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Join the Intelligence2 debate

Join us in the great Intelligence2 debate

Matthew d'Ancona

Wednesday, 12th September 2007

The Spectator’s new partnership with the debating forum

Civilised debate is the essence of The Spectator: it is what animated ‘the little Committee of Politicks’ that Joseph Addison encountered in the St James’s Coffee-house and described in the magazine in March 1711. Three centuries on, it is the desire for a cheerful rhetorical punch-up, in print or in person, that still excites us most at 22 Old Queen Street.

Rod Liddle, Jeremy Clarke, Deborah Ross, Taki, Fraser Nelson: these are only some of the verbal pugilists who form the ‘little Committee’ in our own happy, cacophonous republic of letters.

So it is with the greatest pleasure that we are launching in this issue The Spectator’s new alliance with that much younger but already glorious organisation Intelligence2, the brainchild of two media entrepreneurs, John Gordon and Jeremy O’Grady.

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Labour’s punishment freaks are hounding honest citizens

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Ross Clark says that far from keeping our streets safer or cleaner, the government’s new force of amateur policemen are ignoring the worst offenders and pursuing law-abiding innocents instead

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Christina Lamb interviews the husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zardari, who hopes to be named President of Pakistan this Saturday

Never mind the Olympics — get set for the Jubilee

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Free and open to everyone, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 will eclipse the London Games, says Robert Hardman — an unforgettable tribute to the monarch

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Mary Wakefield talks to the author William P. Young, whose self-published religious novel has astounded the publishing world and sold nearly two million copies

In defence of David Southall

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Theodore Dalrymple examines the evidence against two much-vilified British paediatricians, Professors Southall and Meadow, and finds it sadly lacking

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Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

Give us back our Big Idea, Mr Cameron

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Liam Byrne — tipped for Cabinet promotion in the reshuffle — says that when Cameroons advocate ‘fraternity’ they are repackaging the Conservative case for the shrinking of the state

Status Anxiety

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At first, I thought the reason the British Consul General in Los Angeles had agreed to have lunch with me was because he knew who I was.

Our lazy firemen must make a radical change

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Britain’s firefighters are under-worked and inflexible, says Leo McKinstry. It’s time we created a unified emergency service

Don’t mention the Afghan–Pakistan war

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Both Britain and America are reluctant to admit it but, says Fraser Nelson, our most pressing foreign policy problem is what to do about Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state in which terrorists have taken sanctuary