Society

Friday

The Spectator

What’s wrong with the new consensus

When I supported the Iraq war, it was certainly for the aims James mentioned. And yes, I’m feasting on humble pie now. And Stuart’s right to say that even the Republicans are deserting Bush – the House has just voted to pull out troops by Spring. So I suspect Wee Dougie’s speech will be at the softer end of what’s to come. Britain’s political class are getting in synch with the would-be 2008 presidential candidates. Here’s the bit in Dougie’s speech that jumped out at me: “Given the interconnected nature of the challenges we face, I would argue that we have to simultaneously be fighting to end poverty, to secure

The Spectator

Why America went to war

Come off it, James. American did not go to war to ‘set about a phenomenally ambitious project to build democracies in parts of the world where they had never succeeded before’. America went to war to extract the blood price for 9/11. Saddam was identified with the terrorists. He was said to have weapons of mass destruction and therefore to be a threat to world peace. In attacking Iraq the United States and Great Britain maintained they were acting in self-defence. It was all nonsense, and has ended in disaster. But none of this matters in relation to what Douglas Alexander said yesterday. What matters is that the Gordon Brown

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What is Douglas Alexander talking about?

Douglas Alexander’s speech in Washington last night is being portrayed as distancing Gordon Brown’s administration from George W. Bush’s post 9/11 foreign policy. Particular importance is being attached to this passage: “In the 20th century a country’s might was too often measured in what they could destroy. In the 21st century strength should be measured by what we can build together.” If this intended as a criticism of the Bush administration, it is ignorant in the extreme. After 9/11, the United States did not go on some Shermanesque march to the sea. Instead, it set about a phenomenally ambitious project to build democracies in parts of the world where they

Thursday

The Spectator

Nigel Dempster RIP

His critics called him vain, snobbish, jumped-up and vicious – all true – but Nigel Dempster was also generous (he felt uncomfortable if anyone else paid for lunch); charming (displaying exaggerated and affected old-world manners which made women redden with appreciation) and exceptionally funny (with a theatrical sense of timing when recounting a juicy anecdote). But The Greatest Living Englishman (as Auberon Waugh only half-jokingly dubbed him) was an incredibly complex character – his Daily Mail colleague and contemporary mischief-maker, Peter McKay, believed he was so beset by his “demons” that it was a wonder Dempster could ever sleep. As one who spent many years in the same office and

The Spectator

We have a winner, Ms. Moneypolly

The best suggestion by a Coffee Houser for a new author of James Bond stories was Simon Chapman who proposed The Guardian’s in-house funster, Polly Toynbee. A bottle of champagne is on its way to Simon: congratulations! Here is how we think the book might begin: DIAMONDS ARE FOR TAXING by Polly Toynbee Bond walked at a brisk pace, checking the time on his Rolex Oyster Perpetual: he was late for his meeting with M. An engagement at his tailor in Conduit street had delayed him: unavoidable. In life, there were always priorities. He reached for his black gun-metal cigarette case and black oxidised Ronson lighter and then remembered, with

The Spectator

How the Beckhams will crack America

If you want to know how Brand Beckham will be marketed in the States take a look at the storyboards for the ad campaign that is being launched to promote his first game for the LA Galaxy. One of the most intriguing things about Beckham’s arrival in the US, as Sports Illustrated points out, is how he’ll fit in with team mates who earn so much less than him. He’ll be sharing a dressing room with people who earn $17,700 a year—in contrast to his six and a half million bucks.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The coming Cold War

With Britain and Russia on the verge of Cold War style diplomatic expulsions over Russia’s refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi over the death of Alexander Litvinenko, do read Fraser’s cover story on what Putin is up to.

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

HMQ Not Amused

My impression is that Annie Liebowitz is used to getting her own way.  Not all portraits are equal however… From a documentary titled A Year With the Queen comes this: In one scene… Liebowitz is photographing Queen Elizabeth II when she suggests that the Queen remove her crown for a portrait. “I think it will look better without the crown because the garter robe is so…,” Annie tried, but then the Queen interrupted. “Less dressy? What do you think this is?” the monarch hit back, pointing at what she was wearing and giving her an icy stare. The queen then walked off, with an official carrying the large train of

The Spectator

The Bureaucratic Bungling Corporation

Life is full of little ironies. I am just off to the BBC’s Millbank studios to do some recording for The Week in Westminster. Meanwhile, I have spent much of the afternoon having acrimonious conversations with senior BBC management. The cause? The Corporation has decided to withdraw permission from Emily Maitlis, star Newsnight and News 24 presenter, to be a Contributing Editor at The Spectator. Readers of the magazine will know what a gifted writer Emily is – see last week’s Diary – and I was thrilled when she agreed to become a Contributing Editor and pleasantly surprised when Peter Horrocks, the head off BBC TV news, gave her permission

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Where Bill and Hillary disagree

New York magazine has a piece that is well worth reading on the one issue where Hillary is busy distancing herself from the record of the Clinton presidency: trade. Free trade always takes a hammering during the Democratic primaries thanks to the influence of the labour unions, but there does seem to be something more going on this cycle with not one candidate prepared to offer even the most hesitant defence of future trade agreements. Indeed considering that America still has a sizable manufacturing base to lose, we can expect little impetus for a new trade agreement from Washington in the next few years.

Tuesday

The Spectator

Can John McCain recover?

The former Republican frontrunner has just let his three most senior campaign aides go. These three departures signify the deep trouble that McCain’s campaign is in; he is now third or fourth in the polls and trails the fringe libertarian candidate Ron Paul in the money stakes. But he could still recover. He’s the candidate on the Republican side who is most qualified to be president from day one, not an unimportant qualification considering the state that George W. Bush will leave the country in. He ‘gets’ the nature of the fight we’re in better than any candidate on either side and is also the only Republican candidate to have been

The Spectator

Why social breakdown is so difficult for government to deal with

“All of the work that we have done has reinforced the importance of the first three years on a child’s cognitive and emotional development. The emotional brain is largely created in the first 18 months of life and its auditory map is formed even earlier, by 12 months. Furthermore, it has also been shown, alarmingly, that a child’s education developmental score at 22 months can accurately predict educational outcomes at the age of 26.” This stat in Iain Duncan Smith’s report illustrates the difficulty for public policy in dealing with the whole problem of social breakdown. You can have the best schools in the world but if social advantage is

The Spectator

Bush will change Britain’s politics more than America’s

While the Republicans in America are quietly burying George W. Bush’s legacy in domestic policy, the Tories are embracing it. Iain Duncan Smith’s report on social policy, a labour of love if ever there was one, is animated by the same spirit of compassionate conservatism that underpinned George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign. IDS’s description of the philosophical underpinnings of the report couldn’t have been put better by Bush, or Karen Hughes: “Our approach is based on the belief that people must take responsibility for their own choices but that government has a responsibility to help people make the right choices. Government must therefore value and support positive life choices.” When you

The Spectator

We spend far too much on science

A brilliant topic on the Today programme – the scandal of the government science budget. A staggering £3.4bn of our money is spent on science – thus socialising what should be a completely liberalised form of human endeavour. This partly explains why so many scientists are on call to add to the chorus of global warming alarmism: this is where the research funds lie. All this diverts scientific attention from cutting-edge science which runs against the grain of government priorities. We have a world class Foreign Office, yet are closing down embassies because its £1.8bn budget is deemed excessive. Scandalously, a school teaching Farsi and Arabic to GCHQ staff was

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How close is the Bush administration to giving up on Iraq?

This New York Times story about the Bush administration considering abandoning the surge far more quickly than anyone is expecting is well worth reading. Also, take a look at this impassioned Bill Kristol piece urging the White House not to back down. While we’re on the other side of the Atlantic, this blog from the Aspen Ideas Festival – a kind of Hay on Wye on steroids – is well worth reading if you want to take the intellectual temperature of the American political class. Do note Bill Clinton’s comments about Iraq.

The Spectator

Mo Mowlam, not as useful as she was popular

August 17th, 1998 on how useless Mo Mowlam was in drafting a statement after the Omagh bomb: “We then had the ludicrous situation of TB having to ask Mo for her fax number, and her shouting out ‘Anyone out there who knows the fax number?’ and then saying the officials had disappeared. It was the Mo manner that was fine when things didn’t matter, but deeply irritating when they did. She sounded more and more exasperated. ‘I’ll say whatever you want, Tony,’ she said, at which point he exploded at her… she then lost the plot completely… Mo was getting near hysterical. TB said to her if you went out

The Spectator

The Dodgy Dossier

Sunday 21st June 2003, on demands that he should resign over the “dodgy dossier” on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: “I hadn’t slept well. I was avoiding answering the phone other than to the office because by now all the broadcasters and half the Sundays were trying to ask me if I was going. Now was probably not the right time. It would be seen as bad for TB and bad for me if I went under a cloud.” Anthony Browne, director of the think-tank Policy Exchange and prior to that the chief political correspondent of The Times, is plucking out the most interesting passages from the just published

The Spectator

No WMD

June 2nd 2003, on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: “TB was still in ‘it’s ridiculous’ mode and getting more and more irritated by what was essentially a media-driven thing. The main problem of course was that there were no WMD discoveries beyond the two labs, and no matter how much we said that there were other priorities now, the public were being told as a matter of fact that we had done wrong. We had Clare Short, Robin Cook and a lot of backbenchers on the rampage now. So it was difficult.” Anthony Browne, director of the think-tank Policy Exchange and prior to that the

The Spectator

‘Two families with the same woman’

July 11th, 2002 on TB telling him that Cherie was pregnant: “He then walked over to the wall, leaned against it, laughed and said ‘There’s another complication I need to tell you about.’ He said: ‘I think Cherie is pregnant.’ He said they were both absolutely gobsmacked about the whole thing. But it did mean it was forcing him to think about the future. ‘I’ve effectively got two families with the same woman.’” Anthony Browne, director of the think-tank Policy Exchange and prior to that the chief political correspondent of The Times, is plucking out the most interesting passages from the just published Alastair Campbell diaries for Coffee House.

The Spectator

Campbell considered suicide

August 10th, 2003 on being told while on holiday in France that the Hutton Inquiry wanted to read his diaries: “I had received the request for my diary on Thursday and now, finally, this year’s was being flown out by Peter Howes [duty clerk]. As I left the house, and said goodbye to Fiona, I did actually wonder momentarily whether it would be the last time I saw her, whether what I discovered on reading my own diary would be so awful that I would want to top myself. It was only a passing thought, but it was there, and it came back several times as I drove down to