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Sunday 22 November 2009

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

When I try to track the recent change of mood in political ideas, I trace the history of Policy Exchange. Just before the 2005 general election, I became its chairman. It was then a tiny organisation, dedicated to advancing the forgotten proposition that ideas could come out of the centre-right. Under the founding director, Nicholas Boles, it did this so successfully that it became the biggest and most influential think-tank of its kind. Last year, Nicholas left, and was succeeded by Anthony Browne, who has doubled Policy Exchange’s size in little more than a year. It commands the field. The only drawback of success is that people want our people. Last week, Anthony Browne was stolen from us by Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, who is in want of policies. So we need a new director. What is required? Nothing much — only the skills to manage creative people, fund-raising enthusiasm, the ability to perform in public and, above all, the gift of intellectual leadership. If you are interested, please email natalie.evans@policyexchange.org.uk.

Kate Summerscale’s fascinating book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (Bloomsbury), which has just won the Samuel Johnson Prize, is about a child murder in 1860. It is also about how the press reported that murder. The situation was a very modern one. A great many papers were competing furiously for the news. They took sides, some blaming the London detective (Mr Whicher), and some the local constabulary. Some of them suggested that the child’s father was the murderer, others his half-sister, and so on. They mixed expressions of distaste for the details revealed with a supply of such details every bit as explicit as would appear today. They made the murder a talking point throughout the nation. This was a new phenomenon, as Kate Summerscale observes; but there is more to be said about why it all happened. As with so much social change, it was to do with tax. In 1855, the Newspaper Stamp Act had removed the tax charged by the government on all papers that conveyed news. This reform enraged the Times because it feared ‘a cheap class of newspapers giving all the news which we believe to constitute our principal attraction’. This duly happened, and new papers, most notably the Daily Telegraph, sprang up. Their era has continued to this day. But now the internet does the same thing of which the Times complained, and gets there first — cheaply or free — with most of the news, and the print and broadcast media are thrown into convulsions. What is there, today, ripe for abolition, to compare with the stamp charged on newspapers? The BBC licence fee.

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