The Spectator

The most influential magazine in Britain, covering politics, world affairs, culture, lifestyle, news, comment and analysis.

[The Spectator @spectator]

Louis Sarkozy, the son of the former President of France, says those who took part in the rioting and looting at the weekend have done more to boost Marine Le Pen's election chances than her own campaign staff, and that her strategy is to let France disintegrate.

Watch in full | https://t.co/TaEPDmklCp @napsarkozy

[The Spectator @spectator]

Andy Burnham, together with Liverpool mayor Steve Rotherham, appeared on a charity special of Channel 4's Gogglebox last night. The show began in 2013, but is still going, as all hit TV shows must in this benighted century.

The novelty of the format – watching viewers watch TV – is long gone, as the participants inevitably started acting up for the cameras. It may be a false memory, but I'm sure I remember the show being more caustic, a bit sharper. It is now crushingly cosy and twee. So, perfect for our Andy then.

✍️ Gareth Roberts

Article | https://t.co/vXDhpb2GNV | @OldRoberts953

[The Spectator @spectator]

As the Chancellor puts the final touches to his first Budget, the warnings about unfilled black holes seem only to grow, along with the split between spending-cutters and tax-raisers on what to do about it. As an avowed spending-cutter, I nonetheless find myself with the tax-raisers on one point.

Let the owners, leasers and drivers of those monster cars progressively crowding my modest little hatchback off the road pay their way – and the bigger the tax penalty, the better.

✍️ Mary Dejevsky

Article | https://t.co/i8smfKQK2I

[The Spectator @spectator]

Some statistics are not just illuminating, they are downright shocking. Here's one. At the University of Texas at Austin, one of America's top universities, only 300 students graduated with a major in the humanities.

That would be a big number if UT graduated 1,200 students, but it actually graduates about 12,000. The percentage of humanities major is 0.025 percent.

It rounds to zero.

✍️ Charles Lipson

Article | https://t.co/gJrxXYIkof

[The Spectator @spectator]

As Israel prepares for its election on October 27, the most consequential in decades, I find myself missing my late friend Khamis Abulafia. Khamis was a scion of the famous Jaffa Abulafia dynasty. The fifth child of his parents, he was named for the Arabic word for five.

The Abulafia bakery, overlooking Clock Tower Square, is a local landmark – and a symbol of co-existence, closing each year for eight days on Passover, when Jews are forbidden from eating leavened bread. Khamis was a beloved figure in Jaffa, a bridge between its Arab and Jewish inhabitants.

✍️ Adam LeBor

Article | https://t.co/pvG7RZm3Mv

[The Spectator @spectator]

You need a better class of work, my boy.' My GP father's well-meaning but unhelpful reaction to my second redundancy, both of which occurred in 1989. I was barely 27; he had a job for life.

Four short years but a historical era earlier, I had sallied forth to the London Stock Exchange in September 1985 as a graduate trainee with Laurie, Milbank & Co.

Convinced of the old boy network, without malice my erstwhile lecturer John Hutton, now Lord Hutton and former Labour defence secretary, gently ribbed, 'So Uncle Laurie came up trumps, then.' There was no Uncle Laurie.

✍️ Alastair Irvine

Article | https://t.co/TBk23DNKvZ

[The Spectator @spectator]

I've just been to the west of Ireland, perhaps the greenest place I have ever seen, and one of the most comprehensively stripped of nature too.

Driving north from Shannon, you pass mile after mile of luminous green, almost treeless fields, until the road rises onto the dramatic limestone of the Burren.

We were there to celebrate the marriage of my step-nephew (if such a thing exists) Isaac Ferry to beautiful conservationist Elizabeth Quartararo. The ceremony took place high above the Atlantic, at an ethereal spot beloved of Isaac's late mother, my sister-in-law Lucy Birley.

✍️ Ben Goldsmith

Article | https://t.co/airlhY0Nik

[The Spectator @spectator]

‘Oxford Street ought to be the finest thoroughfare in the world.’ To try and live up to that potential, it's going traffic-free tomorrow. This does not foreshadow the end of Western civilisation, nor another front in the Mayor of London's war on cars. It is just good business.

The line that opened this article is not mine. It was written in 1879 by Charles Dickens Jr. We have had 150 years to think about it and now have the evidence base, growth agenda, and political leadership to make it happen.

✍️ Arthur Kay.

Article | https://t.co/LD97j6WD4l

[The Spectator @spectator]

Rosie smiles when her nephew asks her if she's still swimming in the sea in October. It is, in fact, when she starts enjoying it again.

July and August are all very well, but her spot behind the harbour wall fills up with holidaymakers, annexing the rock where she likes to change, having picnics and jumping into the sea with their children, as if they were swimming for fun.

✍️ Anonymous

Article | https://t.co/U4fRXQZlmV

[The Spectator @spectator]

Oxford Street is set to be pedestrianised on Monday. The change to what is often called the world’s longest shopping street is controversial and opposed by Westminster Council.

But London Mayor Sadiq Khan, having taken control of the area via the Oxford Street Development Corporation, hopes pedestrianisation will revive its flagging fortunes and bring back the shoppers in the run-up to Christmas.

✍️ Alex Klaushofer

Article | https://t.co/rqt0DXMBSs | @alexklaushofer

[The Spectator @spectator]

It's a tabloid phrase you're unlikely to hear often on BBC News, but 'double-whammy' seems a fitting description of what BBC staff have faced in yet another week of editorial turmoil and fresh announcements of cuts.

The Telegraph's revelations that civil servants have been working on secondment at the BBC, contributing to articles and blog posts misleadingly bylined as written by members of 'BBC News' and 'BBC Verify', have been met with irritation and bafflement.

✍️ Charlie Walsham

Article | https://t.co/YKsdL5VZoX

[The Spectator @spectator]

Today the clocks change and today is St Crispin's Day, anniversary of the battles of Agincourt and Balaclava.

Legend says Crispin and Crispinian were twins, beheaded under Diocletian. Aristocratic Romans who supported themselves in exile as shoemakers, they are the patron saints of cobblers, tanners, saddlers, and curriers.

The feast fell from observance long after the professions it celebrated had ceased to be common. But Shakespeare keeps it alive.

✍️ Druin Burch

Article | https://t.co/9Klo3XTUeP

[The Spectator @spectator]

It's a tiny bit lazy, if you ask me. There's a growing market, as reported by a Sunday newspaper, for 'pre-trained' puppies.

These are puppies aged six months and upwards, which will arrive at your house with '100 per cent perfect recall', won't tug on the lead, won't chase sheep or chickens and will lie quietly at your feet in a pub or restaurant. The only catch? One of these robo-puppies will set you back £15,000.

✍️ Sophia Money-Coutts

Article | https://t.co/1FmLIHKRMS

[The Spectator @spectator]

Is demand for the water of life running dry? I've just returned from a trip to Islay in Scotland, which has more whisky distilleries per square mile than anywhere else in the UK, and several of its famous single malts are struggling.

Suntory, which owns Bowmore and Laphroaig, announced in February that it was merging the staff of the two brands, with Bowmore ceasing production until the end of the year, and Laphroaig putting its planned expansion on hold.

✍️ Toby Young

Article | https://t.co/kelA3dVqVP | @toadmeister

[The Spectator @spectator]

In the late 1980s, when I had rarely seen the inside of a high-end restaurant, I happened upon one local to me at the time, in Finsbury Park.

Jacques – a small, exquisite French gaff named after its chef and owner – was nestled between a newsagent and an ironmonger on a grotty bit of Blackstock Road.

So very French was Jacques himself that he was once overheard (via a kitchen intercom) using the most offensive of four-letter words to describe the English, when someone had complained about the size of the dishes.

✍️ Julie Bindel

Article | https://t.co/oFvJTzIjy9 | @bindelj

[The Spectator @spectator]

Sometimes, unexpectedly good news comes from nowhere. So it has proved with the happy tidings that the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square has been saved.

After a long and uncertain 21-month period in which it looked as if the cinema's lease might be prematurely curtailed or simply ended altogether, the company has signed a new 25-year lease, sans break clause, with Zedwell PSQ Ltd, the building's owner.

✍️ Alexander Larman

Article | https://t.co/ewiK3q0acb | @alexlarman

[The Spectator @spectator]

Russiagate was, famously, something of a damp squib. Donald Trump was never a secret Kremlin asset. Moscow did not internet-brainwash the American public into electing him.

It was mostly mad bunkum, which the desperate and deluded media pushed relentlessly for months just because they could not accept the idea that a brash, rude real-estate television tycoon was now their Commander in Chief.

But now, with the midterms upon us and a Democratic majority in Congress beckoning, we're about to have what could be a far more explosive sequel. My working title is Gulfgate: This Time It's Serious!

✍️ Freddy Gray

Article | https://t.co/yO8Ninrjcx | @Freddygray31

[The Spectator @spectator]

Penny for the thoughts of Ilhan Omar, the "Squad" member and Democratic Congresswoman for Minnesota's 5th district, who finds herself the object of affection for at least two of Donald Trump's government departments.

Omar said Wednesday that she plans to move out of her DC home, which was searched by around two dozen Department of Homeland Security agents in the early hours of October 12.

Cockburn could retread the well-worn path about how Trump 2.0 was supposed to augur the end of "lawfare" and the weaponization of government, but he'll spare you.

✍️ Cockburn

Article | https://t.co/6o3fHzpLK8 | @Cockburn_DC

[The Spectator @spectator]

Paul Hardcastle's son, Paul Jr, was dead when three police officers arrived on the scene of his fatal crash in Ongar earlier this year.

One of their colleagues had tried to save him, but when they arrived, they started joking about his death.

In bodyworn footage that was uncovered by the Independent Office of Police Conduct as it investigated the police chase of Paul Jr on his motorcycle that led to his collision with a van, the three constables laughed together as one asked colleagues if it was the wrong time to reveal that Paul Jr had complained previously that she'd failed to investigate a road rage incident.

✍️ Isabel Hardman

Article | https://t.co/2iJKAVqBhE | @IsabelHardman

[The Spectator @spectator]

Working with Danish and Faroese partners sends a clear signal to US counterparts of the commitment on the part of the UK and its European partners to step into the collective defence of a wider arc which includes the High North, North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea.

From the American point of view, the participation in High North operations of US Marines offers opportunities to bring training learnt in other dots on the map in the Pacific Ocean to bear.

✍️ Klaus Dodds

Article | https://t.co/FLoh8qmH4f

[The Spectator @spectator]

Next Tuesday, Israel holds elections for the first time since the appalling attacks of October 7, 2023.

After such a sadistic onslaught, which happened on Benjamin Netanyahu's watch, many pundits predicted his political days were numbered (though it's worth noting that neither Roosevelt nor George W.

Bush were expected to resign after Pearl Harbour and 9/11 respectively – indeed both were subsequently re-elected.)

✍️ Tom Gross

Article | https://t.co/ydTcD13niH