Miliband’s problem is that he seems to believe he will be facing Mrs Thatcher at the next election. His strategy is built around fighting a Conservative party that is perceived to be harsh on the poor. This was the critique for the late 1980s, when almost half of Labour voters agreed with the notion that people live in need because of social injustice and three quarters wanted benefits to be increased. The reforms Mrs Thatcher made were radical, the disruption huge.

Back then, Miliband’s automatic response to stand up for benefit claimants would have made perfect sense. He would have been tapping into a significant well of feeling that the poor were poor because hard-headed economic reforms had pulled the ground from beneath their feet, and that it was callous to expect the jobless to get on their bikes and look for work outside the industries in which they had been brought up. Such feelings extended well beyond the Labour-voting classes. In 1987 — the year of Thatcher’s third general election victory — two fifths of Conservative voters thought that the government should increase welfare benefits.

The public, however, has become a good deal more hard-headed on the issue of welfare benefits over the past quarter-century, and this is especially true of Labour voters. Now, a quarter of Labour’s support agree that poverty is the result of social injustice, and only a third want welfare benefits to be increased. Remarkably, almost half agree with the notion that if welfare benefits were cut, it would help people to stand on their own two feet. Perhaps most striking of all is Labour voters’ perceptions of the reasons behind child poverty. A third are minded to blame ‘society’ — and a whacking 63 per cent are more inclined to blame the children’s parents.

These views are changing not because of Tory propaganda but because of what people on council estates see with their own eyes. The welfare state is now fostering the very worklessness it was designed to eradicate. Workers on low pay are well aware that their neighbours on welfare do not face similar constraints. In some parts of Britain’s inner-city estates, parents have watched in horror as their children leave school and sign on to welfare as a lifestyle choice. The fault lies not with the teenagers, but the system. This is more than just a waste of money; it is an unforgiveable waste of human potential.

These are not views you will hear much coming from Labour’s middle class, the metropolitan elite. Among the circles in which Ed himself moves, there still exists a patrician socialism, where the poor are seen from a distance and the state takes on, formalises and enhances the role of traditional charitable structures.

Ed Miliband’s fight against welfare reform does make some political sense. It is a policy likely to win over well-heeled Liberal Democrats offended by their party’s dalliance with the Conservative devil. On virtually every measure of their attitude towards the welfare system, Liberal Democrats are now significantly to the left of Labour voters. Miliband’s problem, though, is that he must hold on to his core voters who, as was seen a fortnight ago, are quite capable of leapfrogging to Nigel Farage’s Ukip. An overgenerous benefits system which encourages worklessness is becoming entwined with mass immigration as a cause of dissent among the working class.

In some ways we are going back to the late 1970s, when a large body of those who had been assumed to be natural Labour voters were poised to switch to the right. Now as then, if the Conservatives could find a way of winning over these potential defectors, they might look forward to two or three election victories. The problem is that, apart from Iain Duncan Smith, so few Tories speak eloquently about welfare reform. The Work and Pensions Secretary has given his party a new tune, but they seem happy to let him do all the whistling. When the Chancellor joins the debate, he does so with a relish that leaves the party open to Mr Miliband’s attacks.

As so often, the Tory party’s problem is that it does not know what it is doing right. The emergence of a welfare class has been one of the most damaging legacies of the last Labour government. The public recognises that, and wants to support Iain Duncan Smith’s reforms on social security. David Cameron has shied away from his own party’s welfare agenda — perhaps for fear of being branded an upper-class enemy of the poor. But if the Prime Minister wishes to retain power after 2015, he must find a convincing way of talking about welfare. Nigel Farage — himself from a privileged background — has succeeded in doing just that.

The post Labour’s welfare weakness appeared first on The Spectator.

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, flew to Sochi, on the Black Sea, to talk with President Vladimir Putin, principally about Syria. He then flew to Washington, to support the American tour by Prince Harry and hold talks with President Barack Obama. They said that Britain and America wanted to strengthen the moderate opposition in Syria somehow. In a joint press conference, Mr Obama also said: ‘The UK’s participation in the EU is an expression of its influence.’ Mr Cameron tried to placate Tory MPs by rushing out a draft EU referendum bill, in the face of an amendment in the Queen’s Speech debate expressing regret at the absence of such a bill in the government programme. EU officials investigating price-fixing raided the London offices of BP and Shell. Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition, bravely ran into the middle of the road to save a woman who had fallen off her bicycle.

Abu Qatada said he would go to Jordan for trial voluntarily if Britain ratified a new treaty to prevent evidence obtained through torture being used against him; Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said that Britain would press ahead with its own plans. Seven men — Akhtar Dogar, Anjum Dogar, Mohammed Karrar, Bassam Karrar, Kamar Jamil, Assad Hussain, and Zeeshan Ahmed — were found guilty at the Old Bailey of rape and assaults against girls as young as 11, organised from Oxford. Seven other men had already been jailed for up to 18 years for rape and trafficking in underage girls around Telford in Shropshire; although all were of Pakistani ethnicity and all the girls were white, police said that the crimes were not racially motivated. Lord Ahmed resigned from the Labour party on the eve of a party hearing on reports of his having blamed Jews for his imprisonment in 2009 for dangerous driving. Chris Huhne, the former Cabinet minister, and Vicky Pryce, his former wife, were both released from prison after serving 62 days of an eight-month sentence.

The FTSE 100 index rose above 6,600, its highest since 2007. IAG, which owns Iberia and British Airways, made losses of £531 million in the first quarter, thanks to the performance of the Iberia side of things. Moody’s downgraded the Co-operative Bank to ‘junk’ status. Bryan Forbes, the film director, died, aged 86. Geza Vermes, the eccentric scholar of the Dead Sea scrolls, died, aged 88. Andrew Simpson, the Olympic sailor, died when his catamaran capsized, aged 36. A BAE pilotless aircraft designed for passengers flew from Preston to Inverness, controlled from the ground. Goldeneye ducks were found to be refusing to spend the winter in Britain because it has grown too warm.

Abroad

Nawaz Sharif claimed victory for his Pakistan Muslim League in the general election. Two car-bombs killed 46 people in the Turkish town of Reyhanli on the Syrian border. A video circulated seeming to show Abu Sakkar, the leader of the Syrian rebel Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade, cutting out the heart of a dead Syrian soldier and taking a bite; ‘I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog,’ says the man in the video. President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria declared a state of emergency in three northern states in response to Islamist attacks. Boats evacuating Rohingya Muslims in the path of a cyclone in western Burma were overcome by the seas and perhaps 100 were feared dead. Pope Francis canonised 813 Christians who refused to adopt Islam and so were beheaded by Turks invading Otranto in 1480.

A woman was rescued after 17 days trapped under the ruins of a clothing factory complex in Dhaka where at least 1,127 are now known to have died. Police began a criminal investigation into the explosion at the West Fertilizer Company in Texas that killed 14 people in April. The Gerb party led by Boiko Borisov narrowly won the Bulgarian elections but with too few seats to form a credible coalition. In China hundreds were arrested for passing off rat meat as lamb.

France fell into its second recession in four years. The US Internal Revenue Service apologised for exerting extra scrutiny of tax-exempt groups that had the words ‘Tea Party’ or ‘patriot’ in their names before last year’s elections. Angelina Jolie announced that she had had a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer, to which she was genetically predisposed. Tata Steel wrote off a £1 billion loss from its European assets. The UN urged people to eat more insects.

The post 18 May 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

I was reprimanded recently over that miraculous online ordering, and as I have recently moved a mile from a small market town which has everyone’s idea of the old-fashioned high street, I decided to put it to the test. It serves us well for hairdresser, optician, computer supplies, pharmacist, newsagent and fresh fish, and has a plethora of gift shops supplying stuff nobody needs but everyone wants. My dull list read ‘Cosmetic sponge. Arch-support insoles. Disposable nappies, size 4’ (for a visiting grandchild). Our bricks-and-mortar shops yielded none of the above. Cosmetic sponges didn’t exist; insoles ‘only men’s’; nappies, ‘out of that size’ — though a friend accomplished all her list, which read ‘China bell-pull’. My stuff, bought online, arrived next morning with free delivery. I rest my case.

Myfanwy Piper, that wise woman, used to say, ‘There’s too much talk.’ Now it has extended sideways to ‘There’s too much writing’, the problem  being that people feel they have to read it all. ‘I’ve started a blog’ is news to make the heart sink. I need my later years to read the best — novels, biographies, scholarship in a hundred subjects I want to learn about, poetry, letters, wit. I’ve cut out newspapers other than the local one, plus a canter through the hatches, matches and despatches and where the Queen went yesterday. No blogs, websites, gossip columns or online mags. But reading and rereading the best is endlessly stimulating to the mind and enriching to the spirit. Two new novels have been both — John le Carré’s latest spy story, A Delicate Truth, and Lionel Shriver’s intelligent, morally challenging novel Big Brother. I abandon new books often now, mainly because they are badly written. Good prose nourishes like good food and nowadays is harder to find. My recent rereading has been of Jean Rhys. If you want prose so good it makes a writer weep, read hers.

The quest for spiritual refreshment becomes more earnest in later life. Silence does it best for me, and the natural world. The seascapes and marshes, curlews and avocets of north Norfolk, the returning swifts, joyously tumbling above one’s head, make the heart leap. Music so familiar it runs through my veins — Howells’s church anthems, Bach cantatas, beloved Britten, a random tune from a familiar musical of one’s youth — it’s all stored up for some future bleak midwinter. To add new fuel, I plan to visit every church in Norfolk (Anglican and over 250 years old). I am a Christian but you surely need not be to find spiritual and other enrichment this way.

‘You are now registered with this practice and your GP is Dr Smith.’
‘I’d like to see Dr Smith, please.’
‘He hasn’t any appointments for a fortnight.’
‘That’s fine, no rush.’
‘We don’t book more than a fortnight ahead. You can see any doctor.’
Fine in extremis, but with a complex immune system condition and specialist input, I need a relationship with one. That is now both impossible and deemed unnecessary. ‘All the doctors have your notes on screen.’
‘So who does my specialist write to ?’
‘Your own GP. Dr Smith.’
‘Who I will probably never see.’
‘You could try but he’s usually fully booked and we don’t make…’
So who are these people who get to see him? They come in on a Monday morning and queue to grab one of the newly released appointments. I tried that. The queue snaked round the block and back, and of course when I got to the counter, you’ve guessed it, the appointments had all gone. Desperately, I thought of paying to see my GP.
‘I’m sorry, Dr Smith doesn’t take private patients.’
So I guess I’ll never have the pleasure of his acquaintance.

The post Susan Hill appeared first on The Spectator.

Sir: Peter Lilley’s article on fracking (‘The only way is shale’, 11 May) is right to outline the role that shale can play in addressing Britain’s energy crisis, creating jobs, and generating tax revenues. But he is guilty of several errors and omissions.

First, he ignores the concerns of local communities in opposing drilling and extraction. Second, he fails to address questions around methane leakage which are concerning US legislators and executive agencies. Third, he does not set out a role for carbon capture and storage technology, which would reduce the carbon emissions of shale. Fourth, he fails to acknowledge the body of evidence which predicts that onshore wind will become cheaper than gas by 2020.

Fifth, he claims that ‘global temperatures have failed to rise for 16 years’ without acknowledging that the last decade was the hottest on record or that the Met Office claims the current pause is consistent with ‘a trend of continued long-term warming’. Sixth, he claims that China and the US will not decarbonise, when both have started piloting EU-style cap-and-trade schemes this year.

Finally, and perhaps most bizarrely, he claims that Cuadrilla were excluded from an inquiry on shale gas conducted by the select committee of which he is a member. In fact, Cuadrilla’s chief executive, Francis Egan, was a witness at a meeting which Mr Lilley attended. Mr Egan’s evidence was cited nine times in the committee’s report, which Mr Lilley signed off.

If Peter Lilley cannot even remember whose evidence he has heard, why should we trust a word he writes?
Will Straw
Institute for Public Policy Research,
London WC2
 
Sir: Peter Lilley is incorrect when he implies in his recent article that WWF-UK receives funding from the UK government for public lobbying — the funding we receive is used to undertake projects overseas. In addition, his claim that Whitehall is in the thrall of ‘Big Green’ is frankly ludicrous. In addition, for him to say that global temperatures are not rising and that China, India, the USA and others are doing nothing to address climate change is plain wrong.
 
On shale gas, WWF is raising legitimate concerns guided by scientific evidence on both the potential local environmental impact of fracking and the climate impact of chasing more fossil fuels. On the first point, most of the concerned residents are not green zealots but ordinary people. On the second point, the notion that a large proportion of fossil fuels need to stay in the ground for us to have any hope of tackling climate change is not a niche view: the International Energy Agency, the London School of Economics, HSBC and others are saying the same. Perhaps Mr Lilley thinks they’re in the thrall of ‘Big Green’, too?
David Nussbaum, CEO WWF-UK
Godalming, Surrey

Cameron’s ticking clock

Sir: Your main leader (11 May) stated: ‘All Cameron is doing is asking Brussels to make its best offer … Four years is a generous amount of time…’ And later: ‘If David Cameron is re-elected and sets off around Europe to begin his attempted renegotiation…’. The connotation is that David Cameron only has to kill four carefree years before offering the British people a final consultation on their destiny, with his midterm reappointment to do so more or less a foregone conclusion. Gentlemen, this is not prescience; this is cloud cuckoo land. In fact his next two years, with the vote-splitting menace of Ukip and the perpetual treachery of Clegg, will be a time of unremitting struggle. If you doubt the above, rescreen the film High Noon. It is all about a ticking clock.
Frederick Forsyth
Buckinghamshire

Cheese platform

Sir: Tanya Gold writes, ‘I know several people who want to stand for elected office on a platform of more cheese for everyone, funded by the state’ and challenges readers to write in if they can think of a rational objection (Food, 4 May). I should like to take up her challenge. Dairy products are unhealthy and unnatural. It is worse than irrational for humans to consume cheese; it is sheer madness. We bemoan the ever-increasing rise in obesity, especially in children, yet we encourage them to consume dairy products, even though these are very possibly the main cause of obesity.
Sandra Busell
Edinburgh

Half a name

Sir: Entirely through my own error, I left a word out of last week’s review of ‘The Springtime of the Renaissance’ at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. The artist I referred to as ‘Benedetto da’ is really called ‘Benedetto da Maiano’. My apologies.
Harry Mount
London NW5

Hove letter

Sir: William Cook (Arts, 4 May) is not the first to confuse Brighton and Hove. Until 1997 Hove was a separate borough with its own mayor, and it still has its own MP. Just because Kensington and Chelsea are one borough, we do not locate Holland Park in Chelsea. No more should Brunswick Terrace be located in Brighton. It is in Hove. Hove’s residents got so used to correcting those who thought they lived in Brighton that the saying ‘Hove actually’ became a catchphrase.
Timothy Sainsbury
Hove MP 1993-1997

Could deterrence fail?

Sir: Anthony Horowitz (Diary, 4 May) asks if a nation with nuclear weapons at its heart can be civilised. Prompted by David Cameron’s recent praise of Trident, and wishing to register a preference for long life over posthumous vengeance, I wrote to my MP about the other side of this coin; what if deterrence fails, and a radioactive cloud spreads across the UK — what am I to do? Back came the reply: ‘Pray.’
Iain Crawford
Monmouth

The post 18 May 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

Ancients took a mixed view of the emotion. ‘Anger’ is the first word of Western literature — the anger of Achilles, with which Homer’s Iliad starts. Even though it results in the death of his dearest friend Patroclus, Achilles admits that there is pleasure in it, ‘sweeter than the dripping of honey’. The Stoics, regarding control of the emotions as the key to virtue, were entirely hostile to it. Seneca (4 BC–AD 65) paints a fine picture of the angry man: devoid of self-control, forgetful of decency, unmindful of loyalties, deaf to reason and advice, excited by trivialities, incapable of distinguishing right from wrong, his whole face crimson with blood, lips quivering, teeth clenched, joints cracking. Even righteous indignation is disallowed.

Plutarch (AD 46–120) added useful tips. The angry man, he suggests, should have a mirror handy, to see how ridiculous he looks. He should learn the pipe and play himself a soothing tune when he boils over. Since, like the panicking occupants of a burning house or a ship in a storm at sea, he loses all judgment, he must avoid situations where he knows his anger will explode.

Aristotle swam against the tide. An advocate of the ‘mean’ in all things, he regards anger as just another passion which it is foolish to indulge in too much or too little. The irascible man, flying off the handle at the slightest provocation, or nursing his wrath to keep it warm, is a danger to himself and others. The sensible man is angry for the right reason, with the right people, at the right time.

Sir Fergie would surely put himself in that group, but high-minded ancients would have questioned the end to which his psychotic rages were directed — winning a mere game for the pleasure of the mob. Back in the real world, his lack of self-control might actually be dangerous. Lady Fergie must be encouraged to carry a mirror round with her. David Moyes, the new manager, might also be well advised to.

The post Seneca on Sir Alex Ferguson appeared first on The Spectator.

A bill for an in-out referendum on the EU seems doomed to be killed off by a ‘filibuster’ — a campaign by opponents to keep on talking until it runs
out of time.

— The filibuster is often assumed to be an invention of Westminster, yet its first recorded use was in the Roman senate in 60 BC, by Cato the Younger against an attempt by private contractors to renegotiate deals for government work.

— The publicani were businessmen who bid for the right to collect taxes in the provinces on behalf of Rome. Many, however, got their sums wrong and were losing money. Cato was having none of it, and kept on killing off debates on the subject for months until they backed down.

Little platoons

Lord Young championed the role of small businesses in creating jobs. Is it small or large businesses who have created the most jobs over the past decade?
 
TOTAL EMPLOYMENT BY SIZE OF BUSINESS

Source: ONS

Part-timers

Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce were released from prison after serving eight weeks of their eight-month sentences for perverting the course of justice. How much of their sentences do prisoners generally serve?
 
% served by length of sentence

Source: Ministry of Justice

Too unlimited?

Germany’s Social Democrats hurriedly retracted a proposal to introduce a 75mph motorway speed limit; at present, half the network is without a ‘hard’ speed limit. On UK motorways, by contrast, there is a speed limit of 70mph. England versus Germany in motorway safety:

Source: OECD

The post 18 May 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

As the Prime Minister has said in a letter to MPs, he is powerless to bring in a vote while in coalition because the Liberal Democrats are so vehemently against it. Nick Clegg’s commitment to the Euro project is such that he would not allow it to be threatened by giving the public a say. But the Prime Minister’s strategy is a sound one anyway, and not only because he will need all the reasons he can muster to encourage people to vote Tory in 2015.

Even if it were politically possible to bring forward the date of the referendum, the fag-end of the current parliament would be a rotten time to hold it, giving little time to enact the legislation which would fulfil the demands of a public mandate to leave the EU. This momentous event ought not to be rushed. And the public’s mood is fairly settled: for some time now the European Commission’s own opinion polling has found the British the most reluctant members of the union. Just one in six of us have favourable impressions towards the EU; even the Greeks like it better.

There is a limit to the time any democracy can be kept in a union against the will of its people. David Cameron is simply trying to renegotiate membership terms to a position that the British public find acceptable. As Lawson argued, it is unlikely that we will be given concessions; the EU will prove every bit as intransigent and power-hungry as its detractors suspect. All Cameron is doing is asking Brussels to make its best offer — not to him, but to the people he works for. Four years is a generous amount of time for the EU to think of what those terms might be.

What Britain wants is what we voted for in 1975: a common market. But even this has proven far less beneficial than those who voted for it (including Margaret Thatcher) first envisaged. As it turns out, a customs union did not lead to a boost in continental prosperity. William Hague’s description of the eurozone — ‘a burning building with no exits’ — has proven closer to the mark. The policy of erecting barriers against those outside the continent has badly hurt Britain. Switzerland now sells more to China than the United Kingdom does. British exports to emerging markets are among the lowest in the continent.

Mrs Thatcher’s biographer, Charles Moore, reveals on page 11 that she came to believe that Britain’s best interests lay outside the European Union. This ought not to be a surprise; it is those who demur who are now in the minority. The British are a fair-minded people, and want to give our troubled relationship with the EU one last go. If David Cameron is re-elected and sets off around Europe to begin his attempted renegotiation, we will see if the EU is similarly reasonable. After this discussion, we should be able to cast an informed vote in a referendum. Eurosceptics ought to be licking their lips at the prospect. It will be worth the wait.

Long may she reign

Queen Elizabeth looked in remarkable health as she read out the government’s list of legislation on Wednesday — some achievement, given the paucity of content. Even so, the talk of her possible abdication will dominate newspapers for months to come — not because there is any such plan, but because for royal correspondents her decision to skip November’s Commonwealth meeting is a gift.

These writers are unsurpassed in the dark art of making something out of almost nothing. A single glance between Elizabeth II and Prince Philip provides enough material for a double-page feature; one sharp word to a corgi and the self-appointed palace priests augur doom. So of course within a few hours of the announcement that Prince Charles would fly to Sri Lanka in his mother’s stead, royal-watchers were wondering what sort of a monarch King Charles III might be.

In America, where England is sometimes depicted as a semi-fictitious fairyland, the internet has hummed with rumours of an attempted coup by the Duchess of Cornwall, wicked stepmother to Kate’s Snow White. But ‘The Windsors’ is not a TV show, and the Queen’s sensible decision not to take long flights is not a cliffhanger. Although millions of words will be written in the coming days about her possible abdication, the most telling are those of the Queen herself. In 1947 the young Princess Elizabeth broadcast live to the Commonwealth: ‘My whole life,’ she said, ‘whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.’

The post Lord Lawson’s exit appeared first on The Spectator.

The UK Independence Party gave the government and opposition a jolt by doing well in the elections for 34 English councils, increasing its number of councillors from eight to 147 and gaining a projected national vote share of 23 per cent (compared with 25 per cent for the Conservatives, 29 per cent for Labour and 14 per cent for the Liberal Democrats). In a parliamentary by-election at South Shields, the Lib Dems were driven into seventh place, with only 352 votes, with Labour retaining the seat with 12,493 and Ukip coming second with 5,988. Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, grinned a good deal and said ‘Send in the clowns,’ throwing back at him Kenneth Clarke’s pejorative description of Ukip supporters. Lord Lawson, the former chancellor of the exchequer, called for Britain to leave the EU, saying that it would be financially beneficial.

Nigel Evans, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, was arrested by police investigating complaints from two men of a rape and a sexual assault. He was bailed until 19 June, but he requested not to sit during the debate on the Queen’s Speech. Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, said that the corporation might have to pay compensation to the 13 women whom the broadcaster Stuart Hall, aged 83, admitted indecently assaulting between 1967 and 1985. During a trial at the Old Bailey, the court was told that Eddy Shah, the former newspaper owner, aged 69, had sexual relations with a girl when she was aged 14 and 15 in the 1990s. Jimmy Tarbuck, the comedian, aged 73, was arrested and questioned about an alleged assault of a young boy in the late 1970s.

In the Queen’s speech the government promised another Dangerous Dogs Bill and a single state pension of £144. The Queen will not attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka in November, and will be represented by the Prince of Wales. There were 22 serious incidents involving people trying to use the new 111 health helpline, according to Pulse, the GPs’ magazine. Commercial call-centre staff from Wrexham flew to Auckland, New Zealand, to work during the day there to cover night shifts back home. Sir Alex Ferguson, aged 71, is to retire as manager of Manchester United at the end of the season, after 26 years.

Abroad

Israel made two air attacks on Syria, which it said were meant to stop the dispatch of Fateh-110 missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hundreds of Syrians fled coastal areas around Baniyas, where government forces were accused of carrying out massacres. Carla Del Ponte, a member of a UN commission investigating the use of sarin gas in Syria, said on television: ‘The first indications we got … were about the use of nerve gas by the opposition.’ John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, visited Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin abut Syria. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, visited China. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, visited China separately.

The number of those known to have died in the collapse of a clothing factory complex in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, on 24 April rose to 705. In Dhaka, 27 people died as police dispersed demonstrations organised by Hefazat-e Islam, a coalition of Islamist groups. In Pakistan, Imran Khan fell 15 feet on to his head from a platform while electioneering, and was kept in hospital for several days. Two Iranians convicted of possessing explosives were sentenced to life imprisonment by a Kenyan court. A bomb was thrown into a Catholic church in Arusha, Tanzania, during its official opening, killing one and wounding dozens; four Tanzanians and four Saudi Arabians were arrested.

Unemployment in America fell to 7.5 per cent in April, its lowest since December 2008. Three women who disappeared between 2002 and 2004 were rescued from a house in Cleveland, Ohio, and a 52-year-old former school bus driver and his two brothers were arrested. A newly-wed bride and four women friends were burnt to death when a stretch limo burst into flames on the San Mateo bridge in San Francisco. A handgun manufactured by a 3D printer was successfully fired at Austin, Texas. The European Central Bank cut its main interest rate from 0.75 to 0.5 per cent. Giulio Andreotti, seven times prime minister of Italy between 1972 and 1992, died, aged 94. A tornado in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna damaged hundreds of houses and snatched cows from fields.             CSH

The post 11 May 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

Prince Harry will not be starved of local press attention on his trip to New York this week. When I was New York correspondent for the Daily Telegraph a few years ago, the American press were largely uninterested in the views of British journalists, except on one issue: royal visits to Manhattan. Whenever Prince Charles turned up, a frantic call came through to the Telegraph office to appear on CNBC or Fox News. British news priorities in New York were a little different. An old English hack told me, ‘The British are only interested in three New York stories: stories about fat Americans, stories about rich Americans and stories about the Mafia.’ The clichés have changed in recent years. The New York Mafia are in decline; Americans have got poorer; and we’re now almost as fat as they are. Even the one cliché that defines Britain now unites us: two countries separated by a common obsession with the monarchy.

Whatever you think of Nigel Farage’s politics, the hail-fellow-well-met image isn’t artificial. When I met him in the Newsnight green room recently, he was extremely friendly to everyone in a way most politicians aren’t. The drinking thing is true, too. When the programme ended at 11.20, he wondered whether anyone wanted to stay on for a drink. We all declined, in our dreary, hurried way, and rushed off home. We have got more puritanical in recent years — bang goes another national cliché, about the heavy-drinking British. But I wonder if a little of our old, boozy DNA lingers on in our admiration for anyone who still has a drink before six in the evening.

At Hughenden Manor, Disraeli’s house near High Wycombe, the National Trust have come up with a bright idea. In among the pictures of Queen Victoria, Byron and other Disraeli heroes, there’s a little table with a temporary exhibit: Margaret Thatcher’s old prime ministerial red box. Battered and unheralded, except for a small label, the box is enormously affecting — what papers it must have contained, if only for a few seconds, before those brisk little hands scooped them up and scribbled stark memos all over them. There is talk of a Margaret Thatcher library and museum — and I’m all for them. But she doesn’t really need bricks and mortar to commemorate her. If you seek her monument, just look around you.

New financial institutions don’t know what to call themselves these days. A banker friend tells me they’re running out of the classical names they favour. The Iliad’s been taken by Iliad Solutions Ltd, which tests electronic payment systems; the king of the gods was borrowed long ago by Jupiter Asset Management. Hubris and Nemesis are still available.

Visiting the new exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, on Tudor and Stuart fashion, I was struck by the enduring 17th-century influence on clothes today. One ropey 1670s painting shows Charles II being presented with a pineapple. The king has dispensed with the traditional doublet and ludicrous pumpkin-sized hose, replacing them with a short woollen coat and matching modest breeches — the modern suit was born. There’s also a 1638 van Dyck of the poet and playwright Thomas Killigrew mourning his wife, her wedding ring dangling from his black silk bracelet. Although he’s in formal mourning black, he’s artfully dishevelled, shirt billowing out of his unbuttoned doublet. Shabby chic had arrived.

May 16th marks the 250th anniversary of the meeting of James Boswell and Dr Johnson, in the back parlour of the bookseller Thomas Davies, in Covent Garden. To celebrate, the Boswell Trust is holding a reading by John Sessions, at eight in the morning at 50 Albemarle Street, the old John Murray office. Thank God, it turns out the great men met at seven in the evening; it’s only the modern age that’s obsessed with breakfast meetings. Disappointingly, Boswell was drinking tea — he could have done with a few tips from Nigel Farage.

The post Harry Mount appeared first on The Spectator.

Sir: When my late father, John McKee, stood as Conservative candidate for South Shields in the 1970 general election he gained 19,960 votes, more even than David Miliband in the same constituency 40 years later. In last week’s by-election in the South Shields constituency, the Conservative candidate attracted only 2,857 votes. Many things have changed since 1970 but one important thing that is different is that in those days the local Conservative party had a large number of working-class members helping in the campaign; there was even a flourishing Conservative Trade Union organisation in the constituency. Nor was South Shields unique in this respect. Conservative Members of Parliament were elected in several industrial areas including Glasgow, Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland.

Nearly all this working-class support has disappeared and the Conservative party appears to have given up on Scotland and most of northern England. If it wishes to reverse this trend, it needs to rediscover the ‘one-nation’ Toryism which served the party so well in the days before what is loosely termed Thatcherism polarised the nation.

When Harold Macmillan stated, back in 1957, ‘most of our people have never had it so good’, he was criticised for unseemly self-satisfaction but not for the veracity of the statement. In recent history there have been, no doubt, some who have never had it so good, but no politician today would attempt to make such an incendiary statement to the population at large. Conservatives will never regain full political power until the party represents again all geographical areas of the country and the needs and aspirations of a much broader swath of the British population.
(Dr) Ian McKee
Edinburgh

Tebbit’s view

Sir: I have been considering Norman Tebbit’s and others’ recently expressed views concerning the Conservative party’s need to shift Tory party policy rightward in view of the number of disaffected Tories voting for Ukip. This seems to me to betray a startling lack of consistency. When disaffected Conservatives were voting for the SDP/Liberal Alliance in much larger numbers in the early 1980s, I do not seem to remember Mr Tebbit and his friends urging a leftward shift in policy to respond to such loss of support. Very odd.
Dr John Hyder-Wilson
Worthing, West Sussex

Letters are best

Sir: Molly Guinness (‘Thanks but no thanks’, 4 May) is very wide of the mark if she thinks the use of email prevents cliché and banality. Her assertion that ‘Platitudes by post are not worth the stamp’ is nonsense. Perhaps if she had taken up a pencil and a sheet of paper to draft her short article instead of dashing it off on her computer, she may have avoided such nonsense as to suggest that a simple thank-you letter can invoke ‘anxiety and resentment on a scale sufficient to cause the sender to be psychologically crippled under the burden of his own gratitude’. What blather! A handwritten note of gratitude is a demonstration of thought given and trouble taken. Thanks by email? Just hit the delete button.
Christopher Andrews
Coulsdon, Surrey (by email)

Leave towpaths alone

Sir: Laura Raymond (Letters, 4 May) shows the usual arrogance and intolerance of the cycling lobby. How can it be ‘high-handed and elitist’ to want to preserve a pleasant grass path in the country rather than have it covered in tarmac? Melissa Kite is spot on. Another major way in which the cyclists are desecrating the countryside is by building roads for cyclists beside the canals. Towpaths, which were pleasant footpaths, are being converted into racetracks for commuting cyclists who have no interest in the waterways, and who contribute nothing to their upkeep, and are a far cry from ‘lock wheelers’ who were content to ride to the next lock along a bumpy track and risk a dip in the canal while doing so.

Sustrans is mainly responsible for this barbarism. I wonder if anyone else has noticed that anything termed ‘sustainable’ is out to destroy our precious environment?
Clive Brown
Chesterton, Cambridge

Hattersley and Chatsworth

Sir: Anne Somerset seemed put out by Roy Hattersley’s disapproval of the Devonshires (Books, 4 May). Those of us who were aware of Hattersley’s then dyed-in-the-wool left-wing sympathies when he was a member of Sheffield City Council in the late 1950s and early 1960s will not have been surprised. In 1960, Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire, was drafted into the Conservative government by his uncle, Harold Macmillan, in what the Duke himself later described as ‘the greatest act of nepotism ever’.

A fellow socialist acolyte of Hattersley was a reporter on the now defunct Sheffield Telegraph newspaper, where I was a trainee reporter in the early 1960s. When told by the news editor to report on a Conservative party fundraising event at Chatsworth, he was heard to shout across the newsroom: ‘Not bloody likely. It’s time the whole fucking thing was turned into council flats.’
Nicholas Barrett
Hove, East Sussex

Doling out fines

Sir: Your editorial (4 May) exposed the unfairness of council enforcement ‘officers’ reaping rewards in proportion to the fines they dole out. Another financial penalty of which many are unaware is the absurd ‘victim surcharge’, which in instances of speeding offences is in reality often no more than an additional fine on top of the statutory fine for a given offence, along with points on a driving licence. For someone to be ‘surcharged’ in this way, when there is no victim, is as ridiculous as fining a Welsh pensioner for discarding a cigarette butt that had stuck to his shoe.
Anthony J. Burnet
East Saltoun, East Lothian

The post 11 May 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.