John Kampfner unveils the ignominious truth about Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry and reveals Peter Mandelson’s demand, when Brown’s future hung in the balance in early June, that the hearings be held in private. Even now Mandelson’s priority is to protect Brand Blair The charge sheet is long and yet the dock is empty. One
‘Who would ever have thought,’ asked David Hockney, ‘that drawing would return via the telephone?’ It is a typical Hockney point, wry, unexpected, connecting high-tech with low — and in this case undeniably true. Lately he has taken to drawing on his iPhone, with results that are luminous, and wonderfully free in draughtsmanship. ‘I must
The next election will present voters with two distinct futures, says Irwin Stelzer: Labour’s rising taxes and love of the EU, or the Tories’ spending cuts and plans for the ‘broken society’ Where is the clear blue water? MPs in both the Labour and the Tory parties have engaged in behaviour that is illegal, or
Rod Liddle says that the French President may be right about Islam’s ideological content but that his proposal is shockingly illiberal and wrong-headed I’ve been in the Middle East for the last three or four days — just trying to help out, you know, anything one can do — and staying in a hotel which
Chrissy Iley on her many outbreaks of in-flight fury — one of which led to a passenger mutiny. Why do we have to pay £8,000 for airline staff not to be rude to us? I don’t like planes and I’m on them all the time. it’s not really about the fear that I’m going to
Tehran The past week of rioting in Tehran has left many strong images in my mind, but chief among them is the raw passion of thousands of angry Iranians the morning after the disputed presidential elections. Standing in public squares, or on the balconies and roofs overhanging them, they shouted the name of Mir Hossein
Brendan O’Neill is not impressed by a class of paranoid white-collar workers learning how to head-butt imaginary assailants and defend themselves with their laptops Have you ever wanted to learn how to beat up a chav, those baseball-cap-wearing, bling-sporting youngsters who inhabit inner cities, drink copious amounts of cider, and say unintelligible things in ‘Blackney’
Peter Hoskin and Matthew d’Ancona count down the first 25 of The Spectator’s 50 Essential Films The studio logo fades. The opening credits roll. And so we come to the main feature: The Spectator’s 50 Essential Films — a selection of the very best that cinema has to offer, and all in glorious Technicolor. This
The scenes from Tehran have been inspiring and show that democracy is changing the shape of the Middle East, says James Forsyth. But the immediate decision facing President Obama is what to do about Iran’s fast-moving nuclear programme It was what the West had long dreamed of seeing in Iran. The largest rally in Tehran
Rod Liddle says the case of Fata Lemes — a Muslim woman who claimed her dignity had been ‘violated’ by the dress she had to wear in a cocktail bar — is sadly typical of a crazy institutional structure that kowtows to every conceivable outraged sensibility A Bosnian Muslim woman, Fata Lemes, has just won
Toby Young says that Father’s Day is nothing to celebrate: today’s neutered dads have become overworked assistants to their children rather than paternal role models I cannot say I am looking forward to Father’s Day — not if it is anything like last Sunday. I was woken at 5.45 a.m. when my wife Caroline delivered
Jon Cruddas, tribune of the left and foe of the BNP, tells James Forsyth his support for the PM is not unconditional, and praises James Purnell for being ‘true to himself’ Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham, isn’t your typical 21st-century politician. He’s relaxed, unconcerned about his appearance: the amount of spare cloth in
Martin Bright says that the party labels its enemies as ‘mad’ for Freudian reasons: ‘projecting’ its own collective and individual mental disorders upon foes and rebels alike What is it with New Labour and accusations of psychological weakness? No sooner had Hazel Blears announced her resignation from the Cabinet but dark murmurings bubbled up from
Labour had a good night on Sunday. Not Gordon Brown, not Ed Balls, not the Milibands, nor any other of the other ministers who will have been bundled out of office within the next 12 months. They are, of course, doomed. For them ahead lies nothing but months of humiliation, followed, for many of them,
Anne McElvoy spots a new political type: the ‘Labrators’ who have more in common with Cameron than Brown, and may co-operate with a Tory government The Labrators are coming: cross-bred symbols of shifting political times. Labour by background and allegiance, they empathise with many of the New Conservatives’ aims and obsessions. As for the political
Melissa Kite says that the PM is ill at ease with female colleagues. No surprise that it was the women — Blears, Flint, Kennedy — who rebelled while the men hid under the table Remember the Brown Bounce? Yes, there really was one. It was back in September 2007 and Gordon was riding high on
Irwin Stelzer says the PM should seize the opportunity presented by this stay of execution: plot a path to fiscal sanity, cut red tape and restore Britain’s stature on the world stage Now that Gordon Brown is determined to go down with the Labour ship, or to sink it, if you believe his harshest critics,
So, why the great shock? Why the hand-wringing? It’s not as if they weren’t warned. Why all those metropolitan journos disembarking at Barnsley station on the 11.47 from King’s Cross and gingerly approaching the local Untermensch with a sort of disgusted awe: what is it about this ghastly place that resulted in 17 per cent
Matthew d’Ancona says that, by sticking with Brown, Labour has opted for a mad collective delusion. The party is still in thrall to the trio who invented New Labour and cannot think beyond the Blair-Brown era — an incapacity for which it will pay a terrible price In Westminster this week, I have felt like
Before boarding the flight to Moscow, it dawned on me that I might have somehow contracted swine flu from Michael Nyman. What was I to do? This is not what I had in mind when I decided to bring a taste of Britain to Russia. I felt embarrassed. But stranger things have happened in my