Society

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why Labour is still within striking distance

Things are looking good for Cameron – his coalition has 60 percent approval rating, he has managed to persuade the Lib Dems to support what always was a liberal Tory agenda. There is plenty for Conservatives to celebrate, especially on welfare reform and education. But, still, things could be a lot worse for the Labour Party than they are now. I say in my News of the World column today that, rather than being “out for a generation” as Tory strategists were hoping only a month ago, Labour remains (amazingly) in striking distance of winning the next election. And there is no telling when that election will be. Clegg and

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

From the ashes

I’m due to fly to Italy with British Airways tomorrow morning for a wedding later in the week. The flight is in some doubt because of that bloody ash cloud from Iceland. So I did as BA want its customers to do and checked the “volcanic ash update” at BA.com. This told me that the flight was going ahead, no need to worry, etc. Comforted by this news, I nonetheless suddenly felt a twinge of doubt. So, to double check, I tapped in the details for a flight later today (Sun) to Belfast, because the TV news this morning told me that Northern Ireland airspace was closed. It said THAT

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 15 May 2010

Q. I am of an age when I’m invited to coming-of-age parties for my friends’ children. As several of them are well-heeled and the children over-indulged, it has become customary to buy very lavish gifts, which I find ostentatious and can ill afford. I like attending these functions, and relish the opportunity to catch up with old friends. So I devised a trick: I write a thoughtful card, stick a piece of sticky tape to it and then artfully attach a ripped piece of wrapping paper. On arrival, I slip my card among the groaning pile of gifts. To date there have been no repercussions. I hope that the sentiments

Toby Young Toby Young

A Lib-Con coalition is best for Britain, best for me — and my free school in Ealing

Over the past five weeks I have often found myself cursing the British public. I cursed them when Labour’s support started climbing in the opinion polls, grumbling about how some people didn’t deserve to vote. I cursed them when they flocked to the Lib Dem banner following Nick Clegg’s performance in the first debate, complaining about the madness of crowds. And I cursed them on election night when it looked as though they’d granted Gordon Brown a stay of execution, leaving open the possibility that he could cobble together a ‘coalition of the losers’. In the end, though, they’ve got the outcome they wanted and probably the one that’s best

Melissa Kite

Desperate horsewives

One of the highlights of the horsey year for me and my equine girlfriends is our expedition to Windsor Great Park for the annual sponsored cross-country ride. And so with no sleep since the election I hauled myself bleary-eyed to the stable yard at 7 a.m. to start scrubbing grass stains. Why on earth did I buy a horse with white bits? I muttered, as I sloshed around Gracie’s back legs with a bucket of warm water frothing with Johnson’s baby shampoo. No sooner had I settled into a satisfying rhythm of scrubbing and moaning than my peace was rudely disturbed. ‘Hello, smiler!’ said a fellow horse-owner, who seems to

Jeremy Clarke

Speaking up

My boy and I have fallen out. It happened like this. He decided to drive his newborn son, his partner and his partner’s three kids up to the Outer Hebrides, where his partner’s mother lives. The mother wanted to see the baby, and my boy and his partner were keen for her to see him. They wouldn’t all legally fit into my boy’s saloon car, so he tried to hire a seven-seater for the journey. But the car-hire companies won’t hire to the under-21s (even the under-25s have to fork out a whacking great premium) and my boy is 20. Why not buy an old seven-seater for the trip? I

Robin Oakley

Hot competition

It was to have been Ascot on Saturday. But alternative political duties for CNN intervened. ‘OK,’ said the little green man descending from his flying saucer in Parliament Square, ‘I appreciate that “Take me to your Leader” won’t do right now. But when can you take me to your Leader?’ I had been musing at the time on the bleak picture ahead. Prize money down. Breeders’ prizes cut by 20 per cent. Lower appearance money for horses running at Sunday fixtures. Even funds for regulation and dope testing being trimmed. And that’s nothing to do with the regimen of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, just the cuts imposed by

Andrew Lambirth

A great individualist

Andrew Lambirth talks to Jeffery Camp about the primacy of drawing in an artist’s practice More than 20 years ago, when I first interviewed Jeffery Camp, he forbade me to bring a tape recorder as he would find it off-putting. ‘I speak slowly enough for you to write it all down,’ he drawled in measured tones. Although born in Oulton Broad, Suffolk, and spending his early years in East Anglia, Camp has a placeless accent but a memorable delivery: you can indeed jot down most of his obiter dicta if you’re nimble with the stylus. Sitting in his kitchen sipping hot chocolate (he doesn’t have coffee) on a balmy spring

The Spectator

Letters | 15 May 2010

What matters most Sir: In last week’s Spectator there was an interesting section where writers and thinkers were invited to advise the new Prime Minister what his administration should urgently address (‘What the new government must do first’, 8 May). Defence was not included but surely with a war in Afghanistan, an uncertain world and a defence budget under extreme pressure, it should be. A foreign policy-led strategic defence review is the first priority, and a view taken as to what sort of country we want to be. We are clearly not a superpower but we have a seat on the Security Council and are a leading member of Nato

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 15 May 2010

Sunday Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?! Ok, we’d have liked the voters to grasp just how brilliant Dave is — if only so I could have knocked back that bottle of champagne with Poppy and Wonky Tom on election night. And I’m sure Gary is feeling a bit embarrassed after calling nice Mr Murdoch to tell him the exit poll was wrong. Oops! But it’s all far from a disaster. I’ve always said those Liberals are such nice people. And the Cabinet Office has put on a lovely spread for our negotiations — mini quiches and everything!! Am charged with making sure a constant stream of cheese sandwiches

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 15 May 2010

‘You can do a lot of things at the seaside that you can’t do in town,’ sang my husband in a gurgling tone produced by a recent pull at his whisky glass. ‘You can do a lot of things at the seaside that you can’t do in town,’ sang my husband in a gurgling tone produced by a recent pull at his whisky glass. His outburst was a sort of distillery-sponsored tourettist parody of an innocent sentence I had just spoken: ‘You hear a lot of words at elections that you don’t hear all year.’ It’s funny that elections have always been held on a Thursday (at least, since 1935),

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 15 May 2010

The most moving thing was the photograph of the handshake between the Queen and her new Prime Minister. It is an excellent innovation to allow the ceremony to be seen, because it reminds people how the constitution works. After the days of uncertainty, we needed this more than usual. There is also something touching in seeing this beautiful old lady confer authority on a man who was minus 15 years old when she came to the throne. If it were not slightly unconstitutional to suggest it, I would add that the Queen looked very pleased. No doubt the mood will pass, but the fact of coalition actually feels more appropriate

Bruce Anderson

Diary – 15 May 2010

Alastair Campbell had a cynical term for the attempts to recruit Tories and others to Tony Blair’s big tent: ‘Operation Gobble’. In 1916, the Tories went into coalition with Lloyd George’s liberals. They gobbled them, spat out Lloyd George and reduced the Liberals to third-party status. In 1931, the Tories formed another coalition, with some Liberal and Labour MPs: also gobbled without trace. But after 1940, the wartime coalition enabled Clement Attlee to appear prime ministerial, thus helping to win Labour a huge majority in 1945. So this time, who will gobble whom? Thus far, Tory opinion is divided. A lot of MPs are delighted, especially the new ones. After

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 15 May 2010

Five days after the general election, Mr David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative party, accepted the Queen’s request to form an administration and kissed hands upon his appointment as Prime Minister, the 12th of her reign, and at 43, the youngest since Lord Liverpool. Five days after the general election, Mr David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative party, accepted the Queen’s request to form an administration and kissed hands upon his appointment as Prime Minister, the 12th of her reign, and at 43, the youngest since Lord Liverpool. In Downing Street he announced a ‘full coalition’ with the Liberal Democrats. Mr Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 15 May 2010

Paul Johnson recently wrote about the use of Athenian-style ostracism to send bores of one’s choice into exile. Paul Johnson recently wrote about the use of Athenian-style ostracism to send bores of one’s choice into exile. The device would better serve a hung parliament. The point about Athenian ostracism is that it was not a random way of exiling anyone that any Athenian felt like, at any time. Had that been the case, Athens would have been emptied very quickly. It was purely political. Just once a year, the question was put to the sovereign decision-making assembly (all Athenian male citizens over 18) whether they wanted an ostracism. To judge

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Forza Evans!

Cadel Evans wins Stage 7 of the 2010 Giro d’Italia in Montalcino. Photo: Luk Beines/AFP/Getty Images. What with being deprived of, for various reasons*, Contador, Menchov, Valverde, Pellizotti, di Luca, the Schleck brothers, Armstrong and Cancellara you could have been forgiven for thinking that this year’s Giro d’Italia might be a disappointment. Not a bit of it. In fact, I wonder if these days the Giro doesn’t often provide better racing than the Tour de France. It certainly did today. On paper the stage from Carrara to Montalcino was interesting but not obviously threatening even though it included some 20km over the Tuscan strade bianche – that is, gravel and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour leadership candidates move towards the Cruddas position on immigration

One striking feature of the Labour leadership contest so far is how a new more honest line on immigration is emerging. At the Fabian Society conference this morning, Ed Miliband declared that ‘immigration is a class issue’. Pointing out that, “If you want to employ a builder it’s good to have people you can take on at lower cost, but if you are a builder it feels like a threat to your livelihood. And we never had an answer for the people who were worried about it.” In the Guardian, Ed Balls sounds a similar note. He tells Patrick Wintour and Nick Watt that Labour did not, in the eyes

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A contest that sets brother against brother

Ed Miliband was on impressive form at the Fabian Society conference this morning. Early on, he defused the tension over the fact that he was running against his brother with a well-delivered joke about how, given her politics, he his mother would be voting for Jon Cruddas. Throughout he showed a real lightness of touch when addressing the brother against brother question. After today, there can be little doubt that Ed Miliband is running as the candidate of the soft left of the Labour party. He claimed that ‘the state can do extraordinary things’, said that New Labour’s’ ‘combination of free markets plus redistribution’ had reached the end of the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can this marriage of convenience work?

‘It is not the prize. It is a means to the prize.’ This is how one long-time political ally of David Cameron described the Tory leader’s entrance into Downing Street at the head of a coalition government. The deal with the Liberal Democrats which has put Cameron in Downing Street is, as this Cameron ally admits, ‘an arranged marriage not a love match’. In the run-up, the bride’s family was trying to negotiate a better dowry from an alternative suitor, and many in the groom’s family were praying that he would be jilted at the altar. Guests on both sides of the church could be heard whispering that the marriage

Phil Collins

Beyond Brown and Blair

Labour has to reinvent itself to fight the next general election, says Phil Collins. The leadership contenders must look to the party’s radical roots So, they were looking in the wrong place all along. For years now the Labour party has been seeking a steely assassin to deal with its unelectable leader. Finally, where James Purnell failed tragically and Geoff Hoon failed farcically, Nick Clegg has succeeded. Gordon Brown has gone and the Labour party is even more leaderless than when he was actually there. Now that Britain has finally settled on a government, the campaigns will start. Or rather, resume. Discreet campaigning has been going on for some time.