The latest issue of the Spectator is out. Here, for the benefit of CoffeeHousers, is
a selection of five pieces from it.
1) How did David Cameron mutate into a hawk? The last few weeks have been like a political version of a Manimal* transformation sequence. Daniel McCarthy, editor of The American Conservative, looks at this in the current edition of the magazine – he’s sceptical about the operation underway (as were most CoffeeHousers when I last blogged on it) and argues that “Cameron’s interventionism would substitute the discredited example for a hopeful one”.
2) Blair always viewed foreign affairs as a welcome relief from the home front. Might Cameron’s passion be inspired by the sense of “controlled panic” in Whitehall? James Forsyth lists what’s going wrong, and why, in the cover story – I touched on this earlier on. It’s a great insight into the hopes and insecurities of the government, and helps make sense of a lot of things going on right now.
3) And how do we explain the hawkishness of Sarkozy? Janine di Giovanni sends a report from Paris that has some clues. France is worried about the influx of immigration from northern Africa, and the new National Front leader Marine Le Pen is doing very well and came top of a recent opinion poll – with Sarko third. Janine describes how well Le Pen manipulates fear of immigration – travelling to the Italian island of Lampeduse this week, where 8,500 Tunisian migrants have landed.
4) Fascism-lite may be doing well in France, but badly in Britain. Rod Liddle looks at how the BNP is doing appallingly, and asks if David Dimbleby and Question Time are to thank. “This should be a lesson to the left,” he says. “It’s not always the oxygen of publicity. Sometimes it’s the cyanide of publicity.”
5) The extraordinary events of Japan have been a mixed tale of tragedy, extraordinary courage (both of which reflected in a piece from Tokyo from Tanya Coke) but also the panic over nuclear fuel has already sent world energy costs soaring. The explosions we’ve seen so far are Level Four (out of seven) – one below the Three Mile Island blowup. That killed no one (and even Chernobyl’s casualty list is in the hundreds). But fear of what we can’t see (radiation) always trumps fear of what we can (water and mud) even if the latter has been the far deadlier of the two in Japan’s case. Our leading article calls for a sense of perspective, and says that the striking point about Japan’s nuclear power is that the two old bases held out so well.
AND MORE…. Alexander Chancellor, one of my many great predecessors as Spectator editor, comes back to write the diary – and remembers a 20-year-old motorcycling Rupert Murdoch. Carol Sarler looks at the “selfishness” of men like Donald Trelford, Des O’Conner and Rod Stewart who sire children in retirement age. Michael Henderson explains why that, if you don’t like Beethoven, it’s your fault – not his. “A person who fails to come to terms with Beethoven has, in some profound sense, failed to live a proper life” he says. The books section is superb this week, kicking off on a review of a Gulag anthology edited by Anne Applebaum.
All of the above is winging its way to our subscribers now (or available on the iPad). And to join our subscribers, from as little as £1 an issue, click here. It’s the best quid you’ll spend all week.
* For those unfamiliar with Manimal:
Comments