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Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle

The Spectator

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A footballing divide that only Keir Starmer can bridge

It reminded me a little of that wonderful Christmas Day truce in the first world war, when the two sides briefly came together, put aside their...

latest 5

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

The BBC’s real crime is its relentless political bias

I am not convinced that the BBC did very much wrong regarding Scott Mills. No matter how boring the BBC’s seemingly endless retinue of mediocre gay...

02.04.2026 5

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Welfare / Where’s my free BMW?

My friend Will Clouston, the leader of the Social Democratic Party, dropped round with his wife for a bite to eat this week and showed me an ancient...

02.04.2026 8

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Huw Edwards’s defenders owe the Sun an apology

I wasn’t wildly impressed with Channel Five’s dramatisation of the fall of Huw Edwards. But it should at least remind people that it was good...

26.03.2026 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Anti-Semitism / The real reason the left hates Israel

‘Listen to what the man on the left of the camera has to say about Israel, the man who is addressed as Nick,’ a radical Corbynista friend...

26.03.2026 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Why did the NHS employ a dietician who didn't know what the large intestine was?

Here’s a mark of our times. A dietician who apparently ‘bluffed’ her way into a top NHS job has been sacked for knowing less about the body and...

22.03.2026 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Harry Styles has a cute voice

In which the foppish Davy Jones figure from the manufactured band One Direction (Zayn Malik being Peter Tork; One Direction didn’t have a Mike...

22.03.2026 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

The Listener / Harry Styles has a cute voice

In which the foppish Davy Jones figure from the manufactured band One Direction (Zayn Malik being Peter Tork; One Direction didn’t have a Mike...

22.03.2026 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

US politics / Trump should ditch the faux concern for the people of Iran

Live long enough and all your cherished memories of childhood will end up besmirched somehow. For many of us Boomers the 1970s are now nothing but a...

19.03.2026 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

The Listener / Harry Styles has a cute voice

In which the foppish Davy Jones figure from the manufactured band One Direction (Zayn Malik being Peter Tork; One Direction didn’t have a Mike...

18.03.2026 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

The Listener / Harry Styles has a cute voice

In which the foppish Davy Jones figure from the manufactured band One Direction (Zayn Malik being Peter Tork; One Direction didn’t have a Mike...

18.03.2026 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Party’s over / Has Reform peaked?

Murton is a rather frowsy former pit village in County Durham, about half a dozen miles down the A19 from Sunderland. Chip shops, tanning salons,...

13.03.2026 20

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

I do not wish for Reform’s retreat

An addendum to my piece in the mag this week, partly for clarification and partly to reinforce the point, for idiots, that Reform’s retreat isn’t...

12.03.2026 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Party’s over / Has Reform peaked?

Murton is a rather frowsy former pit village in County Durham, about half a dozen miles down the A19 from Sunderland. Chip shops, tanning salons,...

12.03.2026 20

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

What is the point of an Anti-Muslim Hostility Tsar?

Derrida et al were right. The written English language (langue) can be vague and elliptical and the intended meaning not always assured. I wonder if...

09.03.2026 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Won’t someone please think of Dubai’s influencers?

The human spirit is incredibly resilient really. Even in the depth of our concern over the Israeli-American war against Iran, the worry about what...

08.03.2026 20

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Arsenal’s success is a victory for Brexit football

I notice Arsenal have gone seven points clear at the top of the Premier League table and are thus very likely to win the title – a victory, then,...

05.03.2026 20

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Ritz spirit / Won’t someone please think of Dubai’s influencers?

The human spirit is incredibly resilient really. Even in the depth of our concern over the Israeli-American war against Iran, the worry about what...

05.03.2026 20

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Have the Brits forgotten what a song actually is?

The Brits are always awful, so much so that they exist in a place beyond criticism, so obvious are the failings. Just the sight of the award winners...

02.03.2026 20

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Oh, Mandy / My night at the Baftas

Sometimes things work out much better than one could have imagined, as if God, looking down, had decided that for whatever reason, a favour should be...

26.02.2026 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Blue wave / Don’t underestimate the ‘stop Farage’ alliance

So Thursday came and Oxford went to the pollsAnd made its coward vote and the streets resoundedTo the triumphant cheers of the lost souls –The...

20.02.2026 50

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Grooming gangs / To understand pure stupidity, watch The News Agents

There have been numerous surveys over the years intended to prove that conservatives are more stupid than liberals and vice versa, so many that it is...

15.02.2026 60

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Grooming gangs / To understand pure stupidity, watch The News Agents

12.02.2026 20

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Old songs for an audience of elderly people: The Damned’s Not Like Everybody Else reviewed

12.02.2026 30

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

I was right about Peter Mandelson

07.02.2026 40

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Oh, Mandy / I was right about Peter Mandelson

06.02.2026 30

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Oh, Mandy / I was right about Peter Mandelson

05.02.2026 50

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Curious omission / Why won’t the BBC use the word ‘Jews’?

29.01.2026 40

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Mystery solved / The true villains of our TV crime dramas? The creators

23.01.2026 80

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Mystery solved / The true villains of our TV crime dramas? The creators

22.01.2026 20

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Squeezed middle / The age of absolutism

15.01.2026 30

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Has Trump gone mad?

10.01.2026 30

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Doolally Donald / Has Trump gone mad?

08.01.2026 30

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Hypocrisy / David Walliams deserves to be cancelled

01.01.2026 30

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Hypocrisy / David Walliams deserves to be cancelled

01.01.2026 50

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Why did Robin Ince have to leave The Infinite Monkey Cage?

14.12.2025 10

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Turning point / The year wokery went into decline

We will remember 2025 as the year that a madness which had gripped us for a decade finally succumbed to that most irritating of things, reality –...

12.12.2025 20

The Spectator

Rod Liddle