The Spectator was established in 1828, and is the oldest continuously published magazine in the English language. The Spectator’s taste for controversy, however, remains undiminished. There is no party line to which The Spectator’s writers are bound - originality of thought and elegance of expression are the sole editorial constraints.

The trial issue contains a “Thought Crime Special” with articles from Melanie Phillips, “I think, therefore I’m guilty”; Christopher Booker writes about “Scientists in hiding; the demonisation of academics who question the consensus”; Alan Rusbridger explores “How to stifle the press” and how England’s libel laws make it easy.

UK politics come under scrutiny from James Forsyth, Brendan O’Neill ponders if teenagers could ever be “Drunk and orderly”; while Tom Hollander writes his diary and James Delingpole says eat local organic food if you like, but don’t kid yourself that it’s ‘green’. 

The Spectator’s regular arts coverage includes books, theatre, opera, cinema and exhibitions.

Paul Wood: the battle for Greenland. ‘Nobody likes a bully.’ That, writes Paul Wood, is what Donald Trump must bear in mind, even as the President now insists he won’t use force to take the island. Why does he want Greenland? According to Mike Waltz, Trump’s former national security adviser, it’s all about rare earth minerals. But ‘getting them out of the frozen ground is difficult and expensive’. ‘Trump’s declared rationale is national security’ but Wood believes ‘he is muddling up different parts of the Arctic’, confusing Greenland with the Bering Strait. Meanwhile, with Nato in disarray, Vladimir Putin ‘might decide to seize the Norwegian territory of Svalbard’. Trump has his ‘Donroe Doctrine’, claiming ‘a sphere of influence in America’s backyard’; Greenland would be ‘an impressive addition’ to his real estate portfolio. Wood sums it up as ‘the Millwall approach to foreign policy: “Nobody likes us – we don’t care.”’

Peter Mandelson: Reform’s rules of attraction. For Peter Mandelson, Kemi Badenoch’s travails with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK have taken him back to the 1980s and the Social Democratic party’s challenge to Labour. Like Reform, the SDP ‘sought to replace’ one of the main parties. But there were crucial differences. Mandelson says the ‘SDP had a deep bench of competence’, which Reform lacks, but both sprang from ‘the failure in government of the party they were seeking to replace’. Farage ‘will do everything he can to deepen public disapproval of the Conservatives’. Whether he succeeds will ‘depend on Badenoch’s guile in distancing herself from the government in which she served’. For Farage, the tightrope he will have to walk will be between being ‘viewed as a disruptor and being seen as an extremist’. He might reflect on how ‘as the SDP gained ground, the party’s appeal brought Labour to its senses’ – a stick which Mandelson once used to beat his own party into change.

Tim Shipman and James Heale: Robert Jenrick interview – ‘It takes balls to defect’. The ‘key conversation’ about defecting to Reform UK, Robert Jenrick reveals to Tim Shipman and James Heale, was with his father on Boxing Day. When he admitted that if he wasn’t ‘in politics’, he would vote Reform – and that he would prefer Nigel Farage to Kemi Badenoch as PM – Jenrick Snr told his son it was time to be honest with himself. An ‘irrelevant’ Conservative party is now ‘pursuing a 60-seat strategy’ at the next election. Jenrick concluded that even if he replaced Badenoch, he would be ‘the last leader of the Tory party’. Reform events are a bit different to Tory ones – more than 40 knives were confiscated at his Newark rally, from brickies and electricians en route from work. ‘At least a third of Conservative MPs would feel more at home in the Lib Dems,’ Jenrick says; while former colleagues like Jesse Norman ‘actively disagreed’ with his agenda. ‘It takes a sort of balls or madness’ to defect, he reflects – but his wife has done so too.

Lara Brown: the Chinese takeover of Britain’s elite education system. ‘There are 11,000 Chinese pupils at British independent schools,’ says Lara Brown. Roedean is now known as ‘Beijing High’; Cheltenham Ladies College is ‘Hong Kong College’. This isn’t a ‘coincidence’, since admissions teams ‘have made every effort to attract eastern money’, with designated agents. Moreover, ‘more than 30 independent schools and their brands have been purchased by Chinese investors’ in the past decade. According to Brown, they are ‘bargain-hunting: snapping up smaller boarding schools struggling after the pandemic and in a political climate hostile to paid-for education’. In some cases, ‘British schools are doing China’s work for them’. British independent schools now operate 115 overseas campuses, of which 44 are in China, including Dulwich College and Harrow. ‘Thousands of Chinese students at these institutions subsidise struggling financial operations’ back in Britain. But the ‘liberalism taught at many of our schools isn’t popular with the CCP’, with schools forced to teach Beijing’s version of history.

Mary Wakefield: the poisonous truth about British universities. It is clear, believes Mary Wakefield, ‘that almost none of the adults whose job it is to teach students the truth are much inclined to do it’. Take the case of Professor David Gordon – suspended by Bristol University for more than a year after he dared disagree with management over how to handle the furore generated by his invitation to Alice Sullivan, a gender-critical data scientist. ‘If only there was an official body academics could turn to when the brain-washed Stepford students start to circle,’ Wakefield writes. But the ‘long-promised complaint system’ has been put on hold. Also ‘decaying in the weeds’ is the guidance about the impact of last year’s Supreme Court ruling on sex on public bodies. It’s clear that ministers are not interested in ‘any return to reality on the subject of sex’. The only hope lies in groups like the new Cambridge Women’s Society standing up for gender realism on campus.