The Spectator

Sod the state: Michael Simmons on the race to go private 🔸 Douglas Murray: Will we always have Paris? 🔸 Angus Colwell: The dessertification of London 🔸 Maureen Lipman: Bring back proper smoking 🔸 Nicholas Farrell: How to sleep with 1,000 women spectator.com

Does yesterday's Budget suggest Andy Burnham is planning on calling an early general election? Watch in full youtube.com/live/M5RWj6BqMlk| @ShippersUnbound

A Labour chancellor called Healey grappling with the public finances amid fears of an economic collapse. Pressure from the right to slash spending, from the left to put the people before the bankers. Sounds familiar? Well, actually I'm talking about 1976 not 2026 and Denis Healey, not John. I suppose I couldn't have picked a better day to be transported back 50 years to watch The Gang of Three, a wonderful play in which Healey, Roy Jenkins and Tony Crosland 'clash over the soul of British socialism and their own relentless ambitions'. ✍️ Neil Clark Article | spectator.com/article/our-po…

Is the Left’s focus on Israel driven by genuine humanitarian concern? Douglas Murray questions why events in the West Bank dominate headlines when there is arguably greater suffering in places such as Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Watch in full | youtu.be/-SjngLTd1Ec @DouglasKMurray @michaelgove

Her father, Henry Boima Fahnbulleh, is generally styled as a ‘former diplomat’. He was indeed foreign minister in Liberia in the 1980s, and latterly a national security adviser to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. But he is also a Marxist radical who dedicated himself over a long career to the violent overthrow of those who got in his way. George Boley, who Henry has described as a ‘good friend of mine’, led the Liberia Peace Council, another militia faction, which was accused by the TRC of slitting the throats of villagers with cutlasses, burning alive those they accused of witchcraft, and the mass rape of women. Boley was deported from the US in 2012 after a judge found that he used child soldiers. ✍️ John Power Article | spectator.com/article/the-re…

Q. My flatmate has slight OCD about hygiene and covers everything in our fridge with clingfilm. I don’t want to fall out with her but all that plastic is upsetting me. What can I do? – H.S. London W11 Article | spectator.com/article/dear-m…

Which years have had the highest numbers of named storms since the Met Office started naming them in 2015? ✍️ The Spectator Barometer | spectator.com/article/which-…

As seen in the New Statesman. 'Right, how about…' The Prime Minister's face is a mask of sweat. 'How about… 1p off the price of every Freddo… if you… ehhh… if you do… do at least ten hours of community work a month?' Preparations for the Budget are down to the wire. The PM's people had called me for a comms debrief with Andy and the Chancellor ahead of the statement to the House. But when I arrive at No. 11, it quickly becomes apparent that I would be getting much more than I'd bargained for. Sitting on a bottle-green Chesterfield sofa covered in briefing papers, Andy rummages through a Co-op plastic bag he has cradled under his arm and produces a pack of chocolate Hobnobs. 'These used to be a quid, now you'd be lucky to get two for a fiver.' ✍️ Connor McCabe Article | spectator.com/article/the-se…

The consequences for those who can't or won't go private are grim: according to the government's Adult Oral Health Survey, 41 per cent of adults have tooth decay, up from 28 per cent in 2009. Emergency tooth extractions for children which have to be performed in hospitals are now so frequent that one happens every 15 minutes. This can hardly be unexpected when nearly 40 per cent of children have not seen an NHS dentist in 12 months. Dentistry is not the only area of healthcare where users increasingly feel they have no choice but to pay for private top-ups. For much of the NHS's history, most people would not have even considered the use of a private general practitioner. Not so today. ✍️ Michael Simmons Article | spectator.com/article/sod-th… | @Simmons__

In the second part of Michael Gove's conversation with Douglas Murray, they discuss the rise of antisemitism, the Left's obsession with Palestine and the unlikely alliance between Islamists and the radical Left. What does the future hold for Israel – and would replacing Netanyahu really change anything? They also turn to the things that make Western civilisation worth defending, from Britain's great cathedrals to classical music and literature. Despite the challenges facing the West, can it be saved even at the 13th hour? Listen | spectator.com/podcast/dougla… | @michaelgove @DouglasKMurray

Of all the rotten clichés in American political discourse, 'lame duck presidency' is arguably the worst. It ought to be dragged out back – perhaps by the former homeland security secretary and infamous animal-slayer Kristi Noem – and strangled to death. Yet commentators have to say something about the midterms. And since it is likely that President Trump's party will lose on Tuesday night, expect all sorts of explanations as to just what a damaged duck Donald now is. ✍️ Freddy Gray Article | spectator.com/article/donald… | @Freddygray31

Caring for someone who can't care back and whose only interest is exploitation is a mug's game. Do you say: 'Yes friend, hang in there'? No you don't. You say: 'Run for the hills, friend.' Caring for someone who can't care back, whose interest is only in exploiting you, is a mug's game. So why – and several times in the course of reading Sherry Turkle's Artificial Intimacy I put the book aside to blink and wonder – have we entangled ourselves so readily and intimately with uncaring AI? ✍️ Mary Wakefield Article | spectator.com/article/how-ca… | @MaryWakefield

Labour may have removed hereditary peers from the House of Lords, but the party has its own dynasties. This government has a Kinnock, a Falconer, a Miliband and a Reeves, all representatives of famous political families. But the minister with perhaps the most intriguing ideological ancestry is the Energy Secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh. No one denies that Fahnbulleh is an intellectually formidable operator in her own right. With a PPE degree from Lincoln College, Oxford, she speaks with a poised confidence. She has described herself as a Liberian 'refugee' and the inference many will draw is that she is a child of poverty, not privilege. But Fahnbulleh was educated privately at Beechwood Sacred Heart School in Tunbridge Wells, where fees to board are now more than £40,000 a year. ✍️ John Power Article | spectator.com/article/the-re…

Some who attempted to get out of the city spoke of Mogadishu-like scenes at Gare du Nord, where the country's newest net-contributors were busily assaulting any available police and stealing the luggage of any tourist they could find. Unfortunately reports from the front line all confirm a pre-existing prejudice of my own – which is that almost no group is more detached from society than those who call themselves 'artists'. A particularly fine example came courtesy of a woman called Louisa Buck, who writes for the Art Newspaper. Reviewing the carnage in the city, as well as the contents of Art Basel, Buck (the daughter of the late Conservative MP Sir Antony Buck) twittered admiration not for the art but for the vandalism. Taking to Instagram, she wrote: 'For me the most powerful artwork encountered in the last 48 hours was the defaced sculpture under lowering skies in Place de La République passed on my way off to Gare du Nord that speaks volumes of the fury and disappointment felt at uncaring governments and savage policing – and it's not just restricted to France.' ✍️ Douglas Murray Article | spectator.com/article/will-w… | @DouglasKMurray

Andy Burnham says in a couple of interviews that he wants an 'honest discussion' about free movement, and then Downing Street indicates that perhaps he doesn't. Many interpret this as poor 'message discipline'. I don't think so. The key to Mr Burnham's behaviour is to remember two things. The first is that, even after 100 days in office, he still wants to be as different as possible from Sir Keir Starmer. That means he must be seen at all times to welcome open discussion, talking like a human being not a robot. The second is that he wants to keep open the possibility of calling a general election next year. The 'breathing space' he says the country needs is really what his party needs. His talk about free movement is intended to signal to Lib Dem/soft Tory/southern middle-class Labour voters that he feels their pain about Brexit. Downing Street's semi-rebuttal is intended to reassure Red Wall, Reform-adjacent, northern working-class Labour voters. ✍️ Charles Moore Article | spectator.com/article/does-b… | @CharlesHMoore

So damaging was Rachel Reeves's tenure that a Budget from her successor aimed at doing as little as possible seems almost an improvement. Under John Healey, businesses and taxpayers have escaped relatively unmolested. A glancing blow to the banks, a minimum wage – interventionist, certainly, but not socialism red in tooth and claw. Labour MPs hoping for wealth taxes and mass nationalisation must make do with £27 off energy bills and cheaper marmalade. But minimising harm is not the same as doing good. If Healey refrained from further weakening Britain's position, he stopped short of taking the essential action required to improve our sclerotic economy. A 'steady as she goes' Budget means sticking to the path that Labour has already set us on: ever-higher taxes, ballooning welfare spending, anaemic growth and interminable regulation. ✍️ The Spectator Article | spectator.com/article/was-th…

The Tel Aviv neighbourhood of Hatikva is everything Israel's critics across Europe fail to understand. This run-down suburb is home to many working-class Mizrahim: Jews who, save for their skullcaps, would not look out of place in a London mosque. They, or their parents, came to Israel from across the Islamic world: Iraq, Iran, Tunisia, Algeria and Yemen. Finally safe in the Jewish homeland, many have become some of Benjamin Netanyahu's most ardent supporters. These deeply religious taxi drivers, cleaners, administrators and shopkeepers still feel the trauma of life under the iron fist of Islamism. Boycotts and finger-wagging from London or Paris will not sway them. They will vote for the strongman they believe most likely to launch the fastest and farthest-reaching rockets, quashing any possibility of a return to the Islamic world they left behind. ✍️ Noa Hoffman Article | spectator.com/article/can-ne… | @hoffman_noa

What is the purpose of a Budget? To stabilise the national finances? To kickstart economic growth? If you're John Healey, it may be to show the markets that you're fiscally responsible and the public finances are safe in your hands. If you're Andy Burnham, the goal is to show the public that you're trying to do something about the rising cost of living – and to convince Labour MPs that they were right to give you the job. But Burnham also has big plans to transform the country and this was a Budget more about tinkering than transformation. Yes, defence will get £5 billion more by letting the National Wealth Fund borrow off the public balance sheet to invest in defence companies. ✍️ Tim Shipman Article | spectator.com/article/is-bur… | @ShippersUnbound

It was another Jennifer – Jennifer Grey of Dirty Dancing fame – whose desire to tamper with the face that the good Lord gave her made her the object lesson in not fixing what ain't broke; especially, in her case, one's nose. At the age of 26 Miss Grey was pretty enough to be believable as the teenage paramour of heart-throb Patrick Swayze in the wildly popular film, but not so pretty that she alienated the female majority of the potential audience. She was the perfect rising star. But a totally pointless nose-job two years later, and a second procedure to allegedly fix an issue with the cartilage, so altered her appearance that it made her unrecognizable. Grey herself was extremely frank about this unfortunate turn of events, writing in her memoir, “Overnight, I lose my identity and my face.” An airline employee looked at her ID and said “Oh, Jennifer Grey, like the actress.” ✍️ Julie Burchill Article | spectator.com/article/rip-je… | @BoozeAndFagz

The Budget is without doubt one of the most overrated days in British politics. Now that we are entirely at the mercy of foreign lenders, Saudi and Chinese investors, frightened Labour backbenchers and our own suicidal accumulation of debt, the idea that the British state's economic conception of itself is anything more than a tragicomic fiction is laughable. Yet Budget day remains part of the elaborate amateur dramatics that constitute domestic politics. It is also, crucially, a key mechanism by which the government can make the lives of savers, taxpayers and those still brave enough to run a business significantly worse. Today began with the usual theatrics – John Healey, who is privately considered to be a remedial chancellor, posed with the red box on Downing Street. ✍️ Madeline Grant Article | spectator.com/article/healey… | @Madz_Grant

Back when I was 20, my hair cascading down to my shoulders, jeans shredded at the knee, I thought it wise to complete the look with a lip ring. Two years later, there I was, supine at Birmingham A&E, surrounded by doctors craning their necks to look and laugh, while I desperately rued my life choices. As the local anaesthetic took hold, my mind returned to the night before: four pints deep and finding the ring broken at the join, I had squeezed the two ends together, clamping it tighter than my lip could ever accommodate. By morning, it had turned blue. ✍️ Patrick Smith Article | spectator.com/article/help-i…