Society

Sunday

7 Dec 2008

Top Lib Dem donor quits party in tax row

Sam Coates breaks the news that Lord Jacobs, the Lib Dem’s biggest donor, is quitting the party. But reading about his policy dispute with the party, one wonders why he was a Lib Dem in the first place. Sam reports that: “His beef is that he wants Clegg to go further on tax, taking the lowest paid out of tax altogether but also reducing the rates for higher earners. The party is reluctant to raise employers national insurance by the required amount to pay for it, and relations have clearly broken down. Now Lord Jacobs wants to be free to hawk his tax plan around Labour and the Tories –

James Forsyth

Did a Cabinet minister think Brown was breaking the law?

The oddest, and potentially most significant, story in the Sunday papers is the Tories claim—reported in the Mail on Sunday—that two senior Labour people, including a current cabinet minister, passed on information to them about Brown, Balls and the Smith Institute. The two Labour sources apparently pushed the Tories to see whether the relationship was illegal. This claim is bound to increase the paranoia levels in Downing Street. If it is true and not just pys ops by the Tories, then it is testament to how bitterly personal of the divisions in the Labour party are. But it should be remembered that the information was passed to the Tories in

Peter Hoskin

A third term for the Speaker?

Despite his cynical attempts at buck-passery, the heat’s still not off Michael Martin. Numerous MPs across the House are thought to be, at best, underwhelmed – and, at worst, disgusted – by his actions before, during and after the police raid on Damian Green’s parliamentary office. A survey of MPs by the Beeb puts some numbers on the discontent: of 130 Parliamentarians, 32 said they have no confidence in the Speaker, against 56 who still have confidence in him. On a separate question, 50 thought Martin culpable over the search of Green’s office. One thing that may have been holding back Martin’s detractors – and even those 56 who apparently

James Forsyth

Green-gate coming to an end?

Ian Kirby has the scoop about the Damian Green investigation: TORY MP Damian Green and his Home Office mole will NOT be charged in the leak scandal, the News of the World can reveal. Prosecutors say papers seized from Mr Green’s Commons office cannot be used as evidence in a trial. They add that cops FAILED to conduct a proper search in Westminster. The conclusions, in a secret early review by the Crown Prosecution Service, coincide with the initial findings of an independent police probe. That investigation is already concluding the case is “not prosecutable”, and the decision to arrest the Shadow Immigration Minister was “over the top”. One source

Saturday

6 Dec 2008

The Spectator

Letters | 6 December 2008

Nancy and the Keynesians Sir: Nancy Dell’Olio is a Keynesian (‘John Maynard Keynes, my hero’, 29 November), but if Keynes were alive today, he would be revising his doctrine. In the 1930s government expenditure was a much smaller proportion of GDP than it is today. So was the tax take. Then, with the private sector devastated by the slump, increasing government expenditure was the strongest lever to change sentiment and reflate the economy. Now, both the private and the public sectors are crippled with debt. Increasing government expenditure threatens the nation’s credit-rating, and tweaking VAT to encourage people to spend is at odds with people’s desperate desire to save. With

Melissa Kite

Real life | 6 December 2008

My friend Stephen rang me in a tremendous huff, just as I was trying to eat a mince pie. ‘I no longer wish to be a part of this society. You can cease referring to me as a British citizen. I no longer accede to the precepts of this system we call Britain.’ I tried to sympathise through mouthfuls. ‘Yeth, itsth really terrible. Gordonsth rubbisthsth.’ ‘I can tell you are busy, I will leave you to it. I’m going to Waterstones to buy L’Etranger.’ I tried to eat a second mince pie to make up for the enjoyment of the first having been ruined but it was no good. Why

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 6 December 2008

We first encountered Ahmed, our dragoman in Cairo, when he stepped forward to greet us at passport control. He was dressed soberly in dark suit, black tie, black shoes. Shaved head. Designer glasses. His manner was brisk and unsmiling. But now and again an engagingly complicit smile lighted his hawkish face to remind us that he understood as well as we that all is vanity. He expedited the entry formalities then led us outside to a waiting people carrier and slid back the door for us. Ahmed sat up in front, beside the driver. The driver spoke no English and gave his full attention to the road ahead. Ahmed, on

Taki

High life | 6 December 2008

New York A funny thing happened to me on my way out from a party on 17 November in London. I was temporarily confused until I ran into Naomi Campbell in the Royal Hospital Gardens. She was carrying some packages into her car and offered me a ride. ‘Are you going on to Andrew’s?’ she asked sweetly. ‘Hop in, I’ll take you.’ We chatted away and I reminded her how she had once applied a vice-like grip around my neck when I was about to leave the dance floor and decapitate a poisoned dwarf, who had thrown a missile at me. It was a private party in a private house

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 6 December 2008

Q. I have a well-established and generally wonderful cleaning woman whose job, in her view, includes chatting. This was fine in the past when my children were out at school all day but now my 16-year-old son is attending sixth-form college and comes back to work at home between lessons. I have asked my ‘treasure’ to leave him undisturbed at this time but she seems not to take the request seriously. She just goes into the room where he works, sits down on the arm of his chair and chats away. A ‘Do Not Disturb’ notice on the door has had no effect. We do not want to wreck the

Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 6 December 2008

In a recession, head for the mall where you can buy seven Crunchies for £1.49 I was awestruck. As a long-term resident of West London, I had been looking forward to my first glimpse of this emporium, but it was even better than I imagined. I simply had no idea shopping centres could be this good. From now on there would be no need to go anywhere else. It was the answer to all my prayers. I am not talking about Westfield, obviously, but the Oaks Shopping Centre in Acton. The new £3 billion retail park in Shepherd’s Bush may boast a branch of Tiffany, but the Oaks has a

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern – 6 December 2008

In the last two columns we have considered Barack Obama as novus homo and orator. But what about his mixed race? The racist seeks the cause for the differences between groups of people in either physiological or genetic determinism. The resulting characteristics are unalterable and define them as inherently inferior. But are prejudice, xenophobia and stereotyping ‘racist’ in those terms? If they are, Romans were certainly racist, as probably all people of all colours, ages and backgrounds have been and always will be. A major theme is the contamination that results from contact with foreigners. Romans living in the East, we are regularly told, stood a fair chance of being

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody – 6 December 2008

Monday A few loose ends I’m still trying to get to the bottom of: 1) If Damian was running the mole — and there’s no evidence to suggest he was but let’s just say he might have been — then who was running Damian? Wonky Tom says it’s Mrs Damian, the nice lawyer lady. Possible the whole idea was Damian’s I suppose, but seems v unlikely. 2) Was I involved in the leaks and if I was, have I done anything wrong? This is tricky. Been racking brains and do remember Mr G once asking me to pass someone something in a brown envelope. But I didn’t look inside so

James Forsyth

Would a fourth term Labour government try and take Britain into the euro?

Gordon Brown has done something great for Britain: he was one of the people most responsible for keeping this country out of the European single currency. As Chancellor, he was a roadblock to Blair’s ambitions on this front. So when the idea of Britain joining the euro was floated last weekend, I thought it was just Peter Mandelson getting too far forward on his skis and being a bit, from his perspective, too hopeful. But Peter Oborne reports in the Mail today that it was actually part of a coordinated plan: “It was as a result of these talks [with Barroso] that Lord Mandelson floated the tragically misguided idea of

James Forsyth

What the Butler saw

Robin Butler, the former Cabinet Secretary, gave a most interesting interview to Steve Richards on the Westminster Hour this morning. Butler was Cabinet Secretary between 1988 and 1998 and so was there for the slew of leaks that occurred during the tail-end of the Major government. He admitted that most internal leak inquiries achieved little and that he would often ask the police to investigate. However, he noted that he could not “command” the police to help, he could only ask. The police, Butler said, generally refused to get involved unless there was “prima facie” evidence that a serious crime had been committed. It does appear that this approach has been

James Forsyth

Election timing

One of the overlooked elements of the PBR was the Chancellor’s assertion that Britain would be out of recession by the third quarter of 2009. This offered a metric against which the PBR and the other measures Labour have taken can be judged; if the country is still in recession then it will be reasonable to say that they have failed. This is one of the reasons why some Tories expect Brown to go in 2009. Andrew Grice sums up the early election speculation in the Independent today: “Privately, Tories fret about a mid-recession 2009 election, with the Prime Minister seeking a “doctor’s mandate” to complete the patient’s recovery. Their

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 6 December 2008

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2573 you were invited to submit the synopsis of a sequel-that-was-never-written to a well-known novel. Sequels to books and films have a poor reputation, the assumption being that, with the odd exception (The Godfather: Part II, for example), they will almost certainly fall short of the original. I learned this lesson early having looked forward with rabid excitement to Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which failed to live up to its predecessor. You were all on sparkling form this week. In John O’Byrne’s follow-up to Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s repressed incestuous desire finds its true expression and he

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 6 December 2008

There’s got to be some direct relationship these days between the bad behaviour of the Twickenham crowd and the feebleness of the English team. When the Twickers faithful launched into an insanely enthusiastic rendition of ‘Swing Low’ as the All Blacks went into the haka last weekend, you knew there was trouble in store. The haka should happen in relative silence, just like the national anthems — though the crowd has taken to booing them as well. Do the Twickers massive think their borrowed slave song has greater resonance than the utterly authentic haka? As the Barbour and hip-flask brigade trundled back to the shires on Saturday evening, they might

Fraser Nelson

Politics | 6 December 2008

Knowledge that a secret exists is half of the secret, and Westminster loves nothing more than guessing what a secret might be. When The Spectator’s website revealed at 6 p.m. last Thursday that a major Conservative story was about to unfold, there was a flurry of frenzied speculation. One Cabinet member even called 10 Downing Street for clues. No one knew. Several theories were flying (George Osborne resigning, Samantha Cameron pregnant) yet none was as bizarre as the truth: a shadow cabinet member had just been arrested by anti-terror police in a leak inquiry. Once, such a development would have sent Conservative central office into spasm. This time, Damian Green’s

Robert Beaumont

City Life | 6 December 2008

At last, a fine statue of Brian Clough — but still not even a plaque for Jesse Boot ‘All Nottingham has is Robin Hood — and he’s dead,’ said Brian Roy, a Dutch footballer who starred, briefly, for Nottingham Forest in the 1990s. Roy’s assessment of this bleak East Midlands city, as wounding as Orson Welles’s jibe about the Swiss and the cuckoo clock in The Third Man, was fundamentally true — until guns arrived on the scene in 2002. Suddenly Nottingham had an identity, albeit an unwanted one. After a series of high-profile murders, the tabloids labelled it ‘Shottingham’, gun capital of Britain. It is a label which has

Matthew Lynn

Is gold still a safe haven?

It would be hard to imagine a worse run of events for paper money. Investment banks such as Lehman Brothers have drowned in a sea of subprime debt. Building societies such as Bradford & Bingley, once so dull and safe they made fun of it in their ads, have had to be nationalised. In the case of Iceland, a whole country suddenly went pop. So you might think it would have been a great year for the world’s oldest form of money: gold. Fleeing a bankrupt monetary system, investors would seek the security of ingots and krugerrands. Except, as it happens, they didn’t. Among the many fascinating sub-plots to the