Pride with a dash of prejudice: How the Spectator succumbed to the narrative of anti-Muslim bigotry

Pride with a dash of prejudice: How the Spectator succumbed to the narrative of anti-Muslim bigotry Submitted by Faisal Hanif on Thu, 07/23/2026 - 12:43 Britain's oldest and most venerated political magazine has given innumerable column inches to unapologetic racist diatribe that has fanned the flames of Islamophobia Spot the politician: the Spectator Summer party 2026 featured a strong showing of the Westminster media and political elite not deterred by its Islamophobic diatribe (courtesy of Lino Buckingham/Events Manager the Spectator/LinkedIn) On When the Spectator marked its 190th birthday in 2018, it reached for a line from its first editor, the Scottish reformer Robert Stephen Rintoul, to explain what the magazine was for. Rintoul, it wrote, had insisted that "it is difficult to be a mere spectator in times like these" and that "it is the duty of even neutrals to arm". The magazine likes to tell that story about itself: never merely a bystander, always willing to take a side when it mattered.

It is also, on the evidence of the most detailed independent study ever conducted of a single British publication's coverage of Muslims, a false one. The Centre for Media Monitoring's (CfMM) new report takes its title, No Mere Spectator: Anti-Muslim Hostility in Britain's Oldest Political Magazine, directly from that boast, and turns it back on the magazine. CfMM examined almost 4,000 articles published between January 2018 and December 2025.

More than half - 57.4% were rated "biased" or "very biased" against Muslims. Muslim political participation was repeatedly framed as a sinister "influence"; violence by a Muslim was treated as an expression of Islam itself, while violence against Muslims was discussed in ways that minimised anti-Muslim hostility or ignored entirely. And the magazine gave real estate to far-right polemics such as The Great Replacement and demographic-panic arguments, defended as ordinary political commentary.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); None of this happened by accident of a few rogue columnists. Peter Oborne, the Spectator's own former associate editor, told the report's launch panel that the magazine has become "one of the most influential British media apologists for bigotry, hatred and racism". Selective focus In his foreword to the report, Oborne traces this through the magazine's slow…