Turkey and the deep state Boris Johnson said that if Brexit was blocked, the public would blame it on the…
Australian letters
Shakespeare in love Sir: James Allan (“Australian Notes”, The Spectator, Australia Jan 5) correctly identifies the paucity of knowledge of…
Columnists
In defence of unicorns
The scale of the government’s defeat on Mrs May’s deal is, as everyone keeps saying, amazing — yet also not.…
It’s Salmond vs Sturgeon – and whoever wins, the SNP loses
Amid the wreckage of a Brexit process that has disrupted every aspect of British political life, it is easy to…
On Nobel Prize winners and Mastermind losers
I once worked my way through two whole books of IQ tests devised by Hans Eysenck and by the time…
Leavers have just killed the best chance of Brexit ever happening
When intelligent, informed and rational people make a choice that onlookers can see confounds their own declared interests, we are…
Why do authors have to be ‘moral’? Because their publishing contracts tell them so
Suppose you’re a writer with a self-destructive proclivity for sticking your neck out. Would you sign a book contract that…
An energy crisis is looming – but ministers are distracted by Brexit
Transfixed as you were by Westminster chaos, did you also spot the news that Hitachi is about to cancel or…
Books
Ernst Jünger — reluctant captain of the Wehrmacht
Ernst Jünger, who died in 1998, aged 102, is now better known for his persona than his work. A deeply…
How Enoch Powell fancied himself Viceroy of India — and other startling revelations
Interviews, like watercolours, are very hard to get right, and yet look how steadily their art has become degraded and…
Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat: the triumph of Rorke’s Drift
On 22 January last year, the entrance whiteboard at London Underground’s Dollis Hill carried a brief factual statement: On this…
How Eric Clapton’s racism sparked a musical revolution
On 13 August 1977, a demonstration by the National Front was routed in the streets of Lewisham by thousands of…
The best way to defeat totalitarianism? Treat it as a joke
Is there anything one can never laugh about? A question inevitably hanging over humour writing, it’s best answered by the…
Is the threat of capital punishment really the foundation of good behaviour?
Richard Wrangham embraces controversy, and appears to enjoy munching apples from carts he upsets himself. While his new book seems…
Lost in allegory: The Wall, by John Lanchester, reviewed
Dystopian fiction continues to throng the bookshelves, for all the world as though we weren’t living in a dystopia already,…
Death of a rock star: Slow Motion Ghosts, by Jeff Noon, reviewed
Here is a novel set in the no man’s land between past and present, a fertile and constantly shifting territory…
Pitches in the boardroom: football’s future assured
This is a story of resurrection. A mere three decades ago, club football in England was a professional game largely…
Investigative journalists: new crime fiction reviewed
Despite being well-travelled as the BBC’s world affairs editor, John Simpson doesn’t roam far from home in his spy thriller,…
Arts
What a relief we can finally admit Jimmy Porter was a pain in the neck
Gary Raymond must have been wondering if it was the end of a promising career — curtains. He was starring…
Zoë Ball has the voice and warmth but not so much the chat
Whether by accident or design, Zoë Ball took over the coveted early-morning slot on Radio 2 this week just as…
A slog – and why does Elizabeth look like Ronald McDonald? Mary Queen of Scots reviewed
Mary Queen of Scots is a historical costume drama that, unlike The Favourite, does not breathe new life into the…
Les Misérables is another depressing example of the BBC’s woke quota targets
As the Allies advanced towards Germany in September 1944, their supplies were brought all the way from western Normandy in…
One masterpiece, one dud and one interesting rediscovery: Pinter Five reviewed
One masterpiece, one dud, and one interesting rediscovery. That’s Pinter Five. Victoria Station is a hilarious sketch which might have…
The joy of prints
Artists’ prints have been around for almost as long as the printed book. Indeed, they have similar origins in Gutenberg’s…
Never quite pivots from thesis to drama: Royal Opera’s Queen of Spades reviewed
We increasingly accept the collision between life and art. Whether we’re puzzling over the real identity of Elena Ferrante, choosing…
Kitty Flanagan
She’s bright and very funny. Kitty Flanagan was born and educated in Sydney. She is described as a stand-up comedian;…
Life
Taki: Should I just move to a cave in France?
Gstaad Do any of you know what cisgender is? I just found out. Cisgender is a term that describes…
Hell — and heaven – on the French Riviera
We drove down from the hills to visit friends of friends with a house by the sea and on the…
Despite me virtually sexting him, my blacksmith is ignoring me — just like all the others before him
Splitting the atom is nothing compared to figuring out how to get hold of your farrier. Why is the farrier…
In defence of the Cheltenham Festival
‘Deer-stalking would be a very fine sport,’ W.S. Gilbert once observed, ‘if the deer had guns too.’ We who love…
no. 537
White to play. This position is from Jones-McShane, UK Knockout, London 2018. White’s next move was the start of a…
Unauthorised version
In Competition No. 3081 you were invited to supply a parable rewritten in the style of a well-known author. Like…
Stout and bubbly
According to Brewer, a five-word phrase was used to describe a creature, but applies also to a three-word fictional character.…
solution
CHRISTMAS SPIRIT Unclued lights were names of GHOST STORIES by M.R. (MONTAGUE RHODES) JAMES: CASTING (1A) THE (29) RUNES…
Yes, the Brexit debate is robust – but UK politics is moderate, calm and civil
There’s a scene in Lord of the Flies, William Golding’s masterpiece about the collapse of western civilisation, in which a…
Why it’s so much easier not to speak to people
I recently saw a series of photographs depicting a rural home in China. Pride of place in a grimly furnished…
Dear Mary: We have new friends but can’t bear to eat in their filthy kitchen. What to do?
Q. I note that (Dear Mary, 12 January) you advised your correspondent, resentful of Christmas expenditure, to offer instead ‘mutual…
Forget Dry January – if there was ever a month to drink, this is it
January really is the cruellest month. No wonder some fortunate friends have dodged the column of dreary weather and short…
What lies behind John Bercow’s use of the word ‘colleagues’?
The parliamentary press gallery has in the past given a pair of silver shoe buckles to the Speaker as a…
