Istanbul I had a medical in Ankara not long ago. The doctor was a good sort, looked over her spectacles and read out the list: blood pressure all right, weight OK, cholesterol a little high, heart no problem, kidneys no problem Liver? No, nothing — but, Professor Stone, the lungs. Ah, I thought, at 66,
The Prime Minister’s speech on foreign policy at the Mansion House this week was a classic instance of reassurance rhetoric: his intention to soothe Atlanticists on both sides of the ocean, worried by the studied distance Mr Brown adopted at Camp David in July and the mixed signals sent by his ministerial team. Tribute was
Oliver Letwin’s enemies thought they had seen the last of him at Blackpool. His idea of laying out a policy smorgasbord had almost sunk the party, they argued. Yes, there were some good ideas (mainly from Iain Duncan Smith) but having multi-millionaires like Zac Goldsmith proposing a Happy Planet Index and telling the shoppers not
Monday This Aitken business is all v confusing. Has led to heated debates about some extremely odd-sounding things that happened ten years ago. I thought Mr Blair invented ‘sleaze’! But it seems there were all sorts of shocking goings-on in the 1990s under poor Mr Major. Poppy knows all about them, of course, and thinks
Lord of works Sir: Your profile of Lord Malloch-Brown was grossly unfair (‘Labour’s lord of the perks’, 10 November). I have known him since 1979 when, at the age of 26, he built and ran the Khao I Dang refugee camp in Thailand. Over 100,000 Cambodian refugees had reason to be very grateful for his
