The Spectator

The hypocrisy of Virgin Atlantic’s new flights to Saudi
✍️ Gareth Roberts www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-hypocrisy-of-virgi…
Virgin Atlantic is now offering daily flights to Saudi Arabia, with Heathrow to Riyadh return flights starting at a very reasonable £447. Richard Branson has pulled off a deal with Saudia, the national flag carrier, enabling you to travel on to Mecca and Jeddah if you fancy it.

This is all part of Saudi’s attempt to rebrand itself as a tourist destination, which also includes the construction, at mind-boggling expense, of a new six-runway, seven-terminal hub at King Khalid airport – which certainly throws thirty-odd years of fuss, dither and political knicker-wetting about a single extra runway at Heathrow into sharp perspective.

But the most interesting thing, for me, about this new Virgin venture is that this is the airline that has fallen over itself in recent years to brand itself as ‘LGBT’-friendly. (If we must use that obsolete initialism, and Virgin certainly still does.)

6 hours ago | [YT] | 49

The Spectator

The African cardinal who terrifies Macron
✍️ James Tidmarsh www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-african-cardinal-w…
Cardinal Robert Sarah from Guinea in West Africa has been named among the potential successors to Pope Francis and the prospect is sending a jolt through the French establishment. He has accused the West of betraying its Christian roots and described mass migration as a form of ‘self destruction’.

He has spoken of immigration as a ‘new form of slavery’ created by Europe’s failure to defend its identity and has called on young Africans to remain in their own countries and build their futures at home. In 2021, during an interview on French radio, he made one of his most quoted comments: ‘If Europe continues in this way, it will be invaded by a foreign population.’

In today’s France, those words land like a grenade. The unease at the Élysée is palpable.

7 hours ago | [YT] | 672

The Spectator

Trump should be allowed to address Parliament
✍️ Eliot Wilson www.spectator.co.uk/article/of-course-trump-should…
Labour MPs have been busy this week. No, not running the country – but voicing their opposition to Donald Trump’s state visit. Diane Abbott, Nadia Whittome and Clive Lewis are among 17 parliamentarians campaigning to ensure the US President isn’t allowed to address the Houses of Parliament. Their Early Day Motion rehearses various criticisms of the President – ‘misogynism, racism and xenophobia’ and his treatment of Ukraine – and says it would be ‘inappropriate’ for Trump to be given the honour when he comes to the UK in September.

This legislative stunt is unlikely to trouble Trump. The Early Day Motion (EDM) in itself is meaningless. It is a device for MPs to give vent to their feelings but, although it is formally a motion to put to the House of Commons, it will never be debated because EDMs never reach that stage. They are known widely at Westminster as ‘parliamentary graffiti’. It does not represent a groundswell of feeling, having fewer than 20 signatures, many of whom are the usual suspects: Zarah Sultana, John McDonnell and Jon Trickett. It is a left-wing claque arriving at the righteous outrage du jour.

8 hours ago | [YT] | 52

The Spectator

The danger of banning face coverings at protests
✍️ Freddie Attenborough www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-danger-of-banning-…
As the government’s Crime and Policing Bill makes its way through parliament, MPs on the Public Bill Committee are scrutinising its clauses today – including, potentially, Clause 86. If passed, this provision will make it a criminal offence to conceal your identity at a protest. For some people this may sound sensible enough. But for dissidents from authoritarian regimes – and their families thousands of miles away – it’s a very real threat to their physical safety.

In fairness to those currently grappling with the issue, the legislation responds to a genuine problem: the adoption in the UK of the ‘black bloc’ face-concealing tactics pioneered by radical anarchists in the US. Since Hamas’s attack on Israel and the subsequent military response, pro-Palestinian demonstrations have regularly taken place in British cities. A sizeable minority of participants have clashed with police, brandished anti-Semitic placards and shouted anti-Semitic slogans. Many of the protestors have hidden their faces with masks or scarves.

The law as it stands allows police, with proper authorisation, to require someone to remove a face covering. But wearing such a covering is not, in itself, criminal.

1 day ago | [YT] | 20

The Spectator

We need to crack down on music on public transport
✍️ James Hanson www.spectator.co.uk/article/we-need-to-crack-down-…
Hold the front page, sound the alarm, remember where you were – the Lib Dems have come up with a good idea for once. Reinforcing the old adage that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, Ed Davey’s party has announced a genuinely sensible policy: that playing music out loud on public transport should be made illegal. The party is looking to amend the Bus Services Bill, currently making its way through the Lords, to include fines of up to £1,000 for offenders. It’s almost enough to make me put a ‘winning here’ sign in my window.

Anyone who uses public transport in 2025 will have experienced the growing phenomenon of the headphone dodgers. If they’re not blasting out drill music at full volume, they’re having a shouty conversation using their speakerphone. While some are seemingly oblivious to their selfishness, others revel in their brazenness: as if they’re daring their fellow passengers to intervene. On the rare occasion I’ve witnessed some brave soul politely ask a culprit to turn their music down, the response has not been kind. And so the problem grows.

1 day ago | [YT] | 70

The Spectator

I’ve had enough of crimewave Britain
✍️ James Snell www.spectator.co.uk/article/ive-had-enough-of-crim…
Knife crime, shoplifting and fraud is on the rise in Britain. Fraud was up by a third in the last year, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which also reveal a 50 per cent increase (to around 483,000 incidents) in theft. Shoplifting offences rose by 20 per cent in 2024 – reaching the highest figure in over 20 years.

What’s shocking about this tidal wave of crime is that it is hardly surprising. Anyone who has lived in England over the last decade or so cannot fail to have noticed that our streets feel more dangerous. Where I live in Essex, there have been more stabbings. Many people I know in London and the Home Counties have been mugged for their phones and wallets.

Take a walk through central London and it won’t be long before you encounter someone zipping about on an illegal electric bike with a balaclava on. We all know what they are up to.

1 day ago | [YT] | 262

The Spectator

Swinney’s ‘anti-Reform’ summit didn’t achieve much
✍️ Catriona Stewart www.spectator.co.uk/article/swinneys-anti-reform-s…
John Swinney’s cross-party civic gathering – or ‘anti-Reform summit’ – met in Glasgow on Wednesday, with political party leaders from across Holyrood prepared to discuss how to rid Scotland of the hard right. Yet what began as a ‘Democratic Resilience Summit’ rather backfired for those politicians keen to push back against Reform UK’s surge in Scotland – as it turned into a chance for Nigel Farage’s party to enjoy free publicity.

Some 50 organisations from across civic society – including religious and third sector groups as well as every Holyrood party leader except Russell Findlay of the Tories – met in the centre of Glasgow to agonise over how to improve the lot of ordinary Scots. Meanwhile, in his usual media-savvy way, Farage was on BBC Radio Scotland telling those same ordinary Scots he had ‘the great and the good of Scottish politics’ running scared.

1 day ago | [YT] | 27

The Spectator

Why can’t the BBC Proms stick to classical music?
✍️ Stephen Pollard www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-cant-the-bbc-proms…
Welcome to this year’s BBC Proms, the self-styled ‘World’s Greatest Classical Music Festival’, whose programme was revealed today. Every year I write about how even The Proms, which bills itself unambiguously as a festival of classical music, can’t bring itself to be just that: a festival of classical music. And every year it gets worse, with the idea of ‘inclusion’ so pervasive that music which has as much to do with a classical music festival as my pet cat would have at Crufts taking over ever more evenings. This year’s schedule is the final straw.

On day two, the Proms presents ‘The Great American Songbook and Beyond’ with Samara Joy, which is followed by ‘Round Midnight’ with ‘hip hop artist Soweto Kinch’. That’s followed a few nights later by Angeline Morrison singing folk songs from her album ‘The Sorrow Songs’, and then Arooj Aftab and Ibrahim Maalouf with their ‘captivating, eclectic melting-pot of influences from jazz, folk, pop, blues and South Asian’ and ‘Middle Eastern melodies…jazz, Latin jazz, and African rhythms’ respectively.

1 day ago | [YT] | 33

The Spectator

Siddiq hits back at Bangladesh over arrest warrant
✍️ Steerpike www.spectator.co.uk/article/siddiq-hits-back-at-ba…
Back to the curious case of Tulip Siddiq, Labour’s former anti-corruption minister who has been issued with an arrest warrant by Bangladesh over, um, corruption.

Earlier this month, the Hampstead and Highgate MP was slapped with the warrant after the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) submitted a criminal charge sheet against the politician over investigations involving her aunt, and Bangladesh’s recently deposed prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.

Now Siddiq’s lawyers have pushed back, accusing the country’s authorities of failing to uphold the MP’s ‘fundamental right to justice’. And so it rumbles on…

1 day ago | [YT] | 40

The Spectator

www.spectator.co.uk/article/when-will-the-bbc-ever…
On one afternoon last week, I gamely went to the BBC’s deserted headquarters and sat down opposite the perfectly affable Nick Watt. He is one of those unfortunate BBC interviewers who learned their interviewing technique from the worst, but I had a book to sell and assumed I might be asked about it. Instead Watt did that thing that BBC interviewers still think they can do – which is to treat the guest as though you are in the dock, accused of a criminal act, and they are the prosecuting barrister to whom you must answer. Personally speaking, I do not feel this pressure.

Watt started off by asking me about my relationship with Donald Trump. Funnily enough, I didn’t feel inclined to talk to him about that. Then he tried to get me on Elon Musk. I didn’t feel the need to play the BBC’s game of trying to sow division between the President and the founder of Tesla, however. Eventually I managed to get a bit of book stuff in – and then Watt went for the ‘greatest hits’ section.

This is the stage when a BBC interviewer has an author on and asks them how they had the temerity to say certain things in the past. The certain thing on this occasion was a quote from eight years ago in which I observed that since Islamic terrorism comes from Islam, countries that have ‘less Islam’ have less Islamic terrorism than countries that have an awful lot of the stuff.

To me, this seems a statement of the obvious. But not to Newsnight.

1 day ago | [YT] | 1,113