Society Archives

Monday

7 Jul 2008

Obama’s most significant advantage

What should keep the McCain campaign up at night is not Obama’s financial advantage or even his poll lead but his ability to command the news agenda almost at will. Two events in recent days have underlined what a potent tool this is going to be for Obama between now and November. First, there is Obama’s coming tour of Europe and the Middle East. McCain has been on a couple of foreign tours and drawn some decent coverage. But now the Obama campaign is thinking about having their candidate deliver a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate, the same place where Ronald Reagan delivered his justly famous ‘tear down

James Forsyth

Cameron has immunised himself from attacks on his morality matters approach

Conservative Home is worrying about how the press might report Cameron’s Glasgow speech, fearful that it might be presented as a ‘nasty party’ attack. But to my mind, the Tories don’t need to worry: this dog won’t hunt. First of all, Cameron has detoxified the Tory brand enough and spent so long portraying himself as a contemporary man that trying to paint him as some social authoritarian eager to take Britain back to Victorian times just won’t work. For this type of character attack to wound they have to chime with what people think about a politician. In this case, they will fall as flat as attempts to portray Boris

James Forsyth

A moral policy

One of the most frequent conversations that Fraser and I have is about whether politicians can change the moral weather. Fraser thinks they can’t, I think they can. If you agree with me, then David Cameron’s speech today in Glasgow is one of the most important of his leadership to date. Here is the key section of it: “We as a society have been far too sensitive. In order to avoid injury to people’s feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgemental, we have failed to say what needs to be said. We have seen a decades-long erosion of responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others, deferring gratification instead

James Forsyth

Talking about Islamophobia

Peter Oborne’s Dispatches programme about Islamophobia in Britain is already making waves. (To get a sense of Peter’s argument, read this piece he did for the Mail). Peter is undoubtedly right that the press sometime do report rumours and urban myths about Muslims as fact which can contribute to a disturbing, anti-Muslim atmosphere. He is also right that if this country treats its Muslim citizens poorly it makes them more likely to become disaffected and fall prey to extremist recruiters. But where I think Peter goes off course is when he appears to suggest that criticism of the Islamic faith is equivalent to—or as worrying as—criticism of Muslims. Peter’s essay

James Forsyth

Get Carter (Episode 25)

I’m not sure how to describe on a family-friendly blog what people in the know say the mood in Downing Street is like. But Sam Coates has a great example of just how bitter things are over there and how tense relations are between Jeremy Heywood, permanent secretary at Number Ten, and Stephen Carter: On Friday morning, it escalated. There were sore heads all round after the expenses debacle – where was Gordon at the time of the vote? what were those meetings? – and all 200 staff gathered in Downing Street, where they were addressed by Mr Heywood. According to one witness, he began by saying: “I had hoped

James Forsyth

An unhealthy approach to policy

To many in conservative circles, the less said about Tory health policy the better. The Tories have seemingly decided that the best they can do is neutralise the issue politically and so have shied away from doing anything other than trying to win over the British Medical Association. To be fair, this strategy has worked tactically: the Tories are now more trusted than Labour with the NHS, denying Labour of one of its traditional sources of electoral strength. However, it also means that the Tories are, to some extent, to the left of Labour on health as Janet Daley argues in the Telegraph today. (As for the BMA, do read Stephen’s

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 7 July – 13 July

Welcome to the third CoffeeHousers’ Wall. CoffeeHousers’ Wall is a new feature on Spectator.co.uk. Every Monday, we’ll put up a ‘wall’ post and – provided your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there’s no need to stay ‘on topic’ – which means you’ll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There’s also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything’s fair game – from political stories in your local paper, to

Sunday

6 Jul 2008

Alex Massie

Your American Right

Words fail me: re: Civics [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A totally crazy Saturday-morning thought: Wouldn’t George W. Bush make an awesome high-school government teacher? Wouldn’t it be something if his post-presidential life would up being that kind of post-service service? How’s that for a model? Who needs Harvard visiting chairs and high-end lectures? How about Crawford High? (Or wherever?) Reach out and touch the young before they are jaded, or break them of the cynicism pop culture and possibly their parents have passed down to them. Whatever you think of President Bush, he’s a likable guy in love with his country with some history and experience to share. “Awesome” is pretty

James Forsyth

Magnificent

I’m not much of a tennis fan but even I was gripped by the men’s final. Every time you thought it was going to end, the player on the brink of defeat seemed to find another gear. Astonishingly, despite how long the match went on—it was the longest final in the tournament’s history—the quality of play never dropped. After this final and Euro 2008, the rest of the sporting summer has a lot to live up to. PS I do, though, have to agree with Clive’s gripe about the commentary.

Fraser Nelson

A reconstruction report-card

Like James, I’ve been admiring the new issue of Time – what caught my eye was its superb report on the Kajaki Damn in Afghanistan. This is Britain’s top reconstruction project in the Afghanistan and it’s taken an American publication to give us the low-down (and a stunning collection of photographs) on how Our Boys are doing. Here are my top five extracts…. 1. Military officials say the insurgency doesn’t have the numbers to win a conventional fight. But the Taliban doesn’t need to win. It just needs to outlast the will of foreign nations. Few Afghans believe that the Taliban offers a better alternative to the current government, but many

James Forsyth

Look at who else he is talking to

There’s plenty to read between the lines in The Sunday Times interview with Tony Blair. This aside from Blair is particularly interesting: “One thing you could say about me,” he says with a shrug, “is that I have no problem moving on.” And then as an afterthought: “I still talk to David and to Gordon.” Gordon? “Oh yes.” Rather infuriatingly, it is not specified which David Blair is referring to. But whether it is Cameron or Miliband it is bound to raise the Brownites’ blood pressure that David comes first in the sentence. On the surface, Blair is loyal to his successor but there appear to be some comparisons being made.

James Forsyth

Will it be goodbye from Glasgow for Gordon?

Gordon Brown is, according to The Sunday Mirror, finally going to take a proper holiday. The Brown family will head to East Anglia later this month for a week or so. But if Labour loses Glasgow East on the 24th of July, Brown might find the Labour party sending him off on a permanent vacation. It looks like Labour has finally found a candidate, Margaret Curran—a Glasgow MSP, to stand in what would in normal circumstances be a very safe seat for the party. But as Andrew Rawnsley points out, Labour’s traditional strength here means that the party is not well-equipped to fight a competitive campaign; the Glasgow East branch

Saturday

5 Jul 2008

The Spectator

Letters | 5 July 2008

Cummins unstuck Sir: Rod Liddle (Liddle Britain, 28 June) is mistaken to suggest that only Guardian journalists objected to articles published in the Sunday Telegraph under the pseudonym Will Cummins. My Sunday Telegraph colleague Alasdair Palmer and I (both of whom have written frequently to attack Islamic fundamentalism and Islamist terrorism) protested strongly about them at the time, in the office and — in my own case — in print. The main reason for our disquiet was that Mr Cummins had not, as Mr Liddle argues, ‘made it clear that his beef was with the ideology, not the people’. In fact he did the opposite, energetically denigrating all Muslims as

Penny Smith

Diary – 5 July 2008

Penny Smith gives a rundown of her week No matter what happens, Friday is always a big day for those of us who do five days of getting up at sparrow’s cough. The prospect of two days of lie-ins is so exciting it makes me feel giddy. My self-imposed rule of no drinking and no caffeine is broken at weekends. Friday is Clare Nasir’s birthday. She is our vastly overqualified weather presenter. I share a dressing-room with her (or Andrea McLean) and whoever is reading the news on the GMTV Newshour. Our room is barely big enough to hold a stag beetle wrestling match. Clare is very useful for site-specific forecasts. ‘The Opera

Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 5 July 2008

Being muzzled is a very frustrating experience for a journalist. When the story broke last week that Sean Langan had been kidnapped in a remote region of Pakistan — he was released on 21 June after a long and tortuous negotiation — I got a stream of email messages from mutual friends saying, ‘Did you know about this?’ I wanted to respond by saying, ‘Of course I f***ing did.’ For the three months of Sean’s incarceration I had barely been able to think of anything else. On reflection, though, it was a perfectly reasonable question. If I had known about it, why hadn’t I told them? More importantly, why hadn’t

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 5 July 2008

It was either Kung Fu Panda or Prince Caspian, so I took my nephew and niece to the latter. Aunts are only flesh and blood. A trailer for the Panda film featured him exclaiming ‘Awesome!’ Strangely enough this word is used in C.S. Lewis’s novel, about Aslan’s How, though not in the film. Awesome does not appear in the Bible (although awe does, four times, always in the phrase ‘stand in awe’), but Lewis meant it in the sense that the Authorised Version expressed by dreadful, as when Jacob declared: ‘How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God.’ I could see that changes in

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 5 July 2008

Q. I want to give a drinks party for 200 friends. The alcohol is within my budget. Most of my friends are recovering alcoholics and the others are too old to binge drink, but I have been quoted £30 a head for food. I do not want to pay £6,000 for, effectively, a few kilos of trussed up ingredients in exotic sauces. Most people will be going out to dinner afterwards in any case. What is the solution, Mary? I do not want to seem mean. N.S.C.C., London W14 A. Status canapés have become the norm at smart parties but your guests may well be grateful if you do not

Taki

High Life | 5 July 2008

‘My legs are leaden, my throat is dry and I feel slightly sick with anxiety. As I make my way towards the arena the roar of the crowd gets louder. One question keeps edging into the small part of my mind which is functioning normally: what on earth are the combatants going through if I feel like this when I’ve just come along to watch?’ This is the opening salvo of Mark Law’s excellent The Pyjama Game: A Journey into Judo, published last year and prominently displayed in Brussels last week at the ugly but gigantesque Centre Sportif, Kinetix, central Brussels, and about 25 klicks from the place Napoleon met

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 5 July 2008

An extraordinary email from theatre critic Mr Lloyd Evans arrived in my inbox last week. He’d written a play, it said, a two-hander, and one of the characters was based on me. He’d based the character on me after we’d met at a Spectator Christmas lunch five years ago. The play was opening at the King’s Head in Islington on Tuesday. If, after seeing his dramatic representation of me, I was minded to sue, it went on, perhaps we could come to an arrangement that benefited plaintiff and defendant at the expense of the lawyers. Meanwhile, would I like a ticket? I don’t know Lloyd well. At The Spectator, the

Richard Sennett

The Table | 5 July 2008

What passes for summer is finally upon us in the British Isles. Between bouts of rain, we can finally inhale the sun-tan oil, note that last year’s swimsuit seems to have shrunk over the winter and fire up the barbecue. Cooking outdoors connects us to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, and, while the Oxford Culinary Conference undoubtedly has views on who once tended the cave’s fire, the barbecue today is a male preserve. The mittens and apron, the lengthy spatula and prongs, the double gin-and-tonic: these are the couture, jewellery and perfume which compensate the cooking male for the fact that he is no longer fit to be seen near-naked in the