Society

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 8 May 2010

Unreasonable rationality Sir: I fully agree with the blunt but accurate observations of Melanie Phillips in her piece ‘Welcome to the Age of Irrationality’ (1 May). It is a good measure of the Western mind’s fall into murky confusion, and witless denial, that words like ‘rational’ and ‘secular’ have become prone to a transformation of their authentic meaning. But two points made by Phillips trouble me. Is it really reasonable to saddle ‘the left’ with ‘distortions, fabrications and bullying’ in the same breath as she lauds ‘the right’ for their ‘attempt to uphold truth, reality and liberty’? Two, is it not too far-fetched to claim that Britain was ‘first into

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 8 May 2010

The country voted in a general election and local elections. In the run-up to the polls, Mr Gordon Brown had comforted Tiari Sanchez, aged 14, who broke down in tears as she described to a rally of Citizens UK how her family had to eat lentils because their mother earned so little as a cleaner at the Treasury. Mr Brown said hers was an example of the importance of fighting for ‘fairness and dignity for all’. Mr David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative party, wooed Ulster Unionists, then took to campaigning in the middle of the night, visiting firemen and fishermen. Mr Manish Sood, a Labour candidate, told his

The Spectator

Greek lesson

The scenes in Athens, with thousands of protesters attempting to storm the Greek parliament, should send a chill down the spines of the British government this weekend. It is Britain, not Greece, that has the worst deficit in Europe. The story of the next four years will be one of brutal cuts. As the Greeks found, the day of fiscal reckoning can be delayed — but not avoided forever. An administration can buy time by cooking the books, talking about debt as if the money arrived down a moonbeam. But soon, payback time arrives. Now that the election is over, Britain’s payback time will start, and the anger among the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tory coalition

Talk of coalition between parties always reminds people that all political parties are internal coalitions. So all this speculation about Cabinet jobs for the Lib Dems, has set off some grumbling on the right of the Tory party. The right has long thought that shadow Cabinet is unbalanced. They point out that there are only about three pro-European wets left in the parliamentary party but that they are all in the shadow Cabinet. The view of several people on the right that I have spoken to today is that if there are to be three Lib Dems in the Cabinet then it must be MPs from the left of the

The Spectator

What the new government must do first

After an exhausting election, the incoming administration is expected to introduce reforms immediately. But which ones are most urgent? The Spectator asked some of its favourite writers and thinkers to advise the new Prime Minister Stabilise the economy The new government now has to move with utmost swiftness to stabilise British public finances, which Gordon Brown has left in a truly abysmal condition. We are in the middle of the worst debt explosion in the Western world, according to the Bank for International Settlements, and nothing discussed during the election campaign would remotely suffice to bring the situation under control. On the contrary, there is a very real danger that

Evgeny Lebedev

Art is now an acronym for Arid Retail Trade

As the spring auctions begin, it looks as if there’s never been a greater demand for art, says Evgeny Lebedev. But despite a booming market, the art world itself is stagnant If one was to commission a sculpture that depicted the woeful state of the British art market, then it would be difficult to improve on what Boris Johnson is proposing for the London Olympics. The Mayor’s venture represents the fusion of everything that is wrong with the system: a steel billionaire, a £19 million price-tag, a world-famous artist and 1,400 tons of metal in the shape of crashed pylons. And the end result? That the contraption will be used

Daniel W-Drezner

The paranoid style in world politics

Polio vaccines in Nigeria are part of a Western plot to make African women infertile. Foreign zombies are replacing indigenous labourers in South Africa. Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is a secret Muslim who hates the United States and wants to institute ‘death panels’ to govern the healthcare system. The United States triggered the earthquake in Haiti to expand America’s imperial reach. These are just a small slice of the conspiracy theories floating around the global ether of rumour and innuendo. Such theories are hardly a new phenomenon in world politics. Athens fell victim to the politics of rumour and conspiracy during the Peloponnesian war. A century ago,

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

After all the fuss, will anything actually change?

Did you vote for change, then? Or did you, as David Cameron put it during the second of those frigid televised leaders’ debates, vote for ‘hope, not fear’? I decided in the end to vote for fear, as I’ve never been very keen on hope. I think hope is overrated, if we’re honest, whereas there is a dark, brooding intensity to fear. But change? Some things will change, I suppose, but a lot of the things which make people angry will not change at all, the sort of stuff that was rarely if ever mentioned during the election campaign, but which we know thoroughly annoys many people. Here is my

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Travel narrows the mind

The holiday season is upon us, but it’s nothing to celebrate, says Lloyd Evans. Tourism is torture, no matter how you do it Oh God. Here it comes again. The days lengthen, the temperature climbs, the pollen spreads and the mighty armies of foreign invaders prepare to make their move. It’s not illegal immigrants who cause my heart to sink at this time of year. Those brave defectors deserve our admiration for their persistence and ingenuity. They travel here in conditions no westerner would tolerate. They cling upside down to the exhaust pipes of juggernauts. They squeeze into the drums of imported washing machines. Unlike casual holiday-makers they’re serious about

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 8 May 2010

I haven’t watched Triumph of the Will all the way through, but I am fairly confident that at no point in the film does Hess suddenly turn to the crowd and say: ‘Yes, sir, your question. Row 689, the blond gentleman in black with the skull insignia? No, not you, sir — the slightly more Aryan-looking gentleman to the right — just behind the eagle.’ (Maiden with coiled plaits wearing dirndlkleid strides over with a boom microphone.) Man: ‘Does the Führer have any idea how difficult it is to bring up two children on an Unterscharführer’s salary, what with hyperinflation and that?’ Fuhrer: ‘Well, Horst — it is Horst, isn’t

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 8 May 2010

In Competition 2645 you were invited to submit an example of impenetrable ministerial waffle. Lord Mandelson set the bar high with his bewildering statement, ‘Perhaps we need not more people looking round more corners but the same people looking round more corners more thoroughly to avoid the small things detracting from the big things the Prime Minister is getting right’, which scooped the Plain English Campaign’s 2009 Foot in Mouth award. But you stepped up to the mark admirably: I was reduced to judging in short bursts as my eyes glazed over and my brain threatened to shut down in the face of such magnificently opaque prose. The winners, printed

Deborah Ross

Damp squib | 8 May 2010

Four Lions 15, Nationwide Four Lions is Chris Morris’s comedy — comedy of terrors? — about a group of home-grown Muslim suicide bombers, an idea so thrillingly audacious that, when I first read about it, I thought, as you probably did: where is Mr Morris going to hide? In Salman Rushdie’s sock drawer? But while thrilling and audacious on paper, the film itself never properly gets going in any truly risky or satirical way, which is fair enough — what if Rushdie’s sock drawer were full, and Mr Morris had to hide in Rushdie’s pants drawer; would you like to hide out among Mr Rushdie’s pants? — but it feels

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Where we are

Gordon Brown has done two smart things today. The first was to make public what his offer to the Lib Dems was, meaning that every Lib Dem MP knew what it was before their party meeting tomorrow morning. This increases the pressure on the leadership not to do a deal with the Conservatives that does not include the guarantee of a referendum on PR. The second was to say that he’ll give Cameron and Clegg as long as they want to try and strike a deal. The clever things about this is that it puts the onus on Cameron and Clegg to come out and say that they’ve reached a

The Spectator

Election round up

Here is what Spectator.co.uk made of the election Peter Hoskin wrote a comprehensive live-blog of the night’s events. Fraser Nelson hears rumours of coming Tory war. James Forsyth argues that the Tories were right to put the ball in Clegg’s court. Peter Hoskin records three statesmanlike performances and the odd sales pitch from Nick Clegg, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. David Blackburn urges the Tories to remain absolutely united behind Cameron’s deal for power. Martin Bright comments on a failure to manage expectations. Alex Massie says that Cameron should talk to Alex Salmond. Melanie Phillips looks into the murk. And Cappuccino Culture calls for a retirement.                       

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories need to put the ball in Nick Clegg’s court

The Tories have come up short and even a deal with the DUP and Sinn Fein continuing not to take their seats would not give them a majority. So, we are now into proper hung parliament territory. So far, we haven’t heard from Cameron since his speech after being re-elected as MP for Witney. But at some point soon, he’ll have to come out and speak. I hear there are multiple meetings planned for this morning as Cameron’s inner team tries to work out what to do and how to bind the rest of the party into whatever strategy they adopt. In any statement he makes, Cameron needs to stress

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Final polls provide some cheer for the Tories

All the polls tonight are in hung parliament territory. But judging from what I’m hearing tonight, it is the Tories who have been cheered by these polls. The first hurdle for Cameron to get over is having the most seats and votes. If they achieve that, then Clegg’s previous statements mean that the Tories would almost certainly get a chance to govern. These polls suggest that the Tories will make it over that hurdle.  In Tory circles, there is a feeling that when you add in that the Tories are doing better in the marginals and how much more certain Tory supporters are to vote then there are grounds to think that

Peter Hoskin

The shape of public sentiment

Silver medal in the Graph of the Day contest (we’ll have the gold medallist up on Coffee House later) goes to this effort from YouGov.  It’s just been published, with details, over at PoliticsHome, and tracks public “buzz” about the three party leaders during the course of the campaign.  I’m not sure how much to read into it, but the peaks and troughs do follow the contours of the election – so Clegg’s support rises after the first TV debate, Brown’s plummets after the Gillian Duffy incident, and Cameron pretty much flatlines it.  One striking feature is how much ground Brown has caught up since last week: the last few

David Blackburn

EU revises British economic forecasts up

Faisal Islam has the story that the EU has revised Britain’s economic prospects up to 1.2 percent in 2010 from 0.9 percent. Next year, the EU predict to 2.1 percent, the highest of major European nations. Is this a crumb of comfort for Brown? Well yes, but the EU’s predictions are still someway off Alistair Darling’s forecasts. His growth prediction for 2010 is in the region of 1 percent to 1.5 percent, which is closer than his predictions for 2011, when he expects GDP to increase by 3 percent to 3.5 percent. In any event, the upgraded figures are probably too small to shift the polls at this stage. PS:

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Polling suggests that Tories have momentum for the first time since the first debate

I’ve been passed some rather interesting polling. It’s been done for Euro RSCG, the Tories’ lead advertising agency, and is based on a sample size of 2,000 and is, what they call in the trade, momentum polling. The idea is that you ask people which party they think is gaining ground and which is losing ground and that gives you an idea of which party is likely to put on support in the coming days. This polling has been carried out before and after every debate. But I understand that the Tories have not seen it. Interestingly, it shows the Lib Dems doing well before the first debate—at that point

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

With three days to go, Brown delivers his best speech of the campaign

We have now seen the party leaders at the same event for the last time before polling day. This afternoon, Cameron, Clegg and Brown took it in turns to address the Citizens UK Assembly, a collection of urban community and faith groups. Citizen UK had a six point manifesto they wanted to test the leaders on:  Agreeing to meet with the Citizens Assembly twice over a term, a living wage for workers, a cap on interest rates at 20 percent, an ‘earned citizenship’ scheme for illegal immigrants, an end to child detention in immigration centers and community land trusts. The audience was heavily pro-Labour, Brown got a standing ovation for