Home > The Magazine > Features

Saturday 17 May 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Peter Hoskin

Pete suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

How Gordon sees the world

Mark Leonard

Wednesday, 23rd August 2006

Mark Leonard, an authority on Labour foreign policy with strong connections to the government, has spoken to those close to the Chancellor in search of Brown’s notoriously opaque views on international affairs. This is what he discovered

Imagine the scene. It is 2007. The pale November sun is slowly melting the frosted roofs of Camp David. A throng of journalists — bristling with cameras, arc lamps and microphones — jostle for position around two podiums. Suddenly the doors of a log cabin swing open, and President Bush and Prime Minister Brown walk out for their first joint press conference. They ignore the battery of predictable questions — ‘Does Prime Minister Brown — like Blair and Bush — use Colgate toothpaste?’; ‘Have the two leaders prayed together?’; ‘Will they use military strikes against Iran?’ After the obliga-tory platitudes about the importance of the special relationship, Brown drops his bomb-shell: the British mission in Iraq has been accomplished; our boys are coming home.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 Next page

More articles from: Mark Leonard | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

The secret letters of the Jonestown death cult

Barry Isaacson

Thirty years after the mass suicides and murders in Guyana, Barry Isaacson unveils a cache of letters he found in his LA home, mapping the pain of one of the families

C’mon Cherie: even Goering stuck up a bit for Hitler

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says it is no surprise that Gordon Brown has ended up as surly and suspicious as he has: the memoirs of John Prescott, Lord Levy and Cherie Blair are appalling acts of treachery and avarice

I never want to be as insecure as Olivier

Tim Walker

Tim Walker talks to Greta Scacchi about her new role in The Deep Blue Sea, the gaucheness of Bill Murray — and being offered the lead in Basic Instinct

Meet James Purnell: the best hope Labour has of avoiding disaster

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson says that the 38-year-old Work and Pensions Secretary is the best candidate to succeed Gordon Brown. Already surging ahead at his department, he has the gift of sounding like an ordinary human being — and he understands the Cameron Conservative party

An Actor's Life

Joan Collins

Joan Collins lives an actor's life

Milburn: What’s it all about, Gordon?

Fraser Nelson

Alan Milburn gives his first interview since Brown became PM, and tells Fraser Nelson that Gordon has converted to Blairism too late. Something new is needed now

Pity the monks of Tibet who dare to hope that anyone will come to their aid

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle is appalled by the appeasement of China, a country that now combines the most oppressive aspects of state Marxism with the most brutally rapacious aspects of capitalism.

The miners’ strike and the fight against Islamism

Charles Moore

Extremism dies when its lack of legitimacy is revealed, Charles Moore says. Muslim fundamentalism is as brittle as union militancy was in the Eighties

The biggest tent of the lot: to stop Blair becoming EU President

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says that the former Prime Minister has pulled off an astonishing feat: uniting Left and Right, Europhiles and Eurosceptics, people of all nations and creeds, online and
in print, in their glorious campaign to prevent him becoming President of Europe

Meet the minister for selling the unsellable

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson warms to Jim Murphy, the Minister for Europe, who is steering the Lisbon Treaty through parliament — and now promises that he would help Blair become EU President