Matthew Parris’s article about the madness of the Brexiteers has caused much interest on social media, as did Alex Massie’s article along the same lines on Friday. I’ve been amused to see this described by some as a evidence of mutiny on HMS Brexit. A magazine’s star writers attacking each other with some passion, and sparing no weapon in the process. What’s going on?
Simple: the same thing that has been going on since The Spectator was first published 189 years ago. We have no party line on Brexit, or anything else. That’s why writers of the outstanding calibre of Rod Liddle, Charles Moore, Matthew Parris, Hugo Rifkind and many more write for us: we give them complete freedom to say what they want, even if it’s a column attacking the editor. (I haven’t, actually, had the honour of being the subject of one of Matthew’s magnificent Philippics, but if I were to do or say something significant enough I probably would.)
The magazine’s leading article backed Brexit, but that page is where the party line starts and stops. For example, I recently wrote a leading article that expressed sympathy for the striking prison guards: a few weeks later, Rod Liddle devoted a column to attacking the leading article. Rod is one of our star columnists; so when he wrote a book, you might think it would get a good review. But in The Spectator, no one is safe. We sent the book to Julie Burchill, who (to my surprise) shredded it. And unfairly, because it’s a brilliant book, but hey. Rod once attacked Peter Oborne, an associate editor of The Spectator, for what he regarded as an asinine performance on Question Time. When I nervously emailed a draft of his piece to Peter, he replied it was ‘an honour to be trashed by Rod’.
The Spectator has always been a raucous read – and, importantly, nobody’s safe space. The disagreements over Brexit are as nothing compared to the Iraq war where Mark Steyn was urging support for Blair and Bush, while the leading articles were suggesting that Blair was impeached. The result, as the New Statesman’s Helen Lewis generously pointed out today, is that The Spectator is now the best place to see other Spectator writers trashed. We like to think pages contain the very best of argument, from all kinds of angles. Who would you most like to read making the case for Brexit? I’d go for Charles Moore, Rod Liddle, James Delingpole. And the case against? I’d say Matthew Parris, Hugo Rifkind, Alex Massie, Nick Cohen.
There’s a picture on the wall of my office (above) that sums it up: a pastiche of El Lissitzky’s ‘Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge’. It is adapted to depict Taki, Liddle, Moore and other Spectator writers attacking the forces of cliche, boredom and mediocrity. That’s the struggle we’re engaged with: as Martin Amis once put it, the war against cliche.
Our former editor Alexander Chancellor, who died last weekend, summed it up best: The Spectator is more of a cocktail party than a political party. Our only allegiance is to independence of opinion, elegance of expression and originality of argument. If that sounds like your kind of magazine, then do join us by subscribing from £1/week.
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