Society

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Risk management

The Tories keep telling us that they are on an election footing. If they are, part of that must be aiming to lose as few news cycles as possible between now and polling day. There are going to be some that the Tories can’t stop Labour winning; Labour is still the government giving it the ability to act and Brown the benefit of the Prime Ministerial bully pulpit. But what the Tories should be doing is addressing vulnerabilities they know about and cutting out the unforced errors. There are two obvious weaknesses that the leadership has yet to deal with: the shadow cabinet’s second jobs and the whole issue of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Great War’s toll

I’ve been reading Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Dire Warning by John Lukacs about Churchill’s speeches in May 1940. It is well worth reading; a fine example of microcosmic history and short at only a 140 odd pages. Reading it one particular fact stood out to me: “the British their soldiers and sailors and airmen and bombed and burned civilians together, lost fewer lives during six years than during the four years of the First World War.” I knew that the military casualties in Europe were far heavier in the First World War than the Second. But I’d have thought that the war in Asia and the civilian casualties

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How Labour might spin a second bail-out

A second bank bailout would, as Pete noted earlier, be a hinge moment in British politics. Anthony Wells has shown that Labour’s fortunes began to recover because people believed that Brown and Darling’s rescue plan for the banks would work. If the government have to go back and have a second crack at it that will surely undermine public confidence in its ability to handle the crisis and in its future pronouncements. But I suspect that Labour think they have a way to spin it. Congressional Democrats plan to have a stimulus package, which looks like it will be worth between $675 and $850 billion over two years, ready for

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Oborne: Talks have begun about a Lib-Lab coalition

Peter Oborne’s column today is explosive stuff. He writes that secret talks have already begun between Labour and Liberal Democrat figures about a possible coalition. He reports that as a sweetener to any possible deal the Labour Whips office is already drumming up support for Ming Campbell as the next Speaker. Oborne points to an article by Vince Cable suggesting that a national government might not be a bad idea and says: “Throughout all my years of reporting politics I have rarely encountered such a blatant hint by a senior politician from an opposition party that he wants a job in government  –  and all the signs are that Gordon

Peter Hoskin

A second bailout?

So there we have it.  The first substantial rumblings that Alistair Darling’s going to sanction a second banking bailout, after the first one didn’t free up credit as intended.  According to the Times, the Chancellor will “decide within weeks” whether to pump £billions more into the sector.  One option being considered is the creation of a “bad bank”; by which the state would take over bad loans from the banks, thereby detoxifying the main banking system.  It was an attractive idea when Hank Paulson first suggested it in the US, but would practice match the theory with Brown at the helm? Should a second bailout be necessary, the Government will

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 3 January 2009

I’d like to start 2009 with a few words of thanks to everyone who has joined the Spectator readers’ lending team at www.kiva.org/team/spectator. So far we have lent money to over 100 small businesses in the developing world, a figure buoyed by the disproportionate generosity of the Spectator’s Australian readership (including a lady from Cairns in a particularly elegant hat). We still have some way to go before overtaking the largest lending team — 1,700 people from Team Obama, since you ask — but every new joiner helps. And, thanks to the depreciation of the pound, the interest-free loans I made earlier in the year through Kiva (the loans are

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 3 January 2009

In Competition No. 2576 you were invited to submit New Year’s resolutions of well-known figures past and present. There can be no finer example to the goal-setting constituency than Jaspistos who, in his late forties though not necessarily at New Year, resolved to do three things which he had regarded with particular dread: to attend an encounter group, to make a parachute jump, and to answer a sex advertisement in person. He achieved all three and emerged in one piece, which puts to shame those unimaginative souls who annually pledge to lose weight, assert control over their finances, find a soulmate, and perhaps do some sort of voluntary work. I

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 3 January 2009

This is the time of year when I repeat Christina Rossetti’s lines In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron Water like a stone. November was as cold as I remember this once-muggy, foggy month. And December even harder. The Met Office says the rest of winter will be severe, and this is the first of a cold series. I am prepared. I have two lovely, comfortable scarves, one of white, of pure cashmere, bought at an Armani sale by that Prussian beauty Lady Niti Gowrie, which somehow found its way to me, and I also possess an immense long red thing of wool, from

Theodore Dalrymple

Global Warning | 3 January 2009

Reading an account by the historian John Waller of the Dancing Plague in Alsace in 1518 recently, I could not help but notice the interesting but perhaps incomplete parallels with our own time. Economic conditions in Strasbourg were dire in 1518 when a woman called Frau Troffea started dancing in public and continued for days on end until she was exhausted and had damaged her feet severely. Several hundred people soon joined her; the madness was collective. What accounted for this collective madness? Some have suggested that it was caused by ergotism, a condition brought about by an ergot-producing fungus that spreads on mouldy grain; but, while ergot does cause

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Here’s to a transparent 2009

What’s this?  Yet another delay to the publication of ministers’ private interests?  Yep, and this time it’s because some of the “new minsters” introduced during the last reshuffle have – according to the Times’s source – “required quite a bit of investigation”.  The Times adds 2 + 2 together and comes up with Peter Mandelson; who’s “declared the bare minimum in a voluntary entry to the Lords Register of Interests.” Sure, it’s easy to speculate over this kind of thing; especially with the prompt that Mandelson hasn’t yet clarified his “links to Oleg Deripaska”.  But even if the situation’s completely innocent, it’s still rather disspiriting.  At the very least, the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What’s wrong with political dynasties

It now seems that Governor Paterson probably is going to appoint Caroline Kennedy to the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton. The odd thing about her mini-campaign, if you can call it that, is how unnatural she has been. She has been much less assured and appealing than she was when she stumped for Obama. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan, in her own inimitable style, explains why being born to it might be why Caroline has proven to be such a poor advocate for herself so far “People who’ve seen politics up close when young tend to be embarrassed to be in politics. This is because they have seen too

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A needed contrarian

Every age needs its contrary thinkers, those prepared to challenge the conventional wisdom of the day. As Lexington argues in The Economist, Samuel Huntington—who died on Christmas Eve—was that for the 1990s. While others were triumphalist after the West’s victory in the Cold War, Huntington was pessimistically warning of a coming Clash of Civilizations. Huntington was many things but he was not creature of fashion. Clash, to my mind, is at least as flawed a theory as The End of History but it has undoubtedly added something to the intellectual debate. We would be in a better state today if more people in the 1990s had not succumbed to the

Peter Hoskin

The Tories’ message for 2009

Over at Conservative Home, Jonathan Isaby flags up George Osborne’s response to some of today’s gloomy economic and financial indicators.  Here are the shadow chancellor’s words: “First we discovered that there were fewer shoppers in December despite the VAT cut, now we discover house prices are falling sharply and mortgage approvals at a record low despite the stamp duty holiday introduced three months ago. The new year shows that Gordon Brown’s policies are not working and the recession is getting worse not better. That is because an economic recovery depends on confidence in the future, and people do not have that confidence while we have a Labour Government in power

Lisa Hilton

Dressing for the end of the world

We know it’s not cool to dress like a master of the universe right now, and the lunchtime crowd at the Ivy on Tuesday were less Madoff than Man at C&A. Regulars have always been more fashionable than Fashion, considering themselves too serious and important to appear to pay attention to clothes, but the abundance of pastel jumpers suggests a trend reminiscent of Nineties black-nylon stealth wealth. Perhaps dressing like a contestant in a celebrity golf challenge indicates a cannily egalitarian sympathy with the miseries of middle management. Sartorial stress is creeping into other outposts of the Caring empire. At Annabels, that little corner of London society that is forever

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Elections the Tories should win in 2009

The idea that 2009 will be a good year for the Tories is fast becoming conventional wisdom. Michael Brown makes this case in typically eloquent style in The Independent today arguing that once the downturn begins to really hurt, people will turn from the government to the opposition. But what really struck me was Brown’s observation about the two elections that we definitely will have here in 2009: “For the first time since 1993, county council elections will be held in England NOT on the same day as the general election. In 1997, 2001 and 2005 these local elections coincided with Tony Blair’s three victories on general election turnouts –

Peter Hoskin

Has the death knell sounded for the Euro?

Peter Oborne makes a bold prediction in today’s Mail: that the Euro – ten years old yesterday – won’t live to see its twentieth anniversary.  Whether or not you agree with that prognosis, Oborne’s case is compelling: “Indeed, far from being the staggering success its supporters claim, the euro-zone is already inflicting huge damage on the nations within it. Many currency market experts believe that some of these struggling members may be forced to peel away from the euro – with devastating consequences for the rest of the world. The greatest problems, in the short term at least, are in the four Mediterranean economies known as the PIGS – Portugal,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The sterling turning point?

I’m fairly pessimistic about the prospects for sterling – or the GBPeso as some CoffeeHousers have dubbed it. But as a counterbalance to the stuff I’ve been posting recently, here is a forecast from Royal Bank of Scotland which reckons sterling has been oversold, the turning point has arrived and that we will be able to afford to go on holiday after all. Our pounds will be buying €1.20 by next Christmas and €1.30 by Christmas 2010, but we can forget about those $2 pounds. Here is its graph (below). RBS inverts things, and asks how many pence a Euro will buy. RBS reckons the BoE will cut rates to

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Helen Suzman RIP

Helen Suzman was a woman of quite remarkable character and bravery. To have been the sole anti-apartheid MP in the South African parliament for so many years must have required a level of courage and a dedication to principle that few of us can imagine. Suzman was a good liberal, in the proper sense of the word. She opposed the great evil of apartheid, pointed out the failings of the Mbeki government over AIDS and Zimbabwe and denounced Mugabe. As she put it herself: “I am proud to acknowledge that I am a liberal…who adheres to old-fashioned liberal values such as the rule of law, universal franchise, free elections, a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tony Blair: That the economy grew for a decade under Labour was down to luck not Gordon Brown

The Daily Mail reports a quite astonishing quote from Tony Blair: “Mr Blair, replying to a question after delivering a lecture at Yale University in Connecticut, said: ‘It is true that we had ten years of record growth when I was prime minister. ‘I have, unfortunately, come to the conclusion that it was luck.’” Having not heard the audio one can’t tell if Blair was joking, as his spokesman claims he was, or what the context was. But Brown’s boasts about his own economic record have always been exaggerated; a whole bunch of those record quarters of consecutive economic growth came under the Tories and Brown was operating in a

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What to look out for in 2009

The events of 2008 should make us all wary about making predictions. So instead, I’m going to flag up some things that I think are worth watching out for in 2009. The Chinese government’s legitimacy is predicated upon rapid economic growth, so what will happen there when the downturn hits? I’m fascinated to see if there is more social unrest, whether newly affluent urbanites become as irked at the Communist party as folk in the countryside and whether the leadership resorts to nationalist sabre-rattling in an attempt to shore up its position. Iran is the problem that hasn’t gone away. As Richard Beeston notes in The Times this morning, Iran