Rod Liddle, Author at The Spectator (2025)

Rod Liddle, Author at The Spectator (1)

Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

My guide to liberals

Last Saturday I was making my way across the road from St Pancras to King’s Cross when I noticed a large bearded man blundering towards me, dodging the traffic, with a look of great urgency on his face. Assuming he was one of the 78 per cent of people in the capital who are mentally

Sunday

Rod Liddle

Trump 2.0 is more than a ‘vibe shift’

People don’t like to use the term ‘vibe shift’, but I suspect it will turn out to be rather more than that. Certainly, I have never known opinion to change so rapidly – almost overnight. I’m talking about Donald Trump, or, more properly, how he is regarded. On Saturday morning, I was presenting my new

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Who’ll join my war against liberalism?

I can see one possible benefit of having a full inquiry into the almost exclusively Muslim grooming gangs who raped and assaulted and in some cases murdered young white girls and are perhaps still doing so in aselection of Britain’s ghastliest towns. The number of lawyers it would employ and the enormous salaries they received

Monday

Rod Liddle

What has the BBC got against Tommy Robinson?

Do you know, I have noticed a certain thawing in the BBC’s attitude to the American entrepreneur, Elon Musk. I wonder what might have occasioned such a sharp change in mindset of late? It is all a bit of a mystery. I never believed that Musk would bung Reform UK £100 million, and as the

Monday

Rod Liddle

Is Reform unstoppable?

Lying in bed pissed on Boxing Day night, I was visited by the ghost of Christmas Future, dressed in a grey jacket with a velvet collar, hovering over my pit cackling and in a similar state, alcohol-wise, to myself. It seemed very happy, this ghost. It led me to a graveyard where it pointed, in

Rod LiddleRod Liddle, Author at The Spectator (8)

The real best album of last year

Grade: A+ In a desperate wish to avoid the appellation of a derided genre, this young man from Asheville, North Carolina has been described by the press as Americana, slacker rock, indie and alt-country. But we at The Spectator will call it how it is: this is country rock, pure and simple. And if country

Saturday

Rod Liddle

Who is the worst political commentator?

We are approaching the deadline for the prestigious ‘Most Odious Political Commentator of the Year’ award. Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart’s joint bid is so far out in front of the pack, that the result is surely a foregone conclusion. But this should not deter us from running through some of the other noble contenders.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Christmas Special 2024 with Rod Liddle, Lionel Shriver, Matthew Parris and Mary Wakefield

71 min listen

Welcome to a special festive episode ofThe Editionpodcast, where we will be taking you through the pages ofThe Spectator’s Christmas triple issue. Up first: our review of the year – and what a year it has been. At the start of 2024, the outcome of the US election looked very different, the UK had a

Rod LiddleRod Liddle, Author at The Spectator (12)

How can we complain about the 2034 Saudi World Cup?

I suppose it is a mild surprise that Fifa didn’t choose Yemen to host the 2034 World Cup, as the bosses of that awful organisation seem determined to make football do a tour of the world’s most primitive and dangerous hellholes. Instead, it’s Saudi Arabia. Of course it is. Over the last ten years the

Rod LiddleRod Liddle, Author at The Spectator (14)

Can you tell a good guy from a bad guy in the Middle East?

Please excuse the tone of jubilation, but I have been dancing around my kitchen for the past couple of days, in a state well beyond elation, at the removal from power of Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria and its successors who, I am convinced, are a little like our own Liberal Democrats, except with

Friday

Rod Liddle

The absurdity of ‘buffer zones’

The evangelical preacher Stephen Greenhas had his conviction upheld – for standing quite near an abortion clinic in Ealing with a Bible verse in his hands in protest last February. Remarkably, this act is illegal in the UK today. Green argued that he was not protesting about the women entering the clinic, but against the

Thursday

Rod Liddle

The BBC vs Gregg Wallace

The last time I took my wife to watch Millwall play a home game, a gentleman a few rows in front of us took grave exception to the behaviour of an opposing player and identified him, very loudly, as the author of The Critique of Pure Reason – repeatedly and with venom. Having vented his

Saturday

Rod Liddle

Is Labour’s football regulator an own goal?

30 min listen

The Football Governance Bill is currently being considered in the House of Lords. It’s designed to establish an independent football regulator. No team in the football pyramid will be allowed to play professionally without the regulator’s permission. Does the Premier League really require these sorts of regulations? Will such a rigid system, and unprecedented powers,

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Can you win the Booker Prize without being able to write?

I mentioned a couple of days ago being underwhelmed by Orbital, Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize-winning novel. But I am a glutton for punishment, and continuing to ignore my long-held practice of never reading Booker winners, I bought last year’s victor – Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch. As I mentioned, this is about a nasty right-wing

Rod LiddleRod Liddle, Author at The Spectator (20)

I hope you didn’t sign that petition

Did you sign it, then? And if so, what were your expectations? That Sir Keir Starmer would look at the figures and say – perhaps with a tinge of remorse – ‘Yup, that’s it, I’m bang to rights, we’ll have an election?’. Or were you simply hoping to annoy him? If so, I assume you

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

I made the mistake of reading a book that won the Booker Prize

I’ve just broken one of my own golden rules – never buy a book that has won the Booker Prize, because it will be crap. So I have only myself to blame. The rule of mine has held reasonably true, with a few exceptions, since the wonderful David Storey won it in 1976 forSaville. The

Monday

Rod Liddle

Is swimming racist?

I think we can all be delighted that, at last, the University of Leicester has taken action to end one of the real problems associated with swimming pools – the presence there of awful white people, swimming about all over the place. Odious, arrogant, pasty-faced white people with their mewling, stupid white children. White people

Thursday

Rod Liddle

I liked John Prescott enormously

There was a time we all looked forward to on the BBCTodayprogramme, back in the early years of Tony Blair’s first term as Prime Minister. Late July, early August. Blair had scooted off to San Gimignano, Mandelson was probably on a yacht with an oligarch, even Campbell was away battling his weird inner demons somewhere.

Rod LiddleRod Liddle, Author at The Spectator (25)

Labour’s Chinese takeaway

I was thrilled to learn that our government intends to enjoy an ‘open’ relationship with China – one of my favourite countries, as I am sure it is yours. Sir Keir Starmer announced this intention when he bumped into Xi Jinping at the G20 beano in Rio de Janeiro. He also said: ‘We want our

Thursday

Rod Liddle

I have no time for Radio Four’s dross

I switched the radio on in my car today and it went straight to the BBC World at One on Radio Four. I thought I’d tuned it to Radio Three but instead of a mellifluous tune I got Sarah Montague. I was on the bit of the A66 in Middlesbrough where it merges with the

Rod Liddle, Author at The Spectator (2025)
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