Can you imagine anything worse than a foreign company whose software saved lives, cut NHS waiting lists, put more police on the beat and reduced crime? It’s appalling, isn’t it? No British government or public sector body should have any dealings with such a company. Obviously. Much better to let patients die, cut police jobs […]
There’s a video that’s gone viral on social media of a man standing in the middle of a Sainsbury’s with a loudhailer, telling people which aisles have Israeli produce. He is, of course, trying to ensure that shoppers boycott the avocado, hummus and samphire. But the genius of social media – and yes, it can actually […]
A few days after the Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7, my daughter’s school held a multi-faith assembly, specifically to address some of the tensions that most schools with large numbers of both Jewish and Muslim pupils knew would almost certainly come to the surface. My heart sank when she told me about it. […]
It’s easy to scoff at the sheer narcissism of the eight Labour frontbenchers two Parliamentary Private Secretaries who lost their jobs last night, after defying the whip and voting and for an SNP motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Easy, because that’s the obvious response to their self-absorption. The resignation letter of Jess Phillips, […]
I went to see Golda on Sunday. We’d chosen the day last week. Just an ordinary weekend trip to the cinema. But on Sunday it was anything but ordinary, because it was the day after Saturday – the most barbaric and deliberate attack on Jews since the Holocaust, in which (as I write) the number […]
The words trot off the tongue easily: despicable, foul, offensive, disgusting. Take your pick, public burnings of the Qur’an are all of those things. As a Jew, I would view with horror and deep anger anyone who burned a Torah. Any decent person surely finds both beyond the pale – just as any book burning […]
The weather forecast for Glastonbury this year is for sun, sun and more sun. But the organisers of the festival were considerate enough to offer an alternative for those for whom wading through filth is a traditional part of the Glastonbury experience. On Sunday at 2.45pm in the cinema tent, they had scheduled a screening […]
Oh, Jeremy Corbyn. Wracking my brain for a suitable quote to mark the effective end of the former Labour leader’s political career, I realised it had to be TS Eliot, who is – coincidentally, of course – renowned as an antisemite: ‘This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. […]
It would be easy to attack as pure philistinism the BBC’s decision to abolish the BBC Singers and to sack some 20% of its orchestral musicians. Easy, because that’s what it is: philistinism. But that doesn’t get us very far. Philistinism has a long history as one of the most influential forces behind arts policy […]
Lyndon Johnson famously said the first rule of politics is to learn to count. But there’s a second and equally important rule: never forget that the person you are dealing with may well be an idiot. This is not a party political thing. I’ve not actually done a head count but I’d be amazed if […]
Earlier this week, Sean Robinson began a prison sentence after being convicted of rape and actual bodily harm. The details are horrific. I am sorry to have to recount them. The 18-year-old forced a woman to submit to rape in order to save the life of a man she was out with on a first […]
I won’t take it personally if you have no recollection of the publication in 1994 of ‘Towards a More Cooperative Society: Ideas on the Future of the British Labour Movement and Independent Health Care’. Let me just say that it was, for me, a big deal. It was the first time I’d put my head […]
We are fortunate in this country to have some truly superb Holocaust educators. The Holocaust Educational Trust does a brilliant job in teaching children – and adults – about the worst genocide in history. And Holocaust Memorial Day acts as a national remembrance. But while it is vital that people are taught about the worst […]
As a journalist, you hardly need me to tell you that I have disposition towards cynicism. Show me a good deed and my first instinct is usually to ask what we’re not being told about it. But life would be pretty soulless if such cynicism was one’s only reaction. There are, of course, some people […]
One of the best written and most thought-provoking political books in recent decades was Jonathan Freedland’s Bring Home the Revolution. Essentially a paean of praise to American democracy, it skewered the knee-jerk anti-Americanism of so many of Freedland’s fellow leftists by comparing the state of British and US democracy and, remarkably for a book written […]
I once won a contest organised by The Spectator to find the most boring book title ever published. My winning entry – sent to me for a reason I have never fathomed – was Hospital Purchase Records Containing Grain Price Information In Fifteenth Century Ghent. But I have long pondered writing a book others might […]
I doubt many will disagree that this is not a Golden Age of politicians. The Prime Minister has been forced from office over his behaviour, the campaign to replace him has been far from inspirational, and the opposition is led by a man who was not inaccurately described by the outgoing PM as ‘Captain Crasharoony […]
Unless you have an unhealthy interest in the minutiae of Corbynite politics, yesterday’s publication of the Forde Report will have passed you by – as, indeed, will its existence. For those of us unfortunate enough to have such an interest, however, it was something of a big deal. On the face of it, the Forde […]
Not long to go now until the result of tonight’s no-confidence vote in Boris Johnson. The simple truth is that no one really has a clue how it will end; for all that Tory MPs are described as the most sophisticated electorate in the world, they are also among the most perfidious (as this anecdote […]
The classic definition of the Yiddish word chutzpah is the child who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan. But a new one emerged this morning. The news that Elon Musk has struck a deal to buy Twitter has, predictably, led to a frenzy of comment. […]
