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The Spectator’s notes

Charles Moore

Wednesday, 5th December 2007

Charles Moore's thoughts on the week

Most people agree that last week was the most embarrassing for the Labour party since Mr Brown became Prime Minister. This would have been hard to discern from the reporting in the Times, though. After splashing on the first day of the story, it then relegated front-page coverage to single paragraph cross-references, and concentrated on things like the ‘stealth curriculum’ for toddlers instead. The comment, too, was amazingly unThundering. If the Times has a feeling that there is, in general, too much Westminster politics in the newspapers, it is right. But here is a case where the story really does make a difference: an entire government is paralysed by scandal and the fear of more scandal to come. Why shelter Times readers from this news?

At the Labour conference in September, Jack Dromey said that his party was ‘starting to gear up’ for an election, and was ‘no longer racking up debts’ but ‘living within our means’. He also attacked Boris Johnson, saying he was a ‘tufty toff’ and ‘as genuine as a nine-bob note’. Mr Dromey is married to the niece of an earl, Harriet Harman, who is the Deputy Leader of the Labour party. She accepted £5,000 from Mr Abrahams, which he gave under the pseudonym of Janet Kidd. Mr Dromey is Treasurer of the Labour party. One would not be human if one did not get a little thrill of pleasure from rereading Mr Dromey’s words now.

In America, Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials, has been renamed The Golden Compass for the purposes of a film. Should the reverse happen in Britain, and Gordon Brown’s ‘moral compass’ be renamed his ‘dark materials’?

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bruce

December 29th, 2007 8:14pm

the oxford english dictionary (2nd ed.) confirms both terms as per the johnson dictionary definition

Philip T

January 5th, 2008 12:54am

Who was the extreme anti-semite hosted by Ahmed? Doesn't anti-semitism constitute racism and is therefore an offence?
Also, what did these two do to deserve peerages; I'd certainly never heard of them before they became peers.