In answer to your questions

Norman Dee

There is something troubling about the remoteness of the impartiality you profess. It troubles me I know to watch and read running reports on the shifting tectonics of politics and the economic situation by a whole legion of people who are, and will remain, totally unaffected by the changes and shifts and the misfortunes of the people that have to pay the biggest price for all this activity. So I suppose the question is are you remote or impartial ? or can you be both ?

Kevyn Bodman

1)Are you angling for a political seat? You didn't 'get round' to answering that one.

2)Polly Toynbee is the columnist who, more than any other,caused me to start commenting on political blogs.
She wrote an article advocating amnesty for illegal immigrants and that started me off.
(No amnesty for illegals, never treat law-abiding peopla and criminals the same.Plus if you do it now you'll get another influx who will then wait for the next amnesty.)

3)I certainly look for Verity's comments.
And Rhoda's.
And Baron Pipin II now, who is a football connoisseur,i.e. appreciative of the way Arsenal play.

4)NEVER forget that politicians, no matter how agreeable, are NEVER to be trusted.That is not to say they always lie;they tell the truth when it suits them. But ALWAYS be sceptical of them.

Cuffleyburgers

The posts of Verity and TGF UKIP or whatever he's called are usually recognizeable for being total bollocks.

However there are some thoughtful and interesting posters, Nicolas and Moraymint being examples that spring particularly.

Your admiration of harman and her ilk is in my view totally misplaced. You are judging her on her terms. If I was to judge her or anyone else it would be on my terms to wit:
Harman:
* intelligent? probably, but usually hides it well when talking
* honest? no (for example, unimpeachable record on expenses)
* honourable? no (for example do we think she would resign if caught redhanded in a lie, or a piece of collossal incompetence)
* is she fair minded and decent? no (eg, if a tory had a good idea would she be prepared to acknowledge the fact, rather than just copy it and pretend she had thought of it)
* would I want her in charge of anything important? no

On this basis how can you possibly award her parliamentarian of the year?

By making the awards in the way you have you reduce parliamentarianism to a game. This does not do justice to the real losers due to venality and incompetence, which is the people of this country.

CS

I don't think anyone necessarily objects to awards going across the political divide. But I've yet to hear anyone involved in the awards give a credible explanation as to why Harriet Harman deserved one. I mean, apart from being in the Cabinet and becoming deputy leader, what exactly has she achieved? Her big thing seems to be gender equality yet she manages to poison the gender equality debate every time she opens her mouth.

The very wording of some of the awards (survivor of the year, resignation of the year, etc) appears designed as a get out clause to allow you to give the awards to complete failures on the other side and so get them to keep talking to you after you've bitched about them all year.

David Alexander

The very business of handing out awards binds donor and recipient in an unholy alliance and feeds the notion that Journalists and politicians are all of a piece.

Indeed, any two members of the ruling class have more in common with each other than either has with any member of the electorate.

Alexandrovich

"I thought they deserved a response..." But not a response addressing their accusations.
And er, how's the other draft coming along?

Peter From Maidstone

I certainly don't expect the Spectator to be a Tory fanzine. In one sense I could care less about the Conservative Party. But you have failed to address major issues and some of your staff writers have repeatedly insulted those who I imagine are your core customers. You are not providing the interesting and stimulating material that Standpoint does (for example), but easy and lazy material that does not either inform or provoke to deeper critical reflection.

I do not expect all of the award winners to be members of the Conservative Party, but it is a very warped view of achievement which grants Harman and Mandelson any such recognition, and that is what you seem to not realise.

Find a good, honest Labour MP and give him an award. I have no problem with that. But these creatures? There is something very wrong with your perception if you do not understand that the reaction here is not tribal at all. What you have done is morally wrong, not just politically controversial.

You have chosen not to reward the good, the honest, the loyal, the faithful, but the self-seeking, the arrogant, the selfish. There is something very objectionable to that.

Andy Hopkins

Fraser.

I think the point you are missing is that previously when looking at both sides of the house, we could all admit that whilst we did not agree with everyone, most people would at least respect most MPs. I don't hold that opinion anymore as I believe that whilst MPs call themselves honourable - exactly the opposite is true in a lot of cases.

Take the blatant lies on immigration policy - do you intend to comment on the Andrew Neather article for example?

That would be a more worthy use of your time, and mine......

oldtimer

It is also obvious, watching your awards ceremony, that you part of the establishment - that cosy world of insiders who presume to tell us what to think and what to do. It is also obvious that you need to be even handed between the mainstream parties in order to gain and retain access.

As Norman Dee asks, can you really be remote or impartial? I imagine that many believe you need the occasional bucket of cold water (or worse) from posters here to challenge the political correctness and/or group think that seems to infect political journalism.

Edward Sutherland

Fraser, Id be surprised if many of your bloggers are that interested in the baubles you dish out annually to politicians at some champagne reception attended by the Westminster village. Most of us are more concerned at seeing the back of a dire administration that has inflicted immense damage on this country. It's just that some of us don't see the same appetite from the Spectator. You were given an open goal on immigration-Brown's clearly scared on this- and you didn't even shoot.Politics isn't supposed to be fun and fraternisation; it's about getting it right for the country.

Yow Min Lye

Though a man of the right myself, I make a point now of always surfing across the Guardian's Comment-is-Free page because, in amongst the predictable politically-correct bleating, you do occasionally come across well-argued posts that set you thinking. Which I guess is what good, honest political debate is all about.

sinosimon

I think this self exculpation demonstrates why so many people have become almost suicidally depressed at the politico-media nexus that rules our fates. We, the great unwashed, are often left in near apoplexy screaming at our tv screens when we see another open goal missed by the interviewer when yet another pack of lies is foisted on the public by politicians of all stripes. And then we see you all cosying up to each other in public........
just to take one( i could expand to many others, but the tautology would be tedious) of your anointed......why should we admire your actions , or take you seriously as a supposed campaigning journalist when you give ANY award to Peter Mandelson? If I were in the media club, every interview with the noble lord would start with "So Peter, why are you fit for public office when we know that you fraudulently failed to declare a secret loan from a fellow labour politician whose business arrangements were being investigated by the department you were running............"

and i mean EVERY interview. This is part of the problem that infects and threatens to overwhelm our democracy.....you in the media seem to have some self-determined statue of limitations on deceitful or criminal acts, and rehabilitate the fallen as soon as it is deemed acceptable by the village elite.
We poor plebs don't want to be ruled by fraudsters, habitual liars and rapers of the public purse........you seem to enjoy celebrating them, and blatantly treat the whole thing as a rarified game.
It is not a game to the poor dupes who will be paying for this rotten government's catastrophic errors of judgement and character for the next 20-30 years.
You are in a priviliged position, you abuse it as much as the troughing MPs when you behave like this, swlilling champagne with proven liars and cheats of all political stripes and laughing at the petty concerns with truthfulness and propriety of the huddled masses. Shame on you

Tiberius

Understood, Fraser, but there is a difference between the Labour party pre and post 1994.

An award to Tony Benn, for example, is fine - your arguments stand up.

But Peter Mandelson is a member of cabal which has sought to destroy political opposition in this country, and crush the aspiration of its citizenry. It does not seek to win by debating policy, but by closing down dissent.

While I understand you have to have a personal relationships with the cabal (after all it is a reality), I can only surmize (and hope) that you have to hold your nose when dealing with them as politicians.

I would ask this: how can you present an award to Mandelson, who has kept Brown in power, after you have invested so much time and effort in exposing the level of financial ruin our PM has inflicted on the country, much of it as a result of deliberate policy?

I don't imagine the Speccie would lose its reputation as the vanguard of the liberal Right if it chose to cold-shoulder the most destructive government this country has probably ever had.

Amadeus Plonquer

Only a month or two into the job and already you're ducking, diving and writing apologies to your readers?

Is this the result of a guilty conscience? Just who was it 'upstairs' who (strongly) suggested you don't follow up on the Neather story, for example? This is the kind of explosive story that 20 years ago would have brought down the government of the day. Today neuvo-journalists are afraid to mention it.

thedarknight

Gross decadence.

It gives the idea that politics in the mind of its practitioners is a kind of showbiz, a way for 'talent' to strut about and perform their roles while patting each other on the back afterwards.

In fact,it makes me extremely angry. Politics is not a game, to reward Mandelson as a politician is the height of decadence. The idea that his lies,smears and dubious behaviour should be celebrated as a paradigm of what politics is merely shows how degraded the idea of public service is and how entrenched is the arrogance of the media and politics elite.

Frank P

More pretentious bunkum! I almost wrote bollocks, but you really don't seem to have any. Moreover, none of it hides the fact that you dress well to the left (even though the indicator is very small, we can easily see which direction it points). And as editor of a magazine that was once reputed to represent a conservative viewpoint your cronies seem to be incongruous; mainly drawn from well left of centre. Your attempt to diffuse the ire of those you named by flattering them with a personal mention will (one hopes) fail miserably.

You self-serving piece has answered few of the complaints directed at you and the magazine in general by its blog commentariat
and none of them satisfactorily.

Finally, you still have answered our most consistent gripe - what didn't you keep your promise and address the Neather allegations?
I suggest PC - on the subject of immigration and in this case the acronym means political cowardice rather than political correctness (which is the same thing anyway).

Mrs B

sinosimon
I agree wholeheartedly with your comments. I've been banging on about this for ages. The media hacks just don't 'get it'. When I read :

".....you in the media seem to have some self-determined statue of limitations on deceitful or criminal acts, and rehabilitate the fallen as soon as it is deemed acceptable by the village elite. We poor plebs don't want to be ruled by fraudsters, habitual liars and rapers of the public purse........you seem to enjoy celebrating them, and blatantly treat the whole thing as a rarified game."

I said YES! Peter Mandleson should not have received an award. As for Harriet Harmen, she's a joke.

Nicholas

I agree not a fanzine for the Tories but surely a banner for the right - even the right of centre? The parliamentary game between political celebrities, which you (Speccie, not you personally) major in is not the same as the serious ideological issues between right and left that face this country. There are some crossovers of course but one of the problems has been that so much of the agenda, change and consequent issues have not been part of an (admitted) manifesto but operate in a separate dimension to the jolly jousting at Westminster.

Then there is the question of the marriage of Harman's ideology and personal agenda pursuant to the duties of her public office. Do you make a distinction? In occasionally bemoaning the emasculation of parliamentary process and parliamentary scrutiny do you factor in the damage to democracy wreaked by these "parliamentarians" who pursue an ideological mantra not aligned to the promise by which they gained office?

I fear that by joining in the self-congratulation you run the risk of not just the Stockholm Syndrome (you have already succumbed to that) but of neglecting that other public duty so important to the press, of holding our politicians to account. By rewarding Harmon from the right (?) for her play-acting in the parliamentary pantomime you are in danger of endorsing and giving respectability to her rather more sinister left-wing purpose. Aren't you?

Frasier Nelson

Tiberius, you're right I have attacked a lot of these guys. But this us not the Nelson Awards - there was a judging panel, including Trevor Kavanagh and Peter Obrone. It is our collective judgment. Can I ask.... if you were on that panel, whom would you have made politician of the year?

Nicholas

Cuffleyburgers I thank you kindly for your supportive comment (although it is Nicholas rather than the spelling affected by that sleazy French dwarf), but I took the absence of an honourable mention in Fraser's Epistle to the Loons (of which I consider myself a fully paid-up member of the tin-foil hatted militant wing) on behalf of Saint Hattie of The Blessed Frogbox as a sort of compliment.

I'm surprised at Boris holding her trophy though.

Jez

Let me explain.

You bet on a boxer to knock out his opponent.

Your boxer just falls on the floor, say sixth round, no real contact, 'writhes' about for a bit, there's a count to ten. It's all over.

You lose. You think there's something not quite right- but you can't say anything really. Again, it's over and done with now.

The week after you see the same two boxers in a bar- seem to be the best of mates. The one who knocked out your boxer (that you'd backed) slips a wad of £50 pound notes to the other and then winks.

Both of them start to laugh and toast each other.

That is the reaction when you see Mandelson with Boris, you, the media elite and the rest of hangers on 'winking at each other' and guffawing whilst having a 'jolly good time'.

It then becomes apparent why there is no debate on immigration, 'Neather-Gate', why the bloody hell we're in Afghanistan or why there is no real resistance regarding the sell out to the EU.

This is why there is utter 'opened jawed' shock at that award ceremony, Fraser.

biggestaspidistra

FN:"Just as Time Magazine does its Man of the Year - hero or villain - The Spectator awards people who are effective no matter to what end."

Here are Time magazine's last seven picks
2002 The Whistleblowers
2003 The American Soldier
2004 George W. Bush
2005 The Good Samaritans
2006 You
2007 Vladimir Putin
2008 Barack Obama

Yes that seems pretty much the same!

Tim Calvert

Fraser

Many polls show that immigration is the issue that most concerns people.

Who did most to make it an issue? - Nick Griffin.

So will you make him "politician of the year".

I don't think so, but that it where your logic leads you.

JohnPage

I can see why Mandelson was politician of the year, as he's made more difference than any other single politician this year. Isn't effectiveness the criterion? And naming Ken Bloke as newcomer of the year was witty. Vacuous - but witty.

I can see the case for Harman, but it's weakened by how she's been all over the place on expenses.

Delighted by Hannan & Carswell's appearance - a sign of things to come?

Worried of Woking

Your justifaction misses the point entirely. No-one objects to Labour politicians winning parliamentary awards, but what is so shocking about Harman winning isn't a left/right argument as you try to portray it - it's about those who want to control every aspect of our lives and those refuseniks amongst us who try resist. It's upsetting to see The Spectator of all magazines honour someone most of its male readers consider remind them of their first wives.

Frank P

Nicholas

"I'm surprised at Boris holding her trophy though"

I'm surprised that you are surprised. As Emperor of Londonistan in general and the multiculti boroughs in particular he must be very keen on currying (forgive my Urdu) the favour of one of the most left of the Leftists that represent what must now be a majority of his electoral constituency.

Boris is a long lost cause. Power corrupts ... etc. (Lord Acton)

A J Scott

I accept the attempted objectivity of your aims in these awards, but to "honour" a (words fail me that might pass the moderator) ---- like Mandelson goes way beyond objectivity and decency. Poor Herbert Morrison must have spun his way several miles out of his grave by now.

Wilhelm

Hamburgers

The comments by Verity are very sharp and witty unlike er, um Alex Massie , Rod Liddle and er, um Fraser.

They are about as interesting as a Tax form.

anne allan

The words "Harman" and "talent" in the same sentence?
Remember Denis Healey's law of holes; when in one, stop digging. This article is just burying you deeper.
Speccie readers are intelligent enough to rise above mere political partisanship.
But, regardless of her political allegiance, Harman is simply not worthy of that award.

mac

Ah, 'Hell will freeze over first' Fraser. Pretty cast iron/ironcast then?

Still, your ready admiration for Harman, Toynbee and Mandelson, and your dismissive 'move along, there's nothing to Neather', will keep your options open if ever you decide to declare for the utopian cause those worthies espouse.

GoodbyeGordon

Fraser your point is well made and the Spectator's 'honest broker' approach is what makes it such a worthwhile read. That said, I think you need to allow readers a little slack on this one. We have all endured 12 years of a morally bankrupt, incompetent, destructive and disgusting government. Harperson epitomises this despicable regime and thus while your argument is perfectly reasonable anything that lends a shred nof dignity to such a figure is difficult to stomach. I think coffee housers should take comfort from the old maxim: you cannot polish a turd.

Frank P

Fraser

From the comments you may feel that your headline is something of a misnomer. You answer seems to have answered no-one, merely provoked other questions; but no doubt as with Neather you will quickly get bored and move on to something else.

ec ho34

sorry peeps,

must have pressed the wrong key, could have sworn this was the spectator..

Looks like OK magazine from the bilge at the top of the page.

Fraser, enough of the excuses, can you please tell us what everyone was wearing at the awards and a copy of the menu would be nice.

Publius

Thedarknight wrote:
"Gross decadence.
It gives the idea that politics in the mind of its practitioners is a kind of showbiz, a way for 'talent' to strut about and perform their roles while patting each other on the back afterwards. "

-- Exactly. Perfectly said. Decadence is the word. A contemptible lack of moral seriousness.

Publius

To put it in extreme terms in order to illustrate the point, it's as though you gave Himmler a prize for sartorial elegance while forgetting the six million Jews he murdered.

Morally bankrupt.

Snowman

dunno Fraser, is the Internet polarizing the political debate? Could it be that it merely furnishes to the debate the views and ideas of those whom the mainstream media don’t give a shite about? Quite remarkably uniform ideas, too, judging from the postings on the Speccie’s blogs. More to the pony point, the polarization has been in place and kicking for years, it won’t go away, trust me, you can feel the other non-mainstream pole, almost touch it if you’d care to venture amongst the hordes of the unwashed.

So who’s to emerge victorious in the Internet age battle of ideas? Those who stick to the polar mast that nurtured the mainstream statist ideology, and to which Liddle, and I guess also you subscribe, albeit with reservations, or those shouting and ranting at the other pole, those in days past submerged, deprived of public voice? You seem rather unsure where to pitch your tent in all this. Your gut feeling fed, one would hope by your journalistic honesty (I mean this, no irony here) and by the tsunami of the ‘edging-you’ postings must be pulling you away from the course you’ve been steering till now, yet you find it hard to chuck in the warm familiarity, the cozy safety of the Westminster village. That’s roughly what your explanatory note is saying, right?

Can or should anyone blame you? Not really. As things stand, why get your teeth into Neather when, God forbid, Lord Mandy may be in the driving seat in few months time.

And another thing on those you showered the awards on. Isn’t there one single MP amongst the 645 honorable members of whatever colour or gender or whatever who didn’t cheat the taxpayer of a single penny?

De Rigueur

Neather here northere - Nelson?

Tankus

Methinks Fraser want's the troll of the year award.

Or ...he's got a bet on with Guido and Dale to see who will have the most hits this month.

This might work for the short term

Nicholas

"I'm surprised at Boris holding her trophy though"

Frank, I was being wicked. Nevetheless I do take your point about Boris' lurch to the dark side.

Tiberius

Fraser, I would ask the same question of Trevor Kavanagh and Peter Oborne as I asked you – why give validity to a politician who has been part of a catastrophic regime?

TC has always (apparently) been a sceptic of New Labour and PO does not have any underlying Left leanings to my knowledge. So they are free to judge Mandelson and Harman as they surely deserve to be.

I stated my choice for politician of the year when the blog on this was first put up. It was George Osborne.

Apart from his capability to get on Brown’s wick, his presentation and policy have finally become to be recognized by commentators such as Irwin Stelzer, for example. Perhaps the problem has been that he doesn’t get as much media coverage as the more garrulous New Labour politicians.

In which case, one should then ask whether the panel has been influenced by extent of media coverage in reaching its decisions. It would indeed be a great disappointment if it was drawn into voting for the political equivalent of Jedward, rather than someone more deserving but who is overlooked by a largely biased broadcast media.

Michael Booth

Edward Sutherland and Sinosimon - well said guys!

Fraser- To be honest, I don't have a problem with recognising worth across the political spectrum - for example, though I don't support his politics I do think Frank Field has worthy things to say. But no matter how hard I try to ram the 'measured and reasonable' hat onto my fevered brow I cannot for the life of me accept that Peter Mandelson should be acclaimed as politican of the year. The man has been caught out times many with shady dealing, he's a manipulator and worse, and is currently propping up a pathetic government and the worst prime minister within living memory. As for Harriet Harman - words fail me. But other speccies are right - these awards really don't mean much in the grand scheme of things, and if it helps you lot at the Speccie to feel even-handed and fair-minded, then good for you. Your readers might think otherwise, however. I do like reading thought-provoking article and see no point in just reading stuff from like-minded people, but it does seem that you have taken decisions not to open up debate in key areas, such as Neathergate, and your readers want to know why.

Bunnykins

Fraser. I'm glad I don't subscribe to the Spectator Magazine anymore. I'd hate to think any of my money would have contributed to such an obscene event. Are you guys at all chastened by the universal derision your 'Awards' have received? Or are we to expect more of the same under your stewardship?

AAE

So The Speccie, a magazine of Enlightenment ideals, awards those in a government which has constructed all the props of a socialist totalitarian state which is increasingly outlawing the plurality of individual thought and aspiration of which Fraser speaks. This in a week when we learn that any jobsworth in one of hundreds of public bodies can find out who we speak to on the phone, or who we email, or what use we make of the internet - how long before someone is refused a job even on account of what contribution they might make to Coffee House? Harman's grossly mis-named Equality Bill is another catch-all anti-freedom mechanism much in the manner of the Health and Safety legislation now becomes law. This week we hear that juries will no longer have discretion to reduce a murder charge to manslaughter whether or not the evidence might suggest it - yet another loss of individual freedom by the selfish tyranny of the state, and this done with the express wish of the government to stop what it sees as leniency shown to men who murder women, yet Harman, nor any other award winning MP says a word about the plight of girls who are forced into arranged marriages whilst the Home Office and the police look on congratulating themselves on their cultural sensitivities. And on and on and on . . . . . . I think the charge of political cosiness sticks Fraser, to which I would add laziness. Among our hundreds of MPs, you, Oborne and Kavanagh who should know most of them by now, chose only those who give voice on countless hours of TV and radio, or in acres of space in print - are there no little known parliamentarians whose actions or thoughts you think should be brought to our notice and recognised by these awards?

Chuck Unsworth

"in cyberspace brickbats vastly outnumber bouquets"

As everywhere else.

But the judges' choice of Harman was very poor. For one in her elevated position, she has hardly had real impact, although she has been vociferous. What are her achievements? Precious few, in my view, and even Hannan - with one speech - has had greater effect.

Still, it's not as if any of your readers are actually picking up the tab - for the piss-up or for the glittering prizes. Perhaps you could consider conducting polls for these awards next year.

London Calling

I noticed other posts are getting through..Third time lucky? re posting...

To Fraser

As a spectator one would assume that if I stepped into the arena, I to would be mauled by the lions, it would appear that this is also the case towards you judging by the commentary.

If as you state The Spectator have been presenting these awards since the year dot, what makes this years awards so repellent? I don’t remember video footage of last years awards on the Spectator, What changed? The political landscape
or those who were chosen by the Spectator judges that so offended?, either way its all a game of Snakes and Ladders to me, the last meal for the upper class just before the Titanic sank…

“This is not a Tory Fanzite”….what is the Spectator then? Friends reunited…

Holly ......

Fraser Nelson.1.57.
IDS. would have won them ALL if I was on the panel.
George Osborne should have won one for standing up to toady Mandelson and NOT changing anything he has said....AND BEING PROVEN CORRECT.
Diane Abbott should have won one for having her admiration of GB shattered.
Ed Balls should have won one for keeping his face off my telly for the last month.
Yon bloke up in Scotland for pulling the Glasgow by-election and then having the limelight nicked off him by the Westminster croud,spouting that it was because GB is so brilliant at running the country is why Labour won.(Maybe the poor runt should get two or three awards)
Didn't the 'panel' think outside the bubble?
Us CH's should do it next year.
You lot have no idea.Same old same old.

Peter From Maidstone

And are there no Lords who are doing a quiet but solid service to the people that perhaps don't get on QT? Or are the awards actually only for people who get on the TV? It seems impossible not to assume that these awards are just for those who feature in the media and are nothing to do with competence and service.

De Rigueur

Truth is dear Nelson, most of the commentators on your post actually have more valid things to say about our current state of affairs than you do. The only difference between them and yourself is some kind of warped celebrity status because you occasionally get to meet some of the midgets who intrude on the stage of current affaires. As someone said earlier, stop perpetuating the myth and start creating your own.
Sorry if the tone sounds bitter, but you really should give your underpants a hike north.
God Bless.

Tom FD

Exactly... it's a measure of power, not of appeal.

TGF UKIP

Fraser, I must first of all acknowledge the mention especially in your "freak show" para featuring Hitchens and Galloway, Coulter and Moore and WWF boxing. Naturally I appreciate even more the dismissive vitriol the mention aroused in some quarters.

So far as my friend Verity is concerned I note that she has been absent for the past few days so I hope that she is not unwell or carried out her threat to depart the Coffee House for other pastures. It would be a lesser place without her so let's just hope she is engaged on one of her bouts of travelling.

So far as Nicholas is concerned, I have posted before that he would grace the pages of your magazine far more than some of your regular contributors do and I would be far more likely to visit a Nicholas Coffee House blogsite than those of some of your luvvie media mates who you currently flatter with sites.

On the subject matter of the Speccie awards, as I indicated in my post to your original piece, I fully understand the commercial and editorial imperatives behind them and I quite accept that it would be a diminution of the Speccie's prestige and standing to forsake them.

Unfortunately, the award that has produced most ire and puzzlement is quite justifiably that of Parliamentian of the Year to Harman. How on earth that came about given her role in the attempted defence of Martin and, more seriously, in the Damian Green non-debate is quite baffling. It would be most interesting to hear the reaction of whichever Shadow nonentity is her opposite number.

I do note, though, your piece of NuLab attempted placatory spin indicating that the panel "included" Kavanagh and Oborne which inevitably prompts the question - which luvvies made up the rest, Polly and her mates?

Jez

All comments made by myself were on the back of seeing the first two minutes- with the 'celebrity / political elite' and the final segment; Mandelson.

A little perplexed at the constant references to Harman and Darling, i flicked through the thing again.

So you had Harman, Darling and Mandelson there. You also gave them an award each.

That is really bad.

Fraser. If anyone could have tried to present to the nation just how detached the media / Westminster bubble has become from the overall situation out here in the real-world, then in a million years they couldn't have done a better job than 'that' award ceremony.

What were you thinking?

We know it's all web-clicks, promotion and marketing now to compensate for a paperless world but really, what the hell were you lot thinking?

The Spectator is a Centralist Tory publication not 'OK' magazine.

Unbelievable.

Jez

"P.S. For the avoidance of doubt (Kevyn), hell will freeze over before I stand for Parliament."

But i bet you'd injure yourself trying to get to the front of an MBE que.

Anthony

I support all the objections to your line by earlier bloggers, but my main gripe is that to me the whole award ceremony came over as a mutual back-slapping and self-congratulations party to which only the in-crowd had been invited. Harman is certainly not worth any award, apart from Feminist Fanatic of the Year, and the creepy Mandelson lived up, or down, to his deserved reputation. Why you chose to risk offending your core supporters by leaning over backwards - or leftwards - in this way is beyond me. Of course the Speccie must not be politically unprincipled, but it must show credible judgement. Only Boris saved the day, thank God. Give the awards a rest, or re-invent them.

derek ashwell

He said hell would freeze before he became an MP, sure must a bin a hard winter.

logdon

Awards go to the least deserving and this flaccid justification?

Award One to a feminist marxist, educated at a school she would deny others.

One who through her nepotistic strands of connection has achieved such hollow power and yet you applaud her?

This woman is a Marie Antoinette, shallow, conniving, out of touch with the realities of the lives of the commoners she purports to speak for, yet now hailed by the Spectator?

As for Mandelson? Give me a break. The champagne socialist for all seasons, living the life of an oligarch and preaching his camp hypocrisy.

Ducking, diving, breaking the law and coming out of it all, self enriched and smelling of putrid, decaying roses. The fleur de mal of European politics.

This is the new corrupt establishment of political loveydom and you are part of it, exampled both by these silly and fatuous awards and your fey relativism when race, immigration, Islam and Britishness raise their pesky heads.

It won't go away. No amount of the gaudy tinsel of these distractions will affect the public's dismayed gaze.

Fortunately this navel gazing influences voters in no way whatsoever. The inner circle beanfests remain within that inner circle of backslapping careerists and flies over the heads of a groaning general public who’s voices remain unrepresented.

Expenses and immigration are what they talk of.

Huge salaries and improbable expense accounts of public service tenured employees from the BBC, through councils and ending at a bloated NHS.

Cities and towns disfigured by imported ghettos of unassimilated immigrants.

Snooping and Stasiesque surveillance.

The swamping blanket of petty statedom. Poking, intruding and completely useless.

That’s reality.

This is merely the stuff of fairytale politics and you are the Tinkerbell’s who propogate this flim flam of an excuse.

logdon

And if in doubt your very own Mr Liddle nails it. Albeit certainly not within your own august organ.

Heaven forbid it.

"November 15, 2009
Labour’s heartland won’t be fooled on immigration again
Rod Liddle

There is something a little pitiful watching Gordon Brown tell the country how worried he is about immigration, and how it must not be a taboo issue. Like watching a paralytic drunk explaining in slurred tones how he will never touch another drop, and all the while you can smell the paint-stripper on his breath.

There is no issue — with the possible exception of Iraq — on which Labour has been more deceitful to the public at large, or has more egregiously betrayed its core working-class support. The only reason Brown is addressing the issue now is that we are six months away from an election and he fears that the troglodyte BNP thickoes will chew away great big gobfuls of angry working-class voters across a diagonal swathe of supposedly Labour country, from the white-flight satellite towns of Essex to the old mill towns of east Lancashire.

It is little more than lip service from the prime minister and, worse, unaccompanied by even the vaguest admission that his government has let its people down.

We know from the Labour backbencher Chris Mullin’s diaries that ministers would not address the issue of immigration because they were terrified of being called racist: so they did nothing. More recently, the former home office adviser Andrew Neather suggested that the Labour government threw open the doors to vast numbers of immigrants precisely in order to create a truly multicultural Britain, whether or not the British public wanted such a thing (every opinion poll suggests that they did not)."

And on it goes, telling a truth you guys always shy away from.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rod_liddle/article6917199.ece

David Ossitt

Almost everything that has been posted above; in criticism of the awards I agree with.

But; unless I have missed it nobody has mentioned the fact that you invited that dreadful man, the disgraced MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup Derek Conway to the award lunch.

Please explain; what possible reasons you had, that would justify you extending an invitation to this despicable man.

Katy Cat

Hi Fraser, I noticed your article in the NoTW (01.11) in which you've referred to US welfare reform having eradicated poverty. Or something like that.

I realise that you're pitching to a more gullible kind of audience with this kind of piece but, even so, that's quite a statement.

Would you care to share your research around such a finding? I think there's a market for this whole new paradigm and urge you to tell us more - it sounds like you're a potential contender for a Richard Littlejohn 'You couldn't make it up' award.

Frank P

logdon

Obviously Rod kicked against the pricks; he does come up with the goods when least expected, that boy. Mind you, we should get at least a drink for that article, most of it came from the posts of the window lickers or directly from Melanie and the other journos who had the balls to run it. Good for him, though. I did a bit of air punching this morning when I read it.

Peter Steadman

It's a bit puzzling that under a blog titled "In answer to your questions" you fail to mention the Neather story when so many postings ask you to comment. What's a chap to think? Even I, and I suspect many of your readers, are becoming somewhat perplexed at your failure to venture a thought... This is the third arttempt at posting what sort of system have you?

Haldane

It's a bit puzzling that under a blog titled "In answer to your questions" you fail to mention the Neather story when so many postings ask you to comment. What's a chap to think? Even I, and I suspect many of your readers, are becoming somewhat perplexed at your failure to venture a thought...

Daniel 1979

When you refer to Coffeehousers I feel the subject to your post, and ditto Spectator readers. When your panel handed out awards for reasoning that I, and I feel others who associate to those handles do not agree with I want to grab a "not in my name" placard. The reasoning for Harman and Mandy’s awards are not widely shared and the only people on the centre-right that find appreciation of them and their methods seem to work in close proximity to Westminster.

Next year, how about dropping the panel and going straight to the readers for all of the awards?

bill

I have been reading the Spectator for about thirty years. We used to get a free copy at my Oxford college. Whilst my memory may be failing me, I don't recall the left being given much quarter during the first and perhaps second decade that I bought it. I started feeling the Speccie was beginning to lose some of its political "soundness" in the late 90s which was when I began becoming disenchanted until I decided to cease buying it.

Wily Trout

OK, Hell will freeze over before you stand for Parliament, but a nice un-elected SPAD job...? Or, Lord Nelson...? I think you are hedging your bets these days. Have you lost confidence in Dave?