30/11/2019
30 Nov 2019

The final furlong

30 Nov 2019

The final furlong

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Features
Christopher Meyer
Trump’s visit couldn’t come at a worse time – for Boris and for Nato

In the next few days, on 3 and 4 December, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will host a grand international conference of 29 North American and European nations to mark the 70th anniversary of the foundation of Nato — the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which, led by the United States, kept the peace during the fraught years of Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union. We are told that the Queen will give a reception in honour of the heads of state and government and that Donald Trump has accepted the invitation.

Trump’s visit couldn’t come at a worse time – for Boris and for Nato
Johan Norberg
The rise – and disastrous fall – of the kibbutz

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are part of a breed of socialists who argue that this time will be different. Socialism never failed, they insist: only the walls, barbed wire and jackboots did. So what they plan for Britain, while radical, is bound to work! True, it’s more radical than anything done in any European country today. Comparisons with Venezuela or Cuba or Soviet Russia are unfair, they say. But there is one model that today’s socialists talk fondly about: the Israeli kibbutz.

The rise – and disastrous fall – of the kibbutz
Sam Leith
‘My wife sends me sleep bubbles’: The extraordinary world of Pete Townshend

When most rock stars have trouble sleeping, they fall back on Valium, temazepam, heroin or Jack Daniel’s. But Pete Townshend, guitarist and songwriter for The Who and — we’re pleased to discover — Spectator subscriber, isn’t much like most rock stars. Sober now for three decades, he calls instead on his wife Rachel’s psychic powers. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘when I’m having difficulty sleeping, Rachel — who has some… certainly, some kind of healing powers — will say to me, “Do you want me to send you a sleep bubble?” Now, I often go’ — he mimes squirming like a reluctant child — ‘“No, of course I don’t need you to send me a bloody sleep bubble! I’ll just take more codeine.

‘My wife sends me sleep bubbles’: The extraordinary world of Pete Townshend
Dominic Green
Allegations of anti-Semitism are damaging to Labour, but not toxic

Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi, was right to take the unprecedented action of denouncing Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour for endemic anti-Jewish prejudice. James Cleverly, the Conservative chairman, was right to draw attention to polls showing half of British Jews are contemplating emigration if Labour wins. The Jewish Chronicle was right to turn its cover into an unprecedented open letter, begging Britain’s non-Jews not to vote for Corbyn.

Allegations of anti-Semitism are damaging to Labour, but not toxic
Elisa Segrave
Wisdom of the ages: we must keep listening to the elderly

My beloved grandmother died at 90, and my mother at 89, after having Alzheimer’s for 11 years. So I am not rattled by the old; I find their memory lapses challenging rather than frightening. (If I were the full-time carer of an elderly husband, it might be another matter. One woman described it as being strangled slowly by a python.) I recently visited 96-year-old Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, former columnist, journalist and editor of the Sunday Telegraph, at his house in Bucks.

Wisdom of the ages: we must keep listening to the elderly
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