Cover Story
RACE AND CULTURE: ‘Israel’s actions affect our security’
John Denham tells Peter Oborne that the domestic fight against terrorism requires the consent of the Muslim community
The weeks since the death of Robin Cook have seen an unwholesome squabble concerning who will inherit the ‘legacy’ of the former foreign secretary. Chancellor Gordon Brown made an instant smash-and-grab raid, while allies of the Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain have been furtively suggesting that he is the true inheritor.
There is a respectable case to be made, however, that the backbencher John Denham is the only mainstream Labour politician who has a legitimate claim to step into Robin Cook’s shoes. Denham’s resignation on the eve of the Iraq war was rather more courageous even than Robin Cook’s, because he had far more to lose.
Denham was on the way up. His unobtrusive competence as a minister, first at Social Security, later at the Home Office, inspired glowing reports. He was the insider’s tip to join the Cabinet. When Denham resigned, he said farewell to a future at the the highest level in government: Robin Cook, however distinguished, was already in the exit chamber.
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Sarkozy’s burqa ban panders to racism, not feminism
Rod LiddleRod Liddle says that the French President may be right about Islam’s ideological content but that his proposal is shockingly illiberal and wrong-headed
No more consensus: this time there is a choice
Irwin StelzerThe next election will present voters with two distinct futures, says Irwin Stelzer: Labour’s rising taxes and love of the EU, or the Tories’ spending cuts and plans for the ‘broken society’
A Yorkshire genius in love with his iPhone
Martin GayfordMartin Gayford talks to David Hockney about drawing on his mobile phone, life on the Yorkshire coast, and planning lunch around the blossoming of hawthorn
The secret Iraq deal that bought Mandelson’s loyalty to Brown
John KampfnerJohn Kampfner unveils the ignominious truth about Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry and reveals Peter Mandelson’s demand, when Brown’s future hung in the balance in early June, that the hearings be held in private. Even now Mandelson’s priority is to protect Brand Blair
Where is the Arthur Seldon for our own era?
Colin RobinsonColin Robinson, biographer of the sage who so influenced Thatcherism, says that Seldon has no counterpart now — the Tory party is no longer receptive to such challenging ideas
