Politics

If you want to discombobulate a Eurocrat, try calling him a Thatcherite. Gert-Jan Koopman, the European Commission’s otherwise articulate director of industrial policy and economic reform, threw up his hands in silent horror when I lobbed the epithet at him, though I meant it as a compliment. The game in Brussels these days — so I learnt from half a dozen conversations within a stone’s throw of the ultimate in glass houses, the Commission’s re-clad Berlaymont headquarters — is to advance a smaller-government, less-red-tape, jobs-and-growth agenda. But in the face of resurgent protectionism in France and elsewhere and the uncertain outcome of the German election, it is a game which

His party hoped that Kenneth Clarke as Chancellor would deliver the elusive ‘feelgood factor’ that would somehow win them the election. When would it come through? ‘2 May 1997,’ he told them. He was right. The election was held and lost on 1 May, his successor got off to a flying start, and the factor stayed with him. It has seen him and his party through two more elections, while his opponents tried in vain to argue that all the good work had been done for him. Only now has his factotum, Ed Balls, been sent out to tell us that the man in the floppy hat and the scuffed

At the worst moment in Labour party fortunes, some point in the mid-1980s, a Labour politician is said to have emerged from yet another resounding election defeat unrepentant, declaring: there must be no compromise with the electorate. There was something admirable about this remark. The politician who uttered the phrase had doubtless entered politics to espouse the causes he or she passionately believed in — socialism in one country, nuclear disarmament, ownership of the means of production, etc. The fact that the complacent and inert masses of the British people refused to entertain these Marxist insights was no reason to think again. This state of mind was not conducive to

The long line of young women outside Marks & Spencer, arms folded modestly across their chests as they wait for their brassieres to arrive, is a standing rebuke to the European Single Market. Even Peter Mandelson, now installed as commissioner in charge of trade, is talking of a glitch. It is, in fact, the by-product of some clumsy diplomatic bluff and counter-bluff with Hu He, the Cantonese manufacturer and underclothier to the world. Hu’s European competitors have lobbied their governments, they have contrived to stitch things up in Brussels, and shiploads of containers from the Pearl River are now choking the port of Rotterdam while his customers shiver in Kensington

What was amazing about John Ware’s ‘A Question of Leadership’ on Panorama last Sunday was that it has taken nearly four years since 11 September for such a programme to be made. It simply and successfully did the basic journalistic job of asking difficult questions. The chief object of the questions was Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain. Sir Iqbal was juxtaposed with moderate Muslims who unequivocally repudiate the doctrines of Islamist extremism and various apologists for them. What did he think of a group of people affiliated to the MCB who say that those who mark Christmas ‘will find a permanent abode in hellfire’? ‘It’s

There are certain political moves which have now become regular, almost ceremonial features of our national life. One is the IRA’s announcement that the conflict is over. This is repeated once a year or so, flagged by the BBC and No. 10 as ‘historic’, and used as a reason for further concessions to Sinn Fein. Another summer visitor, though only every four years, is a bid for the leadership of the Conservative party by Kenneth Clarke. The form goes like this. Friendly journalists write that Mr Clarke is ‘a fully paid-up member of the human race’ and polls are published showing that many voters have heard of him and some

For security reasons newspapers have been asked not to name the holiday destination to which Tony Blair departed last weekend. This is fair enough, but Spectator readers will nevertheless be reassured to learn that the most characteristic feature of a Blair family holiday still applies: it is taking place at somebody else’s expense. The home where the Blairs are now staying is owned by a millionaire acquaintance, and it is most unlikely that they are paying anything near the market rate. In other respects life has changed. The day before setting off on holiday the Prime Minister suddenly called a press conference to announce emergency measures against terrorism. This event

MPs set off on their holidays this week amid a mood of national consensus. Tony Blair’s reputation has never stood so high, and its lustre stretches across all parties. Conservative MPs look at him nowadays with adoration. They laugh when he laughs, and grimace when he grimaces. One of the main candidates for the Tory leadership, the moderniser David Cameron, has come to base his candidacy on the sublime proposition that he is the natural successor to Tony Blair. Cameron’s supporters openly claim that just as Blair, not John Major, was the inheritor of Thatcher, so Cameron rather than Gordon Brown will take on the gleaming Blair legacy. Meanwhile, leading

Something was missing from Marks & Spencer’s shareholders’ meeting. It was the man from the Pru, standing up to propose a vote of thanks. This used to be one of the City’s most regular fixtures. Neither M&S nor the Prudential are quite the forces they were, but in those days the Pru was M&S’s biggest shareholder, and had been for years, and was happy. Now its place has been taken by Brandes, an American fund which looks for ‘active value’. Investors like the Pru and the pension funds no longer dominate the market in the way that they did. They have bought bonds and sold shares, at the instance of

On the whole, I believe in what politicians like to call ‘the innate good sense of the British people’, but the reactions of so many friends to last week’s bombings depress me. There is a funny mixture of complacency — ‘We will always be stronger than they are’ — with fatalism — ‘There’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.’ Both are wrong. Islamist extremists could not beat us in a direct war, but they will undermine our way of life if they can exercise a hold over a growing Muslim population. Already, according to the Muslim Council of Britain’s own figures, Muslims will account for ‘well over a quarter’