Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Highlights from the latest Spectator | 26 March 2010

The new issue of The Spectator leads on the next big story in British politics: the not-so-cold war for the Labour leadership. The first sign of a brutal civil war is mass evacuation, and we’ve seen that with Milburn, John Reid, Purnell etc. James’s cover piece takes you through the other dynamics. The war the Brown-Whelan-Unite alliance is trying to rig the succession for Ed Balls, he says, and has started to think of which new MPs to select. So when Purnell goes up to Tom Watson and describes him as being a “cancer at the heart of the Labour Party” this is what he’s referring to: an attempt by Watson to rig the succession in his soon-to-be-vacated constituency in favour of a candidate who could be relied upon to vote Balls.  

China’s growing empire is a story which continues to fascinate us at The Spectator. They have very different priorities to the old British colonialists in Africa. Our Wild Life correspondent, Aidan Hartley, has investigated how hundreds of kilos of bloody tusks from poached elephants are being smuggled out of Tanzania each year. He interviews one seller, who says his largest clients are the Chinese and one government official. “The new illegal ivory trade is booming,” he says, “because China’s middle classes want to buy ivory trinkets like chopsticks.” He presents a Channel Four documentary about it tonight.

As CoffeeHousers might have seen, our next Spectator debate is about Cameron – and picks up on a question Trevor Kavanagh raised in his column for us: is he a Heath or a Thatcher? Bruce Anderson gives a preview of his debate, making an impassioned defence. “As a governing doctrine, Thatcherism was gradualist. She took her time to achieve her objectives; she did not fight her domestic battles until she knew that she could win them.

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