Society

Monday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

HS2 is steaming towards budgetary disaster

Byng was the name of the unfortunate admiral executed in 1757, in the words of Voltaire, “pour encourager les autres” after the fall of Minorca. I fear that poor old Michael Byng might be about to go the same way. Having put out a report estimating that the first phase of HS2 could cost £48 billion and the full scheme £104 billion, twice official estimates – will have woken up this morning to hear transport secretary Chris Grayling rubbishing his work, saying that he couldn’t possibly know about HS2 because he hasn’t been working on it. He did, however, devise the system which Network Rail use for estimating costs, which

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Assisted dying turns doctors into killers

You know, the quality on which the British pride themselves, pragmatism, has its limits. There’s a case for abstract moral thinking and it’s especially true when it comes to the fraught moral question of euthanasia, assisted suicide, right-to-die, whatever. And essentially the distinction is between actively killing someone, or allowing them to die – of doing something, as opposed to not doing something, of commission rather than omission. The little ditty by Arthur Hugh Clough, ‘thou shalt not kill but needst not strive/ officiously to keep alive’ sort of sums it up. The latest right-to-die case comes before the court today, that of Noel Conway, a retired lecturer who has

Steerpike Steerpike

New Kensington MP takes against her royal constituents

Although an MP is supposed to act in the best interests of their constituents, Emma Dent Coad appears to have missed the memo. The new MP for Kensington appeared at an anti-monarchist Republic event over the weekend – where she wasted no time in laying into the residents of Kensington Palace. The Labour politician said she despised the money spent on the royal family before comparing the Middleton family to the Kardashians. She said she would prefer the Beckhams to make up the royal family as at least that family has earned its own money: ‘I would say if we are going to have princes and princesses then I would

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Philip Hammond says public sector workers paid ‘10 per cent premium’

Philip Hammond – Public sector workers paid ’10 per cent premium’ Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has landed himself in hot water after he apparently claimed that public sector workers were overpaid during a recent meeting of the political cabinet. Andrew Marr challenged Hammond repeatedly over what he did in fact say, and gave the Chancellor several opportunities to deny that he had used the word ‘overpaid’: Marr: Did you say it? Hammond: Andrew, I’m not going to talk about what was or wasn’t said in a cabinet meeting and it’s easy to quote a phrase out of context, but I’m very happy to talk about the substantive issue.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

A letter to… The Guardian’s sanctimonious letter writer

This one is priceless, believe me. Truly priceless. For a long time now I’ve been buying The Guardian for its unintentional hilarity. Not just the columnists, but even more so the letters pages. This is from their fatuous Saturday family section: yes, it is a minor miracle that such a reactionary receptacle still exists at The Guardian. This is an anonymous letter from a reader saying something they’ve always wanted to say – they have one every week. If you have the time read it all – because it tells you what these people are really like underneath. These tolerant, caring, liberals. If you can get to the part about

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

How Game of Thrones is shaping up as the new season begins

After an agonising year-and-a-bit wait, Game of Thrones, the biggest TV show on earth bar none, returns in the early hours of tomorrow. Given the prolonged gap between the seasons – necessitated by storylines that have now outrun George R. R. Martin’s source material – here’s a pre-release primer on the situation around Westeros, now that Winter has truly arrived. In the North: The start of last season saw the resurrection of Jon Snow – a will-they-won’t-they event that HBO had spent the best part of a year teasing – who was returned to life by Melisandre, one of Westeros’s biggest wildcards. Upon returning to life, Jon proceeds to quit

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Let’s keep up the Moggmentum | 16 July 2017

‘We need to talk about why the internet is falling in love with Jacob Rees-Mogg, because it’s not OK,’ warns a recent post on the Corbynista website The Canary. Its anxiety is not misplaced. Polite, eloquent, witty, well-informed, coherent, principled — Jacob Rees-Mogg is the antithesis of almost every-thing the Labour party stands for under its current populist leadership. And far from putting off voters, it seems to be a winning formula. Even sections of the elusive and generally very left-wing youth vote appear to be warming to the idea that our next prime minister shouldn’t be (alleged) man-of-the-people Corbyn but yet another plummy, Old Etonian millionaire… This ought to

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

What’s Labour going to do with the middle classes?

Be fair. Theresa May’s plan actually half-worked. No, there was a plan. I know the consensus now seems to be that the entire election was motivated by little more a succession of senior Tories saying ‘Gosh yes, everybody loves you!’ to the Prime Minister while Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy stood behind her chair, slapping truncheons into their palms. Only that’s not how it was. Once, there was philosophy here. There was a plan to cut loose the liberal, urban, Remainiac middle classes, and draw in a new working-class Tory vote instead. And, like I said, it half-worked. As in, the working classes might not have got the message that

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Twists on Keats

The latest challenge asked for a sonnet that takes as its opening line Keats’s ‘Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:’ (This was a sonnet Keats chose not to publish but transcribed into a long letter he wrote over a period in early 1819 to George and Georgiana Keats, his brother and sister-in-law.) The invitation drew a pleasingly large, inventive and witty entry which saw you deploy a range of sonnet patterns (there are some 30 variations of the form in The Oxford Book of English Verse). In an especially closely contested week, Julia Munrow, J. Garth Taylor, Chris O’Carroll, Susan McLean, Virginia Price Evans, Paul Freeman, Alanna

Saturday

Markus Krall

Brexit: A view from Germany

 Frankfurt ‘This is not about punishing Great Britain,’ declared Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s interim foreign secretary, on his recent visit to London. I fell about laughing, because this is precisely what’s going on. It is as obvious to us Germans as it is to the Brits: the EU cannot tolerate the thought of a successful United Kingdom outside the Brussels sphere of influence because, if that were allowed to happen, others might dare to start thinking about leaving the club too. Everything we hear from Brussels flows from this. The EU presents itself as a champion of free trade, especially when its leaders are attacking Donald Trump, yet it does all

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron are alike in their narcissism

When Theresa May invited Donald Trump to London, shortly after his inauguration, the howls of the bien-pensant commentariat could be heard from Islington to Brighton. Yet when Emmanuel Macron invited the American president to Paris to stand by his side on Bastille Day, there was barely a peep. How to explain this? Sophie Pedder, Paris editor of the Macron-infatuated Economist, was quick off the mark. Macron, she announced, had extended his invitation to Trump from a position of strength and credibility. ‘May has neither.’ The Elysée press office could not have expressed it more viciously. Yet this conveniently overlooks that May’s invitation was issued before the general election, when May

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will May dare slap down any of those angling for the top job?

There are so many people angling for the Tory leadership now that it really is easier to list those who haven’t yet written an attention-seeking op ed or been spotted plotting in a shady spot in Westminster. It’s not just the ones who fancy the job for themselves, or the little nascent campaign teams that are springing up around them. It is also those who plan to run in order to guarantee themselves a top job in the Cabinet when the new leader carries out a unity-focused reshuffle. As James says in this week’s magazine, some are so advanced in their plans for the next leadership race, whenever that might

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Queen’s gambit | 13 July 2017

International master Andrew Martin is the head of the English Chess Federation Academy. He is well qualified for this post, since his conversational writing style is both characteristically endearing and informative. It is very easy to learn from Andrew’s work. His latest book is a tour de force of the venerable Queen’s Gambit which was originally popularised in the great 1834 series of matches between Labourdonnais and Macdonnell in London. Since then it has formed a staple of every champion’s repertoire. This week’s game, with notes based on those in Andrew’s book (First Steps: Queen’s Gambit Declined, Everyman Chess), shows how devastating the Queen’s Gambit can be in the hands

Raymond Keene

no. 465

White to play. This is from Nepomniachtchi-Korobov, Khanty-Mansiysk 2017. Black’s king is clearly in desperate trouble. What is the most accurate way to finish off? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 18 July or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 … Nd5 Last week’s winner Trevor Lloyd, London WC1

Taki

High life | 13 July 2017

I was going through my paces in Hyde Park, sweating out the booze, raising the heartbeat with short wind sprints, keeping my mind off the weekend’s debauchery and the ensuing Karamazovian hangover. I sat down on a bench, took off my sweaty polo shirt, opened the Daily Telegraph, and took in some rays. A police officer approached me — but with a smile. ‘Are you by any chance Taki?’ he said. ‘Guilty as charged, constable, but this time I’m clean.’ He smiled broadly and asked if he might sit down. Well, Constable Hackworth turned out to be straight out of The Blue Lamp. A Spectator reader, he somehow recognised my

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 13 July 2017

The hen party was seated at an outside restaurant table under the plane trees when I arrived. They sat with straight backs conversing normally, looked cool and lovely, and everything appeared seemly. Yet it was now ten o’clock on their first night on tour. They seemed unusually glad to see their chauffeur; apart from this, there was nothing to suggest that they were even slightly drunk. Appearances might have been deceptive, however, for they were all of them privately and expensively educated young women. I was bidden to be seated and offered a glass of wine, which I accepted. I sat and sipped and listened to their chatter. That something

Melissa Kite

Real life | 13 July 2017

‘What do you think it means?’ I asked the builder boyfriend as we stood in front of the sign. A huge placard, it had been hammered into the ground by the village action group. ‘Keep Our Village in the Green Belt’ is the gist of what it says. But behind it is another sign, which has been there since we arrived, and, we assume, long before that. This one says ‘No Horse-Riding’. The new sign has been put just in front of the first, slightly to the right, so that the two are unavoidably read together as you enter the village, and form a sort of double message, as impenetrably

Peter Jones

Property’s not theft

Sir Trevor Nunn is directing a play called ‘Dessert’. It seems to be a virtue-signalling riff on the evil of possessions. Doubtless Cicero and Aratus will not feature. On the face of it, the Roman statesman Cicero (1st c bc) was a passionate upholder of property rights. He said ‘it is the proper function of the state and its citizens to ensure for everyone the free and undisturbed guardianship of their possessions’. But that did not mean ownership of property overrode the state’s central purpose and therefore duty — the maintenance of social cohesion and so social harmony, that concordia to which Cicero returned again and again. His whole point

Toby Young Toby Young

My wife’s revenge has me at break point

Fifteen years ago, when I was The Spectator’s drama critic, Caroline used to complain that she had become a ‘theatre widow’. I was spending at least three nights a week in the West End while she was cooped up at home. Occasionally, I was able to persuade her to come with me, but most of the time she just made a face: ‘I’d love to accompany you to the musical version of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, but unfortunately I have an unbreakable appointment with the sofa and the TV set.’ Well, she has her revenge. Caroline is captain of the Park Club Ladies Second Team and if she hasn’t got

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 13 July 2017

Q. Is there an etiquette regarding security gates? My wife and I were invited to dinner by new neighbours who have bought a house formerly owned by lifelong friends of ours. In the old days, any visitor would have just swung in off the road through the open stone gates and made their way up the drive to the house. On arrival this time, we were depressed to find black metal security gates barring our way. We waited for the sensor to open them but nothing happened. I then had to get out of the car and stand in the rain pressing buttons on an electronic panel. I waited a