Society

Members of the legal profession who were hoping Michael Gove’s time would be consumed trying to solve the Human Rights Act puzzle will be disappointed. In a speech to the Legatum Institute this morning, the Justice Secretary confirms he will be bring the same reformist zeal to Britain’s legal system as he did to education. Gove’s main concern, according to the extracts of the speech pre-released, is that our justice system at present is tipped too much in favour of the wealthy. Similarly to the rest of the government’s agenda, he wants a One Nation legal system: ‘There are two nations in our justice system at present. On the one hand, the wealthy, international class

From ‘Mr Lloyd George’s Speech‘, The Spectator, 26 June 1915: Though we are short of practically all the munitions of war, our most immediate needs are high-explosive shells and machine guns. Till the shortage here is made up we cannot show that activity which, we must never forget, is the essential element in all military operations, the sine qua non which, if it does not exist, must in the end mean defeat. But though in this war we cannot have activity without a great many more shells and a great many more machine guns than we have got at present, it by no means follows, as our pessimists would lead us

Normally, the phrase ‘continent in crisis’ is hyperbole. But it seems appropriate today as we contemplate the situation Europe, and more specifically the EU, finds itself in. In the next few days, Greece could default, triggering its exit from the single currency and financial disruption across the Eurozone. Meanwhile, Rome is on the verge of unilaterally issuing Mediterranean migrants travel documents enabling them to travel anywhere in the Schengen area because—as Nicholas Farrell reports in the magazine this week—Italy simply cannot cope with many more arrivals. Those involved in the British government’s preparations for a Greek exit put the chances of it at 50:50. If Greece did leave, which would

In Competition No. 2903 you were invited to supply a poem incorporating a dozen cricketing terms. English poets love cricket: Housman, Betjeman, Chesterton and Sassoon all wrote about the game. And then, of course, there is Harold Pinter, who encapsulated it so beautifully in two lines: I saw Len Hutton in his prime, Another time, another time. I admired P.C. Parrish’s clever poem in the opaque modernist style of Edith Sitwell. Tim Raikes, Peter Goulding, Nick Hodgson and Rosemary Kirk also stood out in a large and impressive field. The winners earn £25 apiece. Brian Allgar takes £30. Brian Allgar My wife reminds me of a game of cricket: A

Syed Kamall, the Conservative leader in the European Parliament, has entered the race to be the party’s Mayor of London candidate. The field now consists of Kamall, Andrew Boff, Sol Campbell, Stephen Greenhalgh, Ivan Massow and Zac Goldsmith, Kamall announced this afternoon he is ‘really excited about the prospect of doing this.’ In a statement announcing his candidacy, Kamall pointed out that he’s a ‘Londoner born and bred’: ‘I look forward to having some robust conversations and debates over the coming months about the issues which affect our city. We need to tackle some of the most important things like housing and transport but we also need to ensure that everyone in our city