First the Irish, then the Czechs. José Manuel Barroso is eliminating enemies of the Lisbon Treaty — setting things up for the arrival of President Blair, says Brian M. Carney At first, the European Union’s critics had high hopes for José Manuel Durão Barroso. If Jacques Delors represented Brussels’s unbridled ambition and Romano Prodi its
Big Ben strikes eleven, and time is running out for you to nominate a politician for The Spectator/Threadneedle Readers’ Representative Award. Big Ben strikes eleven, and time is running out for you to nominate a politician for The Spectator/Threadneedle Readers’ Representative Award. We’ve had an enthusiastic response so far, which just goes to show that
When Israeli tanks and troops rolled into Gaza in December 2007, there was no doubt about the outcome of the conflict. Nor was there any doubt about who would be held responsible for using disproportionate force and deliberately harming civilians. Never mind that Israel was responding to years of rocket bombardments from Gaza on its
The BNP are using the public’s real fear of Islamism to attract support for their racist movement, says Melanie Phillips. If the political class wants to take on Griffin, it must first join the fight against Islamofascism The frenzy over the participation of BNP leader Nick Griffin on Question Time this week has been a
It’s easy to spot a member of the recession generation. They’re the sober, thoughtful young people. They’re our sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and friends aged between about 18 and 23 and beginning their adult lives at a time when six million are on benefits. Like the generation above, they love iPods and TopShop. But they’re
David Beaumont, 21 ‘I’d thought that a final year economics student at the LSE would get a job easily. But I’ve found it impossible to get even an unpaid internship. My plan after graduation is to get out: to travel, funded by a low-paid job. Getting on the career ladder at this stage seems a
Rod Liddle is appalled that, after knowingly swindling the taxpayer, the former home secretary faced no punishment at all. It seems unbelievable after all their grandstanding — but MPs really don’t think they have done anything wrong ‘We have got to clean up politics, we have got to consign the old, discredited system to the
It’s fashionable for military top brass to attack politicians when things go wrong. But, says Paul Robinson, many of the army’s problems are of their own making In recent years, failure to ‘support the troops’ has become the ultimate political sin. The Conservatives’ soon-to-be defence adviser, General Sir Richard Dannatt, blasted Brown a few weeks
Power cuts and uncollected rubbish form most people’s memories of the economic debacle that was the 1970s. But for me, a quite different story sums up the lack of business sense that distinguished the British at the time. My mother had gone into a village shop in Kent to buy some bacon, which the affable
Sinclair McKay celebrates 30 years of Britain’s funniest, sharpest and most irreverent cartoon. David Cameron need look no further for a perfect picture of broken Britain Some night soon on the peaceful back streets of Bloomsbury, you might want to keep an eye out for two young ladies from the north for whom the term
Our political representatives have returned to Westminster, and the air is still thick with the Ghosts of Expenses Past. As MPs are ordered to pay back their more extravagant claims — with most of them complaining as they do so — you’d be forgiven for thinking that there isn’t a single decent one amongst them.
The Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford is an astonishing building, designed by Christopher Wren. Its painted ceiling has just been restored, so that the darkish miasma that was Robert Streeter’s original allegory of truth and light striking the university, is now bright with playful cherubs and lustrous clouds. Here, bookended by large chunks of Latin, a
Venetia Thompson says that if you don’t mind slumming it for a bit, you can snap up an out-of-work banker or trader whose stock is sure to rise soon I’m back behind enemy lines in the Square Mile, thankfully nowhere near the trading floor I used to inhabit, but in a place nearly as terrifying:
We all know the truth about the wealth and privilege of the future Tory front bench, says Rod Liddle, but it’s better to brazen it out like Boris than try to seem apologetic The Labour party’s cynical attempt to target the opposition as a party of champagne-guzzling toffs, preening and loaded Hooray-Henrys and chinless, mewing,
All is not lost. While the standing of parliament as a whole is at a low ebb, our readers have jumped at the chance to highlight those politicians who — whisper it — are a credit both to their exulted positions and to the country. All is not lost. While the standing of parliament as
Eurosceptics are not ‘swivel-eyed’ or psychotic, says Daniel Hannan, and it’s only Labour propagandists who think the party is divided on this issue As the Conservative conference got underway, newspapers led with reports of a right-wing insurgency against David Cameron. For four successive days the story continued: there was, we kept being told, an almighty
The People’s Republic of China seems to be morphing into a New Labour-style nanny state, says Brendan O’Neill. But at least the Chinese stand up to their regime The 60th birthday celebrations of the People’s Republic of China seemed to confirm that, for all its embrace of Western-style capitalism, China remains a faraway place where
What’s become of Hillary Clinton? At times of international crisis — and boy, do we have a few — it is customary for the American Secretary of State to take centre stage and work the phones until the early hours sorting out the latest threat to global security. Remember the legwork that James Baker put
For the past decade Samir Shah has been chair of the Runnymede Trust, devoted to studying ethnicity. Now, he says, the real problem in Britain isn’t so much racism, but “cultural cloning”. I first arrived in this country from Bombay in January 1960. Harold Macmillan had yet to make his Winds of Change blowing through
A Pall Mall club: the members’ table at lunchtime: unease and discontent. Everyone wants rid of Gordon Brown. No one is sure about David Cameron. I am asked the questions that I have been asked a hundred times before. What does he believe in? Will he be up to it? The questioners think that their