The Spectator

25/07/2025

Is this the man who can defeat France’s Islamists?

When France played Algeria in their national stadium, the Stade de France, in 2001, the French player Thierry Henry said afterwards he felt – disturbingly – as if he were playing away. The game had to be abandoned after dozens of Algerian fans, furious at being 4-1 down, invaded the pitch.

Bruno Retailleau, the interior minister of France since September last year and a key figure in the small boats crisis, has been known to cite Henry’s comment. Retailleau is carving out a distinct role for himself in government as the tribune of the growing number of his compatriots who share the same sense that they, too, are ‘playing away’. In other words, the millions who believe that they have become strangers in their own country.

There is a trinity of issues at the heart of his agenda – porous borders, rampant crime and an increasingly self-confident Islamist movement that is on a long march through the institutions of the Fifth Republic.

✍️ Dean Godson

When France played Algeria in their national stadium, the Stade de France, in 2001, the French player Thierry Henry said afterwards he felt – disturbingly – as if he were playing away. The game had…

25/07/2025

The roundabout is a symbol of British liberty

We find driving on an open road at 20mph massively frustrating, while we have become inured to waiting at a red light; yet it is the latter that’s wasting our time. Which leads to an interesting question. Could you in fact increase average speeds in London by reducing the speed limit to 20mph? A lower limit may allow us to replace many traffic lights with mini roundabouts. Slower-moving traffic may also make it quicker to navigate T-junctions.

When Americans ridicule Europeans for their love of roundabouts, I always point out the incongruity: a country which prides itself on personal liberty chooses to regulate traffic through dirigiste, heavy-handed state-control – the traffic light or four-way stop – whereas Europe allows for individual judgment. When Woodrow Wilson said that ‘the highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous co-operation of a free people’, he was pretty much describing a roundabout.

It is also possible that people driving at lower speeds are better placed to perform the kind of moral calculus towards other drivers – the ‘give and take’ and ‘benefit of the doubt’ – which is the hallmark of a civilised driving culture.

✍️ Rory Sutherland

In my last article, I introduced you to the ‘paceometer’, which shows how the relationship between an extra unit of speed and the consequent saving in journey time is anything but linear. For any…

25/07/2025

Will Starmer recognise a Palestinian state?

Keir Starmer is facing mounting international and domestic pressure to formally recognise a Palestinian state. Dozens of MPs are expected to publish a cross-party letter this afternoon, urging Starmer to follow the lead of Emmanuel Macron. The French president last night declared that his country will formally recognise a Palestinian state when the UN General Assembly meets in New York this September. A report this morning by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee has also called for immediate recognition, a position that would put the UK at odds with the US.

Labour’s manifesto contains a commitment to recognise a Palestinian sovereignty. But the lack of a timeline has irritated parts of Starmer’s party, including cabinet ministers, who are becoming increasingly vocal in calling for clarity.

✍️ James Heale

Labour’s manifesto contains a commitment to recognise a Palestinian sovereignty. But the lack of a timeline has irritated some

25/07/2025

The BMA should be careful what it wishes for

Just a few weeks ago the trade union movement seemed to be on a high. It has got rid of its hated Tory government. Legislation which made it harder to call strikes had been hastily abolished by the incoming Starmer government. There were generous public sector pay rises all around. If you were a trade union leader, you had every right to feel pleased with yourself.

How things can change. As a trade union leader, you really don’t want a Labour health secretary calling your actions ‘unconscionable’, and suggesting that your members must ‘feel pain’ in order to discourage other unions from striking too. A Conservative health secretary, sure, but a Labour government is supposed to be on your side. Declare war on Labour and the result, as in 1979, is likely to be a government which is rather less to your taste.

✍️ Ross Clark

Surely it must have dawned on the BMA’s trots that a Starmer government is as amenable an administration they’re likely to get.

25/07/2025

The Donald and the art of golf diplomacy

Police and protestors are ready for Trump’s visit to Aberdeenshire this weekend, where he will open the course at Menie, which is due to be named the MacLeod after his mother and has, the family boasts, ‘the largest sand dunes in Scotland’. That might trigger environmentalists, since the ancient links has lost its Site of Special Scientific Interest status as a result of Trump’s development.

One thing that is certain about Trump’s visit to Aberdeenshire is that he will have a GREAT opening round. He is a more than decent golfer to judge by footage (though his declared handicap of 2.8 raises eyebrows), but he has never knowingly played badly, certainly not at a club he owns.

He certainly has the sneakiness and chutzpah, though he falls a long way behind Kim Jong-il, the Eternal Scratch Champion of Pyong-yang, who famously once had five holes-in-one during a round that was 38 under par. Trump and Kim’s sporting prowess matches that of Vladimir Putin, who has scored eight goals in an ice hockey match three times, and Mao Zedong, who was said to have swum ten miles of the Yangtze in just over an hour.

✍ Patrick Kidd

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25/07/2025

Why one US diplomat thinks Ireland has ‘fallen into a vat of Guinness’

US diplomat Mike Huckabee was dead right to question whether Ireland had ‘fallen into a vat of Guinness.’ Huckabee, the United States ambassador to Israel, played into stereotypical tropes on the Irish and alcohol when he made that comment last week. But it is, he reckoned, the only possible explanation for Ireland’s looming ban on Israeli settlement goods, despite ominous soundings from the US over the potentially ruinous consequences. This bill is so stupid it amounts to ‘diplomatic intoxication’, he concluded.

To answer his question, Ireland is not drunk. More’s the pity. It is preparing to commit economic su***de while cold stone sober, just to tighten the screws on Israel.

✍️ Liz Walsh

Ireland's Israeli Settlements bill is so stupid it amounts to ‘diplomatic intoxication’, Mike Huckabee concluded

25/07/2025

The scourge of London’s chicken shops

When hungry or hungover, if you can look past the unidentifiable black stringy bits, Morley’s serves a purpose. But there’s no getting around the fact that what these chicken shops serve up is lowest common denominator food. If the Big Mac is the American century in edible form, the chicken wing somehow represents globalisation’s greasy underbelly. There is still something a tiny bit optimistic about McDonald’s – the Happy Meal, the clown smile, the golden arches promising a bite of the capitalist dream. There is nothing redeeming about the chicken slop. Ronald wouldn’t be so much as turning in his grave as bent over his tombstone in his happy yellow jumpsuit, retching.

And leaving taste aside, the bigger problem is the blight on the high street. Chicken shops are everywhere – there are, extraordinarily, 8,000 in London alone (including 29 on a single stretch of road in Streatham). That compares with 10,500 fish and chip shops across the entire UK, down from a peak of more than 35,000 in the 1930s. The problem with chicken shops is the garish signage, the smell of oil last changed at some point in the 2010s. There’s the crime (in 2019, the Youth Select Committee heard evidence that ‘chicken shop gangs’ were recruiting children to their drug operations with the offer of free chicken), the crowds, the loafing, loutishness and litter.

✍️ Ameer Kotecha

There are 8,000 chicken shops in London alone. How have we become convinced that these shops, with their garish signage and litter, serve some sort of delicacy?

25/07/2025

Teachers deserve their long summer holidays

What’s the best thing about teaching? July and August! Or so the old joke goes. The long school holidays are an easy riposte to teachers’ complaints about the profession. Below inflation pay rises? At least you get the school holidays. Lack of flexible working opportunities? Six weeks off over summer. Disruptive behaviour? At least you don’t have to see the rugrats over Christmas and Easter.

No-one really wants to hear it, but most teachers still feel a knee-jerk need to justify their summer holidays: to explain how hard they work; the hidden hours of marking, planning, report-writing; the free time lost to parents’ evenings and away sports fixtures.

The sheer exhaustion of performing day-in, day-out is difficult to convey to people outside of the profession; I have friends who fret for days over a one-hour work presentation, and yet teachers present around five times a day 180 days a year.

✍️ Kristina Murkett

Teaching is clearly a labour of love, but it is not an inexhaustible one. Shortening the summer holidays would be a disaster

25/07/2025

France’s decision to recognise Palestine is a mistake

Emmanuel Macron has announced that France will recognise Palestinian statehood. The French president will make his historic proclamation, the first among G7 countries, at the UN General Assembly in September. In a statement on X, Macron said that ‘there is no alternative’, adding that ‘the French people want peace in the Middle East’.

Many French people, however, do not want their country to recognise Palestine in the manner Macron intends. A poll last month found that only 22 per cent were in favour of immediate and unconditional recognition; 31 per cent were opposed and 47 per cent would accept recognition once Hamas had laid down its arms and released all the Israeli hostages.

Not for the first time, Macron is swimming against the tide of public opinion in France. Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, condemned what he called a ‘hasty decision’. Even some of Macron’s centrists MPs disapproved. Caroline Yadan, said it was a ‘political, moral and historical mistake’.

✍️ Gavin Mortimer

French president Emmanuel Macron has announced that France will recognise Palestinian statehood for the first time

25/07/2025

Why are the Macrons suing Candace Owens?

As bizarre conspiracy theories go, the rumours about France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron take some beating. The stories that have been circulating about her in the murkier corners of the internet generally suggest that she was born a man under the name of Jean-Michel Trogneux, that she and the French President Emmanuel Macron are related in some way, that Brigitte’s first marriage (to André-Louis Auzière) was non-existent and, for good measure, that Macron is a CIA plant who was installed into the Élysée Palace through nefarious means.

Up until now, the rumours have largely remained both shadowy and obscure, with few other than the most credulous basement-dwellers attaching either veracity or importance to them. However, the Macrons have now decided to sue the popular and influential podcaster and influencer Candace Owens for defamation in an American court, calling her repetition of the claims ‘outlandish, defamatory and far-fetched’, and saying that ‘Ms Owens’ campaign of defamation was plainly designed to harass and cause pain to us and our families and to garner attention and notoriety.’ For good measure, it says that Owens ‘disregarded all credible evidence disproving her claim in favour of platforming known conspiracy theorists and proven defamers’.

✍️ Alexander Larman

The Macrons have now decided to sue the popular and influential podcaster and influencer Candace Owens.

25/07/2025

Labour must confront the uncomfortable causes of immigration protests

That sound you hear is the penny finally dropping in Downing Street. Having spent the year since the horrific post-Southport riots blaming unrest over migration and asylum solely on misinformation and far-right groups, Labour appears to be realising the rot runs much deeper.

Government officials, reports the Times, have warned the cabinet that Britain is ‘fraying at the edges’, after more protests outside of asylum hotels in Epping, Diss and now Canary Wharf (of all places).

Angela Rayner is said to have told colleagues that immigration was having a ‘profound impact on society’, insisting the government needed to acknowledge ‘real concerns’ about rapid social change, twinned with a decaying economy.

Indeed, the way Tory and now Labour governments have up to now dealt with the asylum issue would only make sense if it were designed to generate social conflict. The brunt of the small-boats crisis has been borne by some of the most poverty-stricken communities in the UK, purely because the hotel rooms there are cheaper and the glare of the London-based media is miles away.

Then, locals’ fears about the violent and sexual crimes committed by some of the men who have arrived illegally and unvetted are ignored, up until the point they spark a protest. Or worse. ✍️ Tom Slater

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24/07/2025

The UK has finally signed a free-trade deal with India after three-and-a-half years of negotiation. Lucy Dunn is joined by Michael Simmons and James Heale on Coffee House Shots to discuss the deal and what's in it for Modi and Starmer.

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The UK has finally signed a free-trade deal with India after three-and-a-half years of negotiation. The agreement will open up trade for cars, whisky, clothing and food products, with ministers…