Society

Is the City of London worth defending? Not many in the government seem to think so. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, calls it a ‘cesspit’. George Osborne blames the financial sector for causing the crisis – the Barclays Libor scandal, to him, was not an isolated incident but indicative of the whole rotten system, ‘the epitaph to an era of irresponsibility’. The City’s global enemies look on, amazed. Not even the Brits are prepared to stand up for their extraordinary financial sector. As I say in my Telegraph column today, now is their time to strike. As the Americans are pointing out, much Wall St woe can be traced back to

The argument about grammar schools had been stuck in a rut. Opponents argued that the division between grammar schools and secondary modern was too binary. But with the advent of free schools this argument has lost its force. There is now a diversity of provision meaning that there’ll be no return to the old stark grammar/secondary modern split. Free grammars would also boost the number of state school children going to our best universities and unleash a new wave of educational philanthropy. As Terry Leahy, the former boss of Tesco who has as good a claim as anyone to the title of Britain’s most successful businessman, tells The Spectator this week,

We’re approaching that point in the government’s life cycle when ministers begin to worry about whether they’ll be able to get things done before the next election. One Tory was complaining to me yesterday that the civil service will simply be able to run down the clock with any new ministers after the next reshuffle. This nervousness about their ability to get things done is reflected in the fact that, and don’t laugh, the government is holding a consultation on whether its consultations need to go on so long. Eric Pickles has long been pushing for this, arguing that the 12 week consultations were excessively cumbersome. They certainly mitigate against any rapid

Listening to Mervyn King and his Bank of England deputy Paul Tucker over the past few days, you’d have thought they only found out about Libor manipulation with the rest of us, three weeks ago. Appearing before the Treasury Select Committee this morning, King stated that ‘the first I knew of any alleged wrongdoing was when the report came out two weeks ago’. But documents from the New York Federal Reserve, made public as part of the US Congress’s investigation, suggest that US authorities did know, and tried to warn the Bank of England that manipulation was going on. First, the transcript of a phone call on 11 April 2008 between a Barclays

I have just started a new column, Bright on Politics, for the Jewish Chronicle. My first piece last week discussed Ed Balls and Israel. And this week I discussed why politicians turn to judges when they have lost their moral compass. Here’s the piece. I’m sure you’ll let me know what you think. Blind faith of Brothers and others in law When the political class loses faith in its ability to make moral judgments, what does it do? It calls in the lawyers. The present fashion for judge-led inquiries in the UK has given us the Leveson inquiry into the ethics of the press, and may yet lead to a

It’s easy to be complacent about human rights. We commend ourselves for passing laws that are designed to ensure that, for example, gay people are not discriminated against, or subject to abuse and derision as a consequence of their sexual orientation. We pat ourselves on the back, cheered by our own civility. And yet is it not likely that gay people are still discriminated against, and abused? So, we must forever guard against complacency, against hidden or covert or subconscious homophobia. Because it is all to easy to match ourselves against the sort of behaviour that persists in less developed countries, and feel good about ourselves as a consequence, to