The Spectator

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.

Macron’s last adventure: the President vs the public. Emmanuel Macron is right that raising the pension age is the only way to save France from its dire economic straits, writes Jonathan Miller – although it will only be a temporary relief before ‘the system returns to insolvency after 2030’. While the reforms are needed, Macron’s arrogant attempt to push them through via decree may well have hobbled the remaining four years of his presidency.

 

Humza Yousaf is a gift to unionists. After Brexit, it looked like the Union could be in trouble, writes Katy Balls. Now, Northern Ireland seems more secure, with only 17 per cent of voters opposing the new Windsor Framework. In Scotland, the election of Humza Yousaf has been greeted by all except SNP parliamentarians. One tells Katy: ‘He’s made his first mistake less than 24 hours in,’ by failing to keep Kate Forbes in his cabinet. ‘Forty-eight per cent of the party don’t back him’, while the Forbes debacle has ‘gone down like a cup of cold sick with the members’.

 

Posie Parker: how I feel about my New Zealand attack. Posie Parker, the women’s rights activist, writes a notebook from New Zealand, where she was attacked over the weekend. She describes arriving at a rally in Auckland: ‘Within seconds a man had tipped tomato soup all over my head. I continued to live-stream. But over the next few minutes the mob took on a life of its own.’ She managed to escape the crowd: ‘That day I was told emphatically by each police officer and security that had I fallen I would have been killed.’ Why such anger? Her simple message that: ‘Women don’t have penises, men don’t have vaginas, there is no such thing as non-binary and transitioning children is abuse.’

 

Alex Salmond: my advice for Humza Yousaf. In this week’s diary, the former SNP first minister writes of Yousaf: ‘He needs both Ash Regan and Kate Forbes in the cabinet. Dump the Greens and their daft obsessions. Stop asking Westminster for a referendum (the section 30 referendum cul-de-sac) and instead establish an independence convention.’ He also questions why the SNP plumped for the continuity candidate, saying they ‘seem afflicted with Einstein’s definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results’.

 

Meet the anti-Russian politician targeted in London. David Kezerashvili, Georgia’s defence minister during the 2008 Russian invasion, tells Lisa Haseldine that he believes he’s being followed by shadowy pro-Russian figures in London: ‘I’ve spotted strangers taking photos of me meeting people.’ The former minister has been sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison by the Moscow-aligned leadership of his country. This stalking, he says, ‘happens every few weeks. It’s become part of life’.

 

Kwasi Kwarteng on utopian capitalism. In his first article since leaving the Treasury, the former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng writes, in a review of Crack-up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian, that ‘there are serious questions underlying the ideas of even the most crackbrained libertarians. How can economic growth be generated? How can we preserve individual freedom in a more bureaucratic world?’ He concludes: ‘Reading this book makes one realise how easy it is to mouth the slogans of neo-liberalism. A practical plan to achieve even some of those goals has proved far more difficult.’