Douglas murray

The sad demise of Brooks Brothers

New York Our own Douglas Murray is the canary in the Bagel coal mine as of late. The left controls culture, education and technology over here, but a few canaries are still free to warn the rest of us that we’re being taken for a ride. Here’s a warning to those multimillionaires who get down on one knee every weekend to make themselves feel better for getting lotsa moolah for playing a game in the sun. It has to do with black lives and whether they matter or not. Black lives do matter, but not to those who run the racket that goes by the acronym BLM. According to Murray,

What I would do if I were in charge of the BBC

Gstaad I’ve been wrestling all week with indecision, the kind that tests one’s soul, and the uncertainty is killing me. It’s like having to choose between Keira and Jennifer, when it’s normal to want both. No, I’m not being greedy — and it’s not even my fault that I’m in this position, but that of my esteemed colleague Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds and a fellow columnist. Two weeks ago, at his most serious, he proposed that I be put in charge of either the BBC or the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Yippee, hooray! Douglas was annoyed when certain Tory wets did not defend the appointment

‘Primates like us having conversations. This is the best game in town’: Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris and Douglas Murray at the 02, reviewed

I’ve just returned home from seeing Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris on stage at the O2 Arena in London before a crowd of 8,000 people. And I have to say, it was a pretty good show. Once you’re past the bizarreness of seeing three top-flight intellectuals calmly occupying the same stage normally strutted upon by the likes of Iron Maiden or Def Leppard, it’s tempting to try to evaluate the content of the discussion, score it like a boxing match, or try to figure out which gentleman is the more brilliant or righteous. But those angles, valid as the might be, miss the larger point: namely, that deep

Morrissey’s reading list

Morrissey caused a stir last month when he used a blog post to lambast the Indy for an article – aka ‘an extreme Hate Piece so loaded with vile bile that it almost choked on its own endless capacity to be appalled’ – daring to criticise him. Happily, the former Smiths frontman’s latest entry is more jolly – with Morrissey discovering a tome he actually wants to read: ‘We plan a release for our Back on the chain gang single for August – if the wind remains at our backs and in our sails. If you find yourself at a loose end until then, please read Douglas Murray’s The strange death

Watch: Cathy Newman’s catastrophic interview with Jordan Peterson

In the magazine this week I have written a piece about the Canadian Professor Jordan Peterson. He has been in the UK over the last week to talk about his new book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Among many other things – much more of which I go into in the piece – his visit showed up the UK’s broadcast media in a very bad light. On Saturday morning, Peterson made an appearance on Radio 4’s Today programme. They gave him a hurried four minutes at the end of the show. They could have quizzed him on almost anything and got a point of view different from almost

Are refugees welcome to plant bombs on our trains?

It’s all a long time ago now isn’t it?  All of three days since someone put a bomb on a London Underground train and then stepped out of the carriage.  Thankfully the detonator went off without managing to trigger the main bomb, which isn’t a mistake we can hope for every time.  30 people were injured on the District Line on Friday morning.  But if the bomb had done what it was meant to do then those 30 people wouldn’t have been treated for relatively light injuries.  Instead, bits of their remains would have been gathered together in some order and put into the dozens of body bags ordered for them and others at Parsons

From Italy to Sweden, Europe is dying

In what I promise won’t become a regular feature, I thought it worth issuing an update under the heading ‘I told you so’. It relates to two recent, connected pieces of news. The first comes from Italy where the government is now threatening to close its ports. The ongoing influx of migrants from Africa is once again threatening to overwhelm the country, with almost 13,000 people arriving last weekend alone. Once again the Italians are being made to bear the burden of decisions made at EU-level and exacerbated by activist NGOs. The result is a country once again approaching breaking-point. At the other end of this process comes news from

The ‘hate preacher’ hypocrisy

Well this is interesting.  I had got used to the standard response to terror.  I had thought that when 22 young people get blown up by a suicide bomber in Manchester we were meant to say that it made ‘no sense’, that it ‘wouldn’t change us’ and that ‘love’ must overcome ‘hate’. I thought that when a crowd of people get run over and a policeman stabbed to death we were meant to say ‘We may never know’ what caused such an outrage.  And that when people slit the throats of Londoners while shouting ‘This is for Allah’ we agreed that only perpetrators themselves were responsible for such inexplicable actions? 

The Spectator’s Notes | 11 May 2017

Jeremy Corbyn wants to put up income tax only for people who earn more than £80,000 a year, he says. Anyone below that figure is safe. This reminds me of John Smith’s ‘shadow Budget’ in the 1992 general election. Smith said that the top rate of income tax would rise to 50 per cent for everyone earning more than £36,375 a year (which would be just under £72,000 today). Most people earned much less than the sum chosen, but voters decided they did not like such a clear intention to damage the higher earnings they hoped they might one day achieve. The shadow Budget was said to have lost Labour

Watch: Douglas Murray gives Richard Gott a history lesson

With Emily Thornberry en route to Cuba to attend the funeral of Fidel Castro, back in Blighty landbound socialists — with selective memories — continue to take to the airwaves to heap praise on the late dictator. Happily during one such appearance, from Richard Gott — a former literary editor of the Guardian — on Sky News, Douglas Murray was on hand to offer a few home truths. After Gott heralded Castro ‘one of the most remarkable figures of the last century’ and ‘a really great, great man’, Murray gave an alternative take on the Cuban dictator: ‘History will remember him as one of the more minor 20th century dictators but a dictator nonetheless, a brute,

Owen Jones fails to practise what he preaches on LGBT voices

In the aftermath of the Orlando shootings, Owen Jones appeared on the Sky News paper review on Sunday night to share his thoughts on the terrorist attack which left 49 dead. However, he ended up walking off set live on-air after growing frustrated over the broadcaster’s refusal to describe the shooting as an attack on LGBT people. Since then, Jones has penned a piece for the Guardian calling for the media focus to be on homophobia as the LGBT community try to deal with this attempt at the ‘erasure’ of their people. However, it turns out that Jones isn’t so fussed about the silencing of certain members of the LGBT community. Steerpike understands that

Yay, root out those Jew-haters, Jeremy!

A long and arduous flight back from the Caucasus, but worth it nonetheless for the meaningful protest we had staged in the fragrant and lovely Georgian capital, Tbilisi. They have opened a vegan restaurant there called the Café Kiwi — an affront not just to ordinary Georgians, but to all right-thinking people, surely. A bunch of us stormed the place carrying large chunks of grilled lamb on skewers and spicy sausages, which we flung at the epicene customers, who cowered beneath their tables and were unable to fight back because their bones had been made as brittle as matchwood by a diet consisting entirely of nuts and berries. ‘Eat some

Timothy Garton Ash’s concept of courage knows no bounds

In Timothy Garton Ash’s new book Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World, the historian examines present challenges and threats to free speech. However, it’s the book’s final chapter — titled ‘Courage’ — which is of the most intrigue to Mr S. In the May issue of the Literary Review, Douglas Murray reviews the book. Murray recalls an incident that occurred ten years ago when Ayaan Hirsi Ali — a vocal critic of misogyny in the Muslim world — appeared alongside Garton Ash at an event — after he had ‘written a decidedly sniffy article about Hirsi Ali, dismissing her as, among other things, a “slightly simplistic Enlightenment fundamentalist”‘. In

The Spectator Podcast: Brussels, Tory wars and Brexit feminists

This podcast is sponsored by Berry Bros, The Spectator’s house red. In this week’s episode of the Spectator Podcast, Isabel Hardman is joined by Douglas Murray and Haras Rafiq, managing director for the Quilliam Foundation, to discuss the Brussels attacks. ‘In the wake of a terrorist attack, everything barely worth saying will be said endlessly. And the only things that are worth saying won’t be said,’ said Douglas, writing for The Spectator after the attacks. So what can be said? And what can be done to stop Isis striking again? In his cover story this week, James Forsyth looks at the Conservative crack-up. No one does political violence quite like the Tories, and

Letters | 3 September 2015

Suicide and assisted dying Sir: As a mental health practitioner, I am grateful to Douglas Murray (‘Death watch’, 29 August) for his incisive commentary on the impact of legalised euthanasia on people with psychiatric conditions. Supporters of assisted dying argue that a permissive act would be tightly framed, but the scope would inevitably widen, as has occurred in Holland. Although Lord Falconer and fellow travellers would bar people of unsound mind from the intended provision, this would soon be challenged as discriminatory: because effectively, a person would be punished for losing decision-making capacity. If proponents of euthanasia are really so rational, while their opponents are blinded by emotion or faith, how

We assume British Muslims support British values. Do they?

Let’s put the question very bluntly: do British Muslims affirm British values, or are they outsiders to our way of life? Or, even more bluntly: can we trust them? It is important that we learn to answer this question with nuance, and not in a self-righteous and simplistic way. A week before the Tunisian carnage, David Cameron implicitly raised the question, when he said that too many mainstream Muslims were equivocating, seeming to condone Islamic State and to disparage the West –this ‘paves the way for young people to turn simmering prejudice into murderous intent’, he said. His comments, and his planned counter-extremism bill, were strongly condemned by commentators, and

Secularists need to prioritise their targets

I was on the BBC on Sunday morning discussing the government’s new counter-extremism legislation. Unusually for a discussion on this area the debate seemed to me to be constructive and engaging.  Perhaps this is a reflection of the changed political weather. But there was one strange thing – which is why I mention it here – and that is my disagreement with the former Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris who was on this occasion representing the National Secular Society (NSS).  I like Evan, share many of his views and rather like his ever so slightly other-planetary manner (something he shares with that other former Liberal Democrat MP, Julian Huppert).  Anyhow, it

This election campaign has shown a democracy in a horrible state of disrepair

It is often said that we get the politicians we deserve. But throughout this election I have kept wondering, ‘Are we really as bad as all this?’ The answer must be ‘yes’. This bland and empty ‘campaign’ has not only been the fault of the main parties competing to govern the UK – it has also been a reflection of what they believe we, the general public, now expect from our politics. Of course the result is aggravating, in part because we keep trying to enjoy contradictory things. For instance at some point in recent years it was decided that any statement outside a vague centre-left orthodoxy constituted a ‘gaffe’.

Warning: this column may soon be illegal

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/theelectionwhereeverybodyloses/media.mp3″ title=”Listen to Douglas Murray discuss Islamophobia” startat=1350] Listen [/audioplayer]A couple of weeks back I wrote an article headed: ‘Call me insane, but I’m voting Labour.’ Among the many hundreds of people who reacted with the rather predictable ‘Yes, you’re insane’ was my wife, Mrs Liddle. She pointed out that Ed Miliband had vowed that upon being elected, Labour would make Islamophobia a crime. ‘So,’ she concluded, with a certain acidity, ‘not only will we be substantially worse off under a Labour government, but at nine o’clock on the morning of 8 May the police will arrive to take you away. You are voting for a party which will

If Ed Miliband makes ‘Islamophobia’ illegal, I volunteer to test the new law immediately

I am out of the country at the moment and I see that Ed Miliband has used the opportunity to ‘say’ in an interview with the ‘Muslim News’ that he will outlaw ‘Islamophobia’ if he becomes Prime Minister. I use ‘say’ because ‘Muslim News’ has never seemed to me an especially reputable outlet for news, Muslim or otherwise. And I say ‘Islamophobia’ in scare quotes because, well, the term deserves them. There are many things to say about this, but allow me confine myself to three points: If Ed Miliband does become Prime Minister and chooses to make ‘Islamophobia’ illegal would he mind letting us know what he thinks ‘Islamophobia’ is?