Society

Monday

Matthew Dancona

Rarely has politics been so thrillingly unpredictable

I have spent the past week in Tintagel, overlooking the castle thought by some to be the birthplace of King Arthur and perhaps even the true site of Camelot. It is one of the most astonishing views in England and you feel – because you are – on the edge of the world, looking out into the Atlantic and down through the centuries into a mythic past tantalisingly visible in the Cornish mist. Where better, far from Westminster, to think straight about the decline and fall of King Gordon – a doomed monarch whose plight needs a Mallory or Tennyson to do it full justice. Truth to tell, I have

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The ‘broken society’ consensus

There are increasing hints that there is a new consensus emerging about the ‘broken society.’ Take Diane Abbot’s response to the question about what causes knife crime: “Knife crime, gun crime and the gang culture all have the same roots: educational underachievement; family breakdown and the collapse of manufacturing, which used to employ so many blue-collar males.” There is nothing in that answer that Iain Duncan Smith or David Cameron would disagree with. To be sure, Abbot and the Tories would probably disagree about how to address the problem, but the fact that they agree on its causes is a significant step forward. Also in The Independent today is a

Peter Hoskin

The death of a pier

There’s something both sad and compelling about the images of Weston-Super-Mare’s Grand Pier in flames.  Of course, we should be extremely thankful that no-one has been injured in the blaze.  But it’s hard not to romanticise these quirky and defiant structures, and thereby see other casualties among the ruins.  Nostalgia, innocence, sea air, kiss-me-quick hats and saucy postcards – piers are a uniquely British mix, and a dying breed.  Today their numbers have been cut by one.

Peter Hoskin

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 28 July – 3 August

Welcome to this week’s Wall.  As always, this is your space to write and chat about any topics you want.  Do let us know if there are things you’d like to see us cover on Coffee House.  Or if you’d like to post any photos or videos to the Wall, please e-mail them to me on phoskin @ spectator.co.uk. Photographs: Bobby Jindal with his wife and son (left); Bobby Jindal meeting George Bush (right). Contributed by Verity.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Et tu, Jackie?

Few journalists have been closer to or more respected by Brown’s inner circle than Jackie Ashley, so it is significant to see her calling on Labour to topple Brown. Ashley praises Brown as a “decent, uncorrupt, highly intelligent and serious man with good values, inspired by public service” but she warns that he is leading Labour to “meltdown”. The question is will any Cabinet minister have the coverage to confront Brown. As Ashley puts it, “at some basic level, most ministers seem almost physically scared of Brown.” (The reason for this fear is probably Brown’s temper. Ashley reports that she has “spoken to too many people who have been on

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What goes around, comes around

From tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph: The Daily Telegraph has learnt that a group of moderate MPs are planning a letter addressed to the entire Cabinet setting out the reasons why they are despairing about the problems facing the Labour Party – including Mr Brown’s leadership. In order to resolve the issue the MPs will say that a leadership election needs to be held to clear the air.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Obama recalibrates on Iraq

Obama’s overseas trip appears to have led to at least one major shift in emphasis in his foreign policy thinking. In a Newsweek interview, he was asked how big a force he would leave behind in Iraq to conduct counter-terrorism operations and to train up Iraqi forces. Here’s how he replied: “I do think that’s entirely conditions-based. It’s hard to anticipate where we may be six months from now, or a year from now, or a year and a half from now.” To be sure, Obama has long talked about having some kind of strike force in the region. But he had previously seemed much less concerned about how US

James Forsyth James Forsyth

As long as it is not Johnson, the Tories have little to fear from a change of PM

There are plenty of things to put a spring in the step of Tory MPs right now. Every day seems to bring a new poll that shows them on the way to victory, one today finds them running the table in their top thirty target seats, but what should cheer them most is that the one man who could realistically turn the next election into a genuine contest—Alan Johnson—appears uninterested in the leadership. All the speculation so far is concentrating on David Miliband and Jack Straw. It is hard to see either of these men radically improving Labour’s fortunes. Miliband is not as good a communicator as David Cameron and

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 26 July 2008

Sensible scares Sir: To be fair to the scaremongers (Another Voice, 19 July), at least some of the scares mentioned by Matthew Parris (al-Qa’eda, HIV) seem less frightening in retrospect not because they were always insubstantial but because the threats were taken seriously and action was taken to counter them. If the fuss over the threat of Aids in Britain now seems excessive, might that not be because it changed people’s behaviour? In other words, there is some social value to scaremongering from the press and public agencies. Robert Bargery London E1 Saint Pius XII? Sir: Pope Pius XII was described by Golda Meir, the then Israeli foreign minister, as

Alex James

Slow Life | 26 July 2008

‘Lunch at the Athenaeum!’ I told my mum. No idea what I was talking about. ‘The Athenaeum! It’s a gentleman’s club on Pall Mall. I’ve arrived, mother. Look at me now!’ I’ve been trying to break on to the gentleman’s club scene for a while. I’ve even joined one, a creaking Goliath down by the river. The dining room there is about the nicest in London, but I’ve only been once. The food is good: reasonably priced, old-fashioned splendour, whacking great Chateaubriand and whumping puddings that trump the décor for scale and invincibility. The ceilings are high and the conversation is low. The view is of the river and a

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 26 July 2008

Last month I noticed that the only poem I’ve ever written was a suitable candidate for the local literary festival’s poetry competition, whose theme had been announced as ‘landscape as muse’. So I dug it out of the drawer and had another look at it. I thought the poem excellent. One of the competition rules was that each entry must have a title, however, and mine was untitled, so I sat down to think of one. After some thought, I gave it the title: ‘Snapshot of my eight-year-old son and Mr Allen standing on a hillside above a bay in early autumn waiting for the albino ferret Fatima to come

Taki

High Life | 26 July 2008

Corfu The Ionian islands are softer, greener and more feminine than those of the Aegean, and Corfu in particular was used by Homer as the setting of one of the most beautiful episodes of ‘The Odyssey’, the meeting of Odysseus with Nausicaa. For any of you with short memories of the classics, Odysseus was washed ashore, having escaped Calypso’s enchantments, and is welcomed with warmth and generosity by Nausicaa’s parents, King Alcinous and his wife Arete. Once the Ithacan king reveals his identity the Phaeacians take him back to his island, which he hasn’t seen in 20 long years. In an earlier tradition, before the Trojan War, the Argonauts, having

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 26 July 2008

Q. While staying for a weekend in a five-star Umbrian paradise south of Siena, you can imagine my horror when my breakfast partner recoiled at my pulling out my Baedeker on Siena. I always carry Baedeker when centreville-ing, but my companion expressed abject mortification and begged me to put it away. I consider myself to be a person of reasonably good lineage but did not realise it was bad form to have Baedeker in a public place. Can you rule, Mary? A. It depends on whether you are interested in posing as so entrenched an habitué of Siena that you do not need Baedeker or whether you are more interested

Robin Oakley

The Turf | 26 July 2008

I once bought a house from a chap who insisted that Shakepeare’s entire output had in fact been penned by Francis Bacon. Be that as it may, Bacon did come up with the odd pithy insight, as when he argued, ‘Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age and old men’s nurses.’ Lately, I have been putting Mrs Oakley’s companionship qualities to the test with a trapped sciatic nerve, which has made me about as much fun to live with as John McEnroe at two sets down and serving to save the match. Fortunately, the saintly Mrs O is blessed with a realism that deserts her only when faced

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 26 July 2008

Should I have forced myself to accept a diseased prisoner’s licked spoon? Like most Englishman, how well mannered I am depends upon the social status of the person I am interacting with. If he is below me in the pecking order, I am unfailingly polite, bending over backwards to reassure him that I do not think of him as my inferior. If he is above me, by contrast, I am insolent and contemptuous, doing whatever I can to convey that I do not consider him my superior. This code has served me pretty well over the years, but it was tested to breaking point on a recent visit to Westville

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Diary – 26 July 2008

From London to Bath to Manhattan, ten funerals or memorial services since October makes more than one a month, and attending them can seem a full-time occupation, as well as a sorrowful one. John Biffen, Bill Deedes and Ian Gilmour were full of years and had done the state some service. James Michie and Euan Graham had also reached fourscore years, and Jean Freas, a dear family friend in New York whom my father met at a party there on the night Truman won his dramatic victory in 1948, was almost 80, as was Anthony Blond. At their age death is sad rather than tragic, but too many Fleet Street

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 26 July 2008

The news that the government is to fund a board of Islamic theologians to try to advance more moderate interpretations of Islam has been attacked as an unprecedented attempt by the state to shape the doctrine of a religion. It may well be a bad idea, but unprecedented it is not. The establishment of the Church of England meant that, until the 1970s, Parliament had the ultimate authority to determine doctrine and worship. It still has a residual role. Parliament empowered the courts in such matters. In 1850, for example, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council supported a clergyman called Gorham after his bishop had refused to institute him

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 26 July 2008

The recent return of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers in exchange for five living Hezbollah prisoners exemplifies one of the most deep-rooted human feelings: that the dead must come home. At one level, it seems irrational. What do the dead care? But as the ancients knew, it is not the dead who count in this matter, but the living. In some respects, ancient Greeks were fairly relaxed about death. Corpses were not regarded as objects of horror. The prospect of death did not seem to fill them with terror. But while Greeks often expressed doubts about whether the dead possessed any faculties of perception, they equally often spoke as

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron wants us to think that the torch has passed to a new generation

One of, if not, the key theme of David Cameron’s leadership has been generational change. Back in his 2005 conference speech Cameron told the hall “We can be that new generation”, in his first PMQs he told Tony Blair that he “was the future once” and responding to the Budget in 2006 he derided Gordon Brown as an “analogue politician in a digital age.” It was, though, far harder to wield this weapon against Tony Blair than it is with Gordon Brown. (Sometimes the execution was also too self-satisfied, NB Cameron’s reference to being “bunched” at PMQs). Blair always seemed to have a sure touch for the zeitgeist, I can’t