Home > The Magazine > Features

Wednesday 9 July 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Liz Anderson

Liz 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

Brown’s rhetoric suggests he will abandon the Foreign Office view that Britain needs to take part in European projects — even if they are flawed — in order to influence them from the inside. At the Treasury he has often relied more on the brute force of his ideas and the threat of a veto to influence his European partners (although this approach is less effective in policy areas that are decided by majority voting). One famous battle over a Commission proposal for a ‘withholding tax’ saw Brown argue his way from being in a minority of one in 1999, to securing majority support for his approach in 2003. Brown’s allies expect him to use similar tactics to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). One explains, ‘There was incandescence in the Treasury when Blair settled on the EU budget in 2005 without sorting out the CAP. Total incomprehension. The damage it did to public finances; to world trade talks and the chances of France and Germany shifting in the Doha round.’ One concession that Blair did win was an agreement that the European budget will be reviewed in 2008 or 2009. A Labour adviser predicts that Brown will use the opportunity for a showdown with the French: ‘Brown has more appetite for a fight than Blair. Blair wants to be liked and have other leaders on the phone. Gordon would be much more comfortable being isolated in Brussels, lapping up the praise from the press back home.’

Previous page 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

A portrait of the artist as a tennis champion

Melissa Kite

Melissa Kite meets Martina Navratilova, nine times Wimbledon singles champion and now pioneer of ‘tennising’ — an artistic technique that creates Jackson Pollock-style patterns

Et tu, Scott? Bush’s press aide turns on his boss

James Forsyth

James Forsyth talks to Scott McClellan, former press secretary to the President, about his new book attacking the Bush administration, its methods and its deceits

The Law Lords are right to resist the government

Lord Lloyd of Berwick

Lord Lloyd of Berwick says that the government’s emergency legislation to overturn their lordships’ ruling on witness anonymity is part of a ‘gradual usurpation’ of our liberties

I was starstuck by David Cameron

Steven Berkoff

In the week of the Spectator Summer Party, Steven Berkoff recalls another of our celebrations at which he sought out the Tory leader and forgave his confusion of Brando and Dean

How to get stabbed: you, too, can be knifed in a public place

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says that it helps to be aged between 14 and 30, white and male. Being drunk and argumentative speeds things along. And no public policy seems to dissuade those who do the stabbing

Very discreetly, Cameron is writing his first Queen’s Speech

Fraser Nelson

In spite of their commanding poll lead, the Tories are terrified of seeming complacent. But, as Fraser Nelson discloses, work is well advanced on a first-term plan for government in which education reform and a welfare revolution will be the centrepieces

EU leaders will never consult us again

Daniel Hannan

Daniel Hannan, who predicted the Irish ‘No’ vote in this magazine, now says that the EU will simply implement the Lisbon Treaty and never risk a referendum again

‘If there’s a vote of no confidence on 42 days, we’ll win’

Matthew d'Ancona

In her only print interview, Jacqui Smith tells Matthew d’Ancona that her proposal for the detention of terror suspects does not undermine Magna Carta, that she is ‘frustrated’ by Lord Goldsmith, and that the ‘West Midlands housewife’ is a better judge of the threat than MPs

‘Touch wood,’ Karzai said to me. You hear it all the time

Fraser Nelson

From the President downwards, all Afghans know that the peace in Helmand is precarious.Fraser Nelson reports from a shattered land of corruption and murky power where warlords wait to see if the West has what it takes to stay the course and thwart a horrific new conflict

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