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Friday 22 August 2008

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Clemency Burton-Hill

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Boris is the kind of Tory I’d vote for: which means he can win

Rod Liddle

Wednesday, 11th July 2007

Rod Liddle urges his friend to stand for Mayor of London and demonstrate
what modern Conservatism can do — if you let it

I’ve voted Conservative only once in my life — during elections to the London School of Economics students’ union 23 years ago, when the Tory manifesto pledged to spend all of the union money on buying a racehorse, rather than giving it to the bloody miners, or Robert Mugabe, or Pol Pot, as Labour wished to do. A lot of my fellow lefties voted similarly, sick to the back teeth of the posturing, grand-standing, attitudinalising antics of these awful little gobby public schoolboys from Tunbridge Wells and Berkhamsted in their interminable Che Guevara berets and Coal Not Dole! badges. This sort of middle-class Leninist radical chic was well past its sell-by date even in 1984 and joyously lampooned by both Rik Mayall in The Young Ones and ‘Student Grant’ in Viz at the time. And yet, bizarrely, all these years later we find that a sort of warped, less amenable, version of Student Grant is still Mayor of London; the old History Man moustache may have disappeared along with the Comrade Mugabe safari suit and those pointless newts, but the infantile leftist posturing, the colossal arrogance and the incompetence remains.

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After Jade’s cancer, what next? ‘I’m a tumour, get me out of here’?

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says that the stunningly tasteless announcement of Jade Goody’s cervical cancer on Indian Big Brother marks a new low. But that won’t stop TV bosses saying it is a public service

Economic recovery plan? Forget it, Gordon

Martin Vander Weyer

The Prime Minister’s survival is pinned on a September ‘relaunch’ to ease the voters’ economic woes. But, says Martin Vander Weyer, each door through which Brown tries to escape his predicament slams in his face. His room for manoeuvre is negligible

Georgia sheds light on the mind of Cameron

James Forsyth

James Forsyth says that the Tory leader is more immersed in foreign policy than first seemed probable. Unlike Brown, he has ambitions as an international leader

Behind closed doors with the maestro

Clemency Burton-Hill

As a Proms presenter, Clemency Burton-Hill had unique access to Daniel Barenboim last week: she reports on his private remarks about music and his rage for excellence

Poles are the fall guys of the immigration debate

Dennis Sewell

The taboo on discussing migration has only been partly lifted, says Dennis Sewell. We pretend that all migrants are the same, whereas the statistics reveal some uncomfortable truths

Give us back our Big Idea, Mr Cameron

Liam Byrne

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

‘I’m not an ambassador for New Labour, I’m an MP’

Martin Rowson

In the latest of his occasional series, Martin Rowson talks to Bob Marshall-Andrews, serial Labour rebel who had the entertaining cheek to accuse Miliband of disloyalty

‘There is nothing saying Labour will ever win power again’

Fraser Nelson

The choice facing the governing party is between defeat and annihilation, says Fraser Nelson. For now, Labour is mired in ‘division without decision’ as Jack Straw, David Miliband and others wait to see who — if anyone — will wield the knife against Gordon Brown

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

We have a duty to protect Zimbabwe

Peter Oborne

Robert Mugabe is murdering, starving and brutalising his people in the run-up to the presidential elections next week, says Peter Oborne. We should act now to prevent civil war and ethnic cleansing