Two views on the death of the West
AI is the new Climate Change
As a writer, I need to stop tripping into curiosity black holes while doomscrolling podcasts. Seeing as I’m already face-down…
Tim Wilson: from oblivion to resurrection – wait, what?!
Tim Wilson has always been a sort-of ‘third man’ to the Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie’s leadership tussle. As the…
The right will rise from Ceuta
Spain’s far-left socialist Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been preaching to a radicalised electorate about the joys of mass migration…
New Premier, same party
Labor has effectively decided to ‘run against itself’ as a new party with a new face at the Victorian state…
The spirit of Cain
Last month the ABC broadcast a young woman inviting the nation to imagine what it would do to Gina Rinehart…
For art’s sake
Between 1801 and 1812, more than 100 tonnes of Pentelic marble were hacked away from the walls of the Parthenon…
There can be no sovereign capability with Net Zero
The Albanese government’s fervour for renewable energy and red tape expansion looms large over the otherwise welcome decision to explore…
Internationalism: where no one is privileged, even in their homeland
Carl von Clausewitz said that war was politics by other means, one method of advancing your interests among many. In…
The education beneath the education
Every civilisation teaches its children what to love, what to fear, what to obey, and what to regard as sacred.…
Vale Rod Liddle
On the sudden and very sad passing of Rod Liddle, who died aged 66 following a short illness: Rod Liddle…
The refusal of rescue
A love for the island A young girl crests a sandstone ridge above a homestead in Tasmania’s bush and finds…
Immigration and national identity
Last week I trekked down to Melbourne to speak at a policy dialogue put together by the Robert Menzies Institute…
Two views on the death of the West
Patrick J. Buchanan is an American author, political commentator, and former senior political advisor. He served in the administrations of…
Single point of obsolescence
Andy Burnham had been Prime Minister for roughly ten days when he discovered one town in England that Whitehall could…
Christopher Nolan says AI is a ‘Trojan horse’
While Hollywood races to make movies cheaper with AI, Christopher Nolan remains deeply sceptical of the technology, and younger audiences…
The political kelpie
In the dusty paddocks of rural Australia, the kelpie does not lead from the front. It does not bark orders…
The insensitive ears on Islamic terrorism
Listening to some of the prattles of pundits after two alleged Islamist-related attacks within 48 hours, I am reminded of…
Australia’s inevitable energy dystopia
It’s GenCost season again, where outrageous claims are made, seemingly cemented in fact and buttressed against criticism by the historical…
Thirty years on, the Coalition have no idea what to do about One Nation
It has been almost 30 years since the founding of One Nation, and the Coalition parties still haven’t worked out…
The suit didn’t die. Dignity did…
The suit is dying. Not because men suddenly discovered that T-shirts are more comfortable – they always were. Not because…
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner loses again – A victory for free speech | Celine Baumgarten S3 Ep 18
Celine Baumgarten (Celine Against the Machine) has celebrated her SECOND victory against the eSafety Commissioner. This wasn’t only a personal…
Did Donald Trump conquer the world with witty insults? | Joel Gilbert S3 Ep 17
Did Donald Trump conquer the world with witty insults? I’m joined by Joel Gilbert to discuss the genius of humour…
Digital tyranny or ‘child safety’? 😵 & the bitcoin revolution | Efrat Fenigson S3 Ep 16
When Australia’s Under 16 social media ban started locking adult political writers out of #Substack – it was just the…
Albo’s corrupt media
As readers may remember, I’m just back from a visit to Canada. One thing an Australian notices immediately is that…
Hot little wars
During the first Cold War, an estimated fifty ‘hot little wars’ flared across the globe – proxy conflicts, insurgencies and…
Tyranny of the reluctant voter
There is a peculiar Australian conceit that compulsory voting is part of the natural order, as fixed as the Constitution…
1943 revisited?
The Newspoll released last week by the Australian shows a continuation of a trend, visible since January this year, which…
Israel is real
Like Abraham, I set out from Ur of the Chaldees to the hill country of Canaan, a journey of about…
The Anti-Australia Axis
With the media still obsessed with Barnaby Joyce’s stern and immediately obeyed command to his farm dog, journalists ignored the…
Lemon
It was once the engine room of the European economy, the strongest of them all. Germany is now on its…
Denigrating women the progressive way
This week, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson lost her case to overturn a ruling that she had breached the Racial…
Why progressives were desperate to believe Jason Arday
The Jason Arday affair has been a great revealer. On the one hand, it is a glorious romp that has…
Two wars are becoming one
Alarmed western observers are warning that the wars in Ukraine and Iran could merge into a single region-wide conflict. Ukrainian…
Rod was the most exciting boss I ever had
The best word for my feelings about Rod Liddle’s death is one that Rod was occasionally heard to use himself.…
My debt to Rod Liddle
Rod Liddle got me into journalism. We always had The Spectator lying around the house when I was young. I soon…
Is Tainan the world’s most dangerous city?
In a country full of brilliant food, the Garden Night Market in sultry Tainan, south-west Taiwan, is still a standout:…
How Rod Liddle shook up the BBC
The most striking thing about Rod Liddle when he arrived at the BBC as a trainee producer was how different…
The big hole in Reform’s naval migration plan
There’s something reassuring about Nigel Farage’s promise to stop the boats by sending in the Navy to return rescued migrants forcibly to…
The best of Rod Liddle’s Listener columns
Commissioning Rod on pop was easy. I’d email him a list of eligible albums and he’d ignore me and offer…
Lucy Powell is wrong to call the curriculum a ‘straitjacket’
And we’re off – Lucy Powell has followed up on Andy Burnham’s speech about providing high-quality technical education routes that are valued…
The best of Rod Liddle
Rod Liddle, a columnist and associate editor at The Spectator, has died at 66. You can read some extracts from…
Why I could never tone down Rod Liddle
Rod Liddle has died at the age of 66. In 2019, Fraser Nelson, then-editor of The Spectator, wrote about the…
Rod Liddle was one of the finest journalists of his generation
I only met Rod Liddle a few times, though at The Spectator and the Sunday Times I worked alongside him…
A New Zealand republic in Jacinda Ardern’s lifetime?
New Zealand’s former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, believes the nation will become a republic within her lifetime. We have heard…
The row over English becoming an official language of New Zealand
Parliamentarians in New Zealand have been limbering up for an oddly unedifying debate over what ought to be the most…
What they don’t tell you about Christmas in New Zealand
‘I still think New Zealand the most beautiful country I have ever seen,’ Agatha Christie marvelled in 1922. Evidently she’s…
What will Jacinda Ardern do next?
When I first met Jacinda Ardern in the early 2010s, the notion that the young MP with the toothy smile…
Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is a triumph
A gurgle of merriment
Chekhov is tricky. He’s not someone we think of as uproarious but the playwright himself used sometimes to complain that…
High Antipodean
The death of that fabled cricketer Sir Garfield Sobers – one of the greatest all-rounders who ever lived – is…
A Treasury on YouTube
It’s strange how much we take for granted the world we inherit, which is available to us on YouTube for…
To be trans Hamlet or not to be
Is there something strange about seeing a great comedian who identifies as a trans woman do a solo Hamlet, the…
All aboard for Paisley: a trip round unloved Britain
‘Most people who have been to Crewe station have never been to Crewe.’ In a moment of serendipity, my train…
Into the wild: Country People, by Daniel Mason, reviewed
In his mid-forties, Miles Krzelewski is a graduate student who makes Saul Bellow’s Herzog look like an academic overachiever. After…
How the multi-billion-dollar wellness industry is putting us at risk
No one could accuse Dr Nick Tiller of taking health and wellness issues lightly. In his latest book he recounts…
Whimsical defence mechanisms: Sail Away Land, by Ben Pester, reviewed
A spectre is haunting England in the surreal tales assembled in Ben Pester’s Sail Away Land, the follow-up to his…
Why most scientists don’t want us to believe in life on Mars
‘Is there life on Mars?,’ asked David Bowie, and would not stay for an answer. The astrobiologist Steven Benner has…
A broken bond: Gaining Ground, by Joan Barfoot, reviewed
When a girl turns up at an isolated cabin in Canada, unannounced and uninvited, the woman busy thinning the lettuce…
The West has become its own worst enemy
On 27 January 2024, Iranian-backed militants launched a one-way attack drone at the US base known as Tower 22 in…
A high seas adventure unlike any other
When the American shipbuilder Enos Bright constructed the Mentor in 1807 he had no inkling of the tale it would…