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Patrick West

Patrick West

The Spectator

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There’s no such thing as a neutral centrist

13.12.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

Toxic / Why men join the manosphere

The obsession with ‘toxic masculinity’ shows no sign of abating. As reported this weekend, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has warned...

09.12.2024 20

The Spectator

Patrick West

No, Keir Starmer: Brits don’t want ‘change’

Change. If one word can embody the political philosophy of Keir Starmer, it’s this one. The Prime Minister is ever so fond of it. Starmer deployed...

06.12.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

Vegans aren’t saints or sinners

Vegans are a people both widely admired and hated. That is the conclusion of a report earlier this week, one that found that shoppers who opt for meat...

03.12.2024 8

The Spectator

Patrick West

Is DEI dead?

The triumph of Donald Trump and the defeat of a Democratic party beholden to identity politics has prompted many to conclude that woke ideology is...

30.11.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

The trouble with Labour’s ‘respect orders’

As the Allison Pearson debacle begins to settle down, the lesson being drawn by many is that the police have no business harassing people for voicing...

25.11.2024 20

The Spectator

Patrick West

Gary Lineker isn’t that bad

It’s a crying shame that we will no longer hear the insightful and original opinions of Gary Lineker. No more comprehensive and judicious...

17.11.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

What the Boots Christmas advert backlash is really about

Christmas television adverts are meant to be comforting, homely, and traditional. While some find these offerings, especially John Lewis’s, overly...

13.11.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

The strange death of English literature

The interest in reading books and the appreciation of English literature is at a nadir. This week it was revealed that only 35 per cent of eight to...

10.11.2024 9

The Spectator

Patrick West

Gambling laws / What Iain Duncan Smith gets right about freedom

One of Kemi Badenoch’s much-touted strengths is that she cares about British culture, society and our country’s values. She is renowned for her...

08.11.2024 4

The Spectator

Patrick West

Labour will regret its war on bus passengers

Aside from debates as to what actually constitutes a ‘working person’, the Labour government does ostensibly seem clear as to whom it wants to...

29.10.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

The trouble with protest mask chic

We in Britain have become used to the hallmarks of anti-Israeli protests. There are the slogans decrying ‘genocide’. There are chants in sympathy...

12.10.2024 20

The Spectator

Patrick West

A remake of Cheers won’t work

One of the most popular sitcoms of the 1980s, Cheers, is set to return to our television screens. The show is set for a revamp, except now it will be...

05.10.2024 40

The Spectator

Patrick West

The quest for diversity could finish off University Challenge

Universities today are well-known as places where progressive, hyper-liberal politics predominate. It’s only logical, therefore, that the cry for...

24.09.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

Sleaze / Starmer’s freebies and the truth about Labour’s double-standards

The Labour government’s u-turn on freebies, its disclosure last night that it will no longer accept donations for clothes, is an admission that it...

21.09.2024 20

The Spectator

Patrick West

McDonald’s did not make Kemi Badenoch working class

Is it possible to change your class? Not just superficially – in moving up and down the hierarchy of social standing – but change it inwardly so...

19.09.2024 6

The Spectator

Patrick West

Robert Jenrick is wrong about the culture wars

To some people, the culture wars don’t matter. They are an irrelevance, an indulgence. A distraction from the material, bread-and-butter concerns of...

03.09.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

Labour’s puritanical attack on vaping

On Times Radio this morning Lucy Powell, Leader of the House of Commons, said that she wanted the government to ‘tackle the scourge of vaping’. Of...

01.09.2024 5

The Spectator

Patrick West

The culture wars are far from over 

It’s only been a month since the new Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, declared that the ‘era of culture wars is over’. Yet this morning the Daily...

26.08.2024 4

The Spectator

Patrick West

We’ve forgotten how to say ‘no’

It has been widely observed that we live in a society marked by cancellation, censorship and cowardice in the face of mob rule. To this we might add a...

30.07.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

How to tell the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia

With England playing Slovakia in the Euros later today, there’s absolutely no excuse this time for Anglophones to confuse this country with that...

30.06.2024 20

The Spectator

Patrick West

Let’s take no lectures from Emma Thompson on the climate

The actors are out in force again, speaking politics. Only days after Brian Cox appeared on the BBC bemoaning that Brexit is reducing our GDP by 4 per...

24.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

How a dead French poet helped the Allies to victory on D-Day

D Day, 6 June, 1944, saw put into action one of the most unlikely alliances in the history of warfare: that between the largest military invasion of...

06.06.2024 9

The Spectator

Patrick West

Gary Lineker and the problem with celebrity boycotts

One of the country’s most cherished footballers, and one of its most irritating right-on social media commentators, Gary Lineker, has been at it...

02.06.2024 20

The Spectator

Patrick West

Why we need the word ‘woke’

Has the word ‘woke’ become a lazy, all-too-common cliché? The novelist and Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver thinks so. During an appearance...

31.05.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

Why is it acceptable to mock the working class?

You may laugh. You may have gasped in disbelief. But yes, it’s true, we now have a new socio-economic classification, known collectively as the...

22.05.2024 30

The Spectator

Patrick West

The delusion of the pro-Palestinian campus protestors

Much has been made in recent weeks, and especially in recent days, about the degrees of ignorance often displayed by those protesting for the people...

08.05.2024 20

The Spectator

Patrick West

Did Stephen Fry join the Garrick by mistake?

The battle over sexism and equality at the Garrick Club continues to rumble on. It was revealed yesterday that several of its members,...

03.05.2024 30

The Spectator

Patrick West

Why the smoking ban exposes the ‘right side of history’ delusion

As a conservative non-smoker who in his youth was a libertarian twenty-a-day man, I can see both sides of the argument over the government’s recent...

19.04.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

Why is the civil service being given lessons on ‘microaggressions’?

Civil servants are being given lessons instructing them not to roll their eyes or look at their mobile phones while dealing with members of staff....

01.02.2024 6

The Spectator

Patrick West

Why do the French struggle to speak English?

Why are the French so bad at learning foreign languages? Yes, you read that right. This isn’t a lament as to how the British are so terrible at...

16.01.2024 10

The Spectator

Patrick West

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