Society

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Psychological flaws

The Mail on Sunday reports that the Tories are considering psychometric tests to assess which MPs are suitable to run departments. There is also talk of asking peoples’ secretaries to report on how they react to stress.  Unsurprisingly, the Mail find several MPs who are—anonymously—prepared to rubbish the idea as big brother, control freakery. But what I find most worrying about the whole story is this quote from a “well placed source” defending the scheme: “The idea is to find out before we get into government which Shadow Ministers are capable of controlling a major department and a big budget – and which ones are not.” Surely, this is something

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The banker precedent

By rescuing the banks, Brown has illustrated that—in extremis—the government can find the money to do things. As Andrew Rawnsley argues in The Observer this is going to be a problem for Brown in the coming months: “ballooning government debt points to a severe squeeze on services. Whitehall is already anticipating the bloodiest spending negotiations for a generation. Mr Brown has guaranteed spending only on health and education, which implies serious pain everywhere else. Politically difficult in any circumstances, the boggling billions directed to the banks makes this even harder to sell to the voters. Every time a cut falls, the cry will go up: you could find £500bn for the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown gets a poll boost but the Tories are still ten points ahead

There are two ways of looking at today’s YouGov poll, the first carried out since the announcement of the government’s rescue plan for the banks. The first is to see it as evidence of how the financial crisis is reviving Gordon Brown’s premiership. Labour are up three point to 33 percent—their highest rating with YouGov since February, 59 percent support the government’s rescue plan and Brown and Darling are 33-27 ahead of Cameron and Osborne on the question of who voters trust to best handle this crisis. The other, and to my mind more accurate, way of looking at it is of proof of how much trouble Labour is still

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Real Life | 11 October 2008

I have been living in hotels for so long I am beginning to hallucinate. For example, at an EU summit on Saturday I could have sworn that Nicolas Sarkozy winked at me. I was fighting my way to the front of a media scrum at the Elysée Palace and almost fell over the rope. I teetered against it and in that second our eyes met and the French President smiled beguilingly at me. But I could have imagined it. The whole thing could easily be a product of staying in the Park Inn, Charles de Gaulle, and existing on summit sandwiches. Very nice sandwiches they were, with aspic on top.

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 11 October 2008

There was this evil Albanian gang specialising in kidnapping young girls, forcibly addicting them to heroin and selling them on to wealthy Arabs as sex slaves. To simplify their operation and reduce shipping costs, the gang had decided to concentrate their efforts on kidnapping middle-class Californian girls arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. But when they abducted a sensitive teenager on her first visit to Europe, they hadn’t reckoned on the determination of her war-hero father to find and rescue her. The girl was worth much more to the Albanians than their other captives ‘because she is a vier-jeen’. She was therefore set aside for an invitation-only auction

Taki

High Life | 11 October 2008

New York The war on terror, as the most inarticulate man ever to inhabit the White House calls it, has now lasted longer than the second world war. And take it from Taki, it’s not going away, not in my lifetime, that’s for sure. Insurgencies have a tendency to wear out their enemy and eventually prevail. Malaya (1948–60) is the only exception (thank you, Col. Thompson). In 1946 the French fought an insurgency in Indochina, and after eight years they collapsed in Dien Bien Phu. Algeria ditto. Ten years in Vietnam saw mighty Uncle Sam defeated, while in the Philippines the Marxist Huks are yet to be beaten. In Afghanistan,

Denis Macshane

Diary – 11 October 2008

Parliament is back and I can relax. A tiresome cliché holds that MPs have a three-month summer break. If only. I have spent more time canvassing, selling tombola tickets and doing politics than ever before. And then on the eve of the Commons returning there is pure political Wagner. Boris fires Blair! Mandy returns! Like Churchill returning to office in 1939 the signal goes out: ‘Peter is back!’ Russia invades and dismembers Georgia! George W. Bush nationalises more finance capital than Lenin! The USA adds an extra S to become the United Socialist States of America as its ambassador quits Mayfair to open an embassy in the heart of proletarian

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 11 October 2008

We all know that everything about money comes down to confidence, but normally, because we have that confidence, we do not think about what this means. Now we must. We have learnt that mighty banks are nothing if customers — and other banks — have no confidence in their assets. Panicked, we turn to governments. Only governments, we believe, can ultimately overcome monetary crises, because only they have control of the printing press. If they ‘stand behind’ our banks, our confidence can be restored. That is why Gordon Brown acted as he did on Wednesday morning. But is this necessarily so? In all the amazing scenes of recent weeks, I

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 11 October 2008

Monday Everyone in a panic about our Greek taverna line. Am starting to wish I never mentioned it. DD keeps ringing up to tell Gids about big game hunting. ‘I know, I know,’ I told him. ‘You’d better be sure you kill with the first shot, etc.’ Sometimes the old ones are the best. Sometimes, however, they are just tedious. To make matters worse, we’re run off our feet because Nigel is being rested. It was the only compassionate option after he went funny at conference and rampaged around the press room screaming obscenities at journalists, which even Gary said was taking media management a bit too far. So he’s

The Spectator

Letters | 11 October 2008

The blame game Sir: While I do not flinch from looking on the Clinton era as a disaster for its neglect of the threat to global security posed by bin Laden et al and the tacit encouragement of Enron-style corporate accounting, I think blaming the Democrats for the credit crunch may be going a little too far (‘Clinton is to blame’, 4 October). The politically correct housing agenda described in Dennis Sewell’s article was not conducted in secret, or if it was it would be difficult to imagine that the post-Watergate right-wing media in the US would have allowed it to be secret for long. It should have been possible

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 11 October 2008

I cannot help feeling a certain affinity with Peter Mandelson. Like me, he has been given a number of high-profile jobs, only to lose them in slightly dubious circumstances. Yet somehow he always manages to bounce back. He is the political equivalent of a Weeble: no matter how near he comes to toppling over, he ends up righting himself. This has led me to formulate the Mandelson/Young Guide to Failing Upwards: 1. Cultivate a reputation for being clever. No matter how often you screw up, if people believe you possess some special talent, they will always consider employing you. In Mandelson’s case, the fact that he is widely thought to

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 11 October 2008

Dot Wordsworth on sex and séances In 1885 W.T. Stead bought a 13-year-old girl for £5 as part of his campaign to get the age of consent raised to 16. He was the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, an evening paper. Stead’s allies included Bramwell Booth, the son of the founder of the Salvation Army, Cardinal Manning, the Earl of Shaftesbury and Frederick Temple, the future Archbishop of Canterbury. The scandalous publicity Stead achieved helped to bring in a Bill by which the age of consent was indeed raised to 16. Stead did not mention in print that he had chloroformed the poor girl he had bought, and had

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 11 October 2008

Q. Next week I will visit London where I have been invited to an exhibition in Cork Street by the artist Richard Foster. Since I understand he is one of the so-called Pinstripe Painters, I wonder if you can advise me whether it will be de rigueur to wear a pinstripe suit myself? I worry this may be thought bad taste in consideration of the current kerfuffle in the banking world. A. Pinstripe suits have long been controversial items but the reality is that they are worn, not by bankers, but almost exclusively by estate agents and theatricals. Neither, misleadingly, are they worn by the ‘so-called Pinstripe Painters’ (who also

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Photo of the Day | 11 October 2008

There would have been more – and better – blogging in these parts recently if I hadn’t been helping to look after my niece, Florence, lately. She was, alas, suffering from abandonment issues as her mother was in London. Even the pastoral delights of the Borderland offered but a temporary reprieve. Still, here she is on her way to feed the two Jacob sheep (Rachel and Leah, obviously) yesterday: All of which is a way of getting round to reminding y’all that you should check out the wee beast’s mother’s website. If you felt like commissioning a painting then you’d a) be smart, b) be rewarded with a fine picture

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Another blow to Palin’s reputation

The report into Troopergate doesn’t disqualify Sarah Palin but it does tarnish her reformist credentials, one of the assets that she was meant to bring to the ticket. The McCain can point to the fact that the report says that “Governor Palin’s firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.” But its criticism of Palin for “abusing her power” and the portrait it paints of her governorship are damaging. McCain made several gambles in picking Palin. The biggest was that Palin would be ready for primetime on the biggest political stage of all. After

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is there a case for suspending the markets?

The White House yesterday dismissed Silvio Berlusconi’s suggestion that the markets should be shut down for a few days. But support for this idea is still gathering pace. Steven Pearlstein, the Washington Post’s respected business commentator, makes the case for it today: the markets could use a timeout just about now, something that lasts longer than a weekend and gives policymakers around the world the chance to get a good nice sleep and evaluate their options without feeling like they have to respond to every movement flashing across their Bloomberg screens. It would allow some time for passions to cool and for real investors to regain control of markets now

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown admits comprehensives failed urban Britain

Gordon Brown’s desire to have it both ways is quite incredible. In his conference speech Brown took a personal and cheap shot at David Cameron, accusing him of using his children as props. But now he is perfectly happy to use his children as the backdrop for a soft-focus interview with Alison Pearson of the Mail and to talk on the record about their health issues. But once you have got over this and the irony of Brown, who keeps stressing that he is a serious man working flat out to try and solve this crisis, taking time out to indulge in sofa politics you’ll find there is a revealing

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown’s flawed war plan

Gordon Brown wants to style himself as the leader Britain needs for the coming ‘economic war’. His political survival depends on persuading, one might use another word here, the electorate that only he has the toughness, experience and knowledge to lead us out of this financial turmoil. I suspect that Brown will get a boost for being in charge and appearing to have a plan at the moment. But when this crisis turns into a recession, the public will turn on Brown. Charles Moore comes up with a brilliant analogy for Brown’s predicament in his Telegraph column today: “This week he resembles Neville Chamberlain in September 1939. He has declared

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Web Exclusive: Lloyd Evans on Thomas Friedman

Thomas Friedman, the influential American commentator, addressed Intelligence Squared on his new book, ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded. Why the world needs a green revolution and how we can renew our global future.’ A star turn visited Intelligence Squared on 13th October. Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer prize winning journalist and columnist on the New York Times, came to discuss his new book ‘Hot Flat and Crowded’, an analysis of the global challenges of the 21st century. The topic seemed spectacularly tedious but Friedman caught our interest immediately with his unusual stance. He’s both deeply sceptical of America and devoutly patriotic. His language is chatty and challenging. ‘We’ve lost our groove,’ he said

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 11 October 2008

In Competition No. 2565 you were invited to submit a poem about the minor irritations of life written in heroic couplets. Things that bring out the misanthropist in me include ‘comedy’ stickers on cars (e.g., ‘my other car’s a Porsche!’), the over-enthusiastic use of exclamation marks and strangers who say ‘cheer up, love; it may never happen’, which strikes me as a very risky statement. High on yours were poor grammar, impenetrable packaging and anyone who chirrups ‘have a nice day’. And I now know that those who seek to reassure me with claims that no one minds my baby son’s piercing squawks on public transport are lying. The winners,