The waters of the River Avon, recounted the vicar of Bengeworth, outside Evesham, ‘reached almost to the keystone of the arch of the bridge, and extended up Port Street to the public pump on the south side of the street… The waters of the River Avon, recounted the vicar of Bengeworth, outside Evesham, ‘reached almost
As Spectator readers would have expected, this magazine was an early and enthusiastic backer of Boris Johnson as the next Mayor of London. On 4 July we gave him our official endorsement and urged him to run on our Coffee House blog (new.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse). Now that he has thrown his bandana in the ring, we shall
Beneath the dynamic surface, Brown is dismantling Blair’s public service reforms When ministerial limousines line Great Smith Street in Westminster it is normally a sign that the Cinnamon Club is doing brisk trade. This upmarket Indian restaurant has become so popular with MPs that it has wired up a division bell in its foyer to
Dr Andrew Wakefield, if he is still a doctor by the time you read this, seems to be a baddun. A disciplinary panel heard that when children arrived at his house for a birthday party he grabbed a syringe and extracted blood from each one of them, giving the kids five pounds in exchange. Some
Public affairs vex no man, said Doctor Johnson, and I know what he meant. He, however, did not live as we do in an age of information in which, without retiring entirely to bed, it is next to impossible to dodge the headlines altogether. Besides, there’s something extraordinarily tonic in vexation: it is to my
The Conservative leader needs to get his mojo back. At least he had some to start with, mojo not being a quality much associated with his predecessors: ‘That often elusive quality that sets a person apart from everyone else. The word “magic” could, almost without exception, replace it in all of its contexts, sentences or
A fortnight ago we urged David Cameron to raise his game after Gordon Brown’s impressively bold start as Prime Minister. A fortnight ago we urged David Cameron to raise his game after Gordon Brown’s impressively bold start as Prime Minister. In his response to the report by Iain Duncan Smith’s social justice policy group, the
‘Among all criminals and murderers, the most dangerous type is the criminal physician.’ ‘Among all criminals and murderers, the most dangerous type is the criminal physician.’ So said Dr Miklos Nyiszli, a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz who acted as pathologist to Josef Mengele. The unspeakable depravities of the Nazi doctors were catalogued at the Nuremberg
Don’t mention the war on terror — even if we’re winning it The war on terror is over — or at least has been purged from the vocabulary of Gordon Brown’s government. The phrase, he has decided, will never be mentioned by any of his ministers. The men who attempted to attack a London nightclub
Rarely has there been such a triumph of expectation management as the arrival in No. 10 of the new Prime Minister. Only eight weeks ago, Labour was agonising over the loss of 900 council seats in England, the victory of the SNP in Scotland and the gloomy prospect of Gordon Brown’s succession. The then Chancellor’s
By the time the next issue of The Spectator hits the news-stands, Tony Blair will have battled his way through his last EU summit; the Labour party will have elected a new leader and deputy leader; and Britain will have a new Prime Minister who will be busy forming his government. Harold Wilson’s over-quoted remark
Boris Johnson is being rather coy about his chances for promotion. ‘Statistically, I am due to be fired again,’ he tells this month’s GQ magazine. ‘It may be that the psychological effort needed to haul myself around into a more gaffe-free zone proves too difficult.’ This is not the orthodox view: most in Westminster consider
In describing his relationship with the press, Thomas Jefferson said that he had been ‘used as the property of the newspapers, a fair mark for every man’s dirt’. Yet the third President of the United States was also a zealous champion of press freedom. ‘Were it left to me to decide whether we should have
‘We will have to get new targets in Europe,’ Vladimir Putin said in an interview last week. ‘Which weapons will be used …ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or some completely new systems — that’s a technical matter.’ The apparent purpose of this outburst was geopolitical blackmail. Ostensibly at least, the Russian President was warning George W.
Most elections produce a defining campaign event. In 1979 it was Margaret Thatcher’s enlistment of Saatchi & Saatchi and the ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ posters. In 1987 it was the party political broadcast that became known as ‘Kinnock The Movie’. The year 1992 is remembered for the Tories’ devastatingly negative tax bombshell broadcasts. The next campaign
Why has the Tory grammar- school row raged for so long? It is glib to suggest, as some have, that it is simply filling a news vacuum as the political world awaits the ascension of Prime Minister Brown and averts its gaze from the slow car crash of the Labour deputy leadership contest. The truth
Even from his holiday home in Crete, David Cameron will be able to sense the waves of schism and confusion which engulf his party this week. Parliament is not sitting, yet the grammar schools row has already triggered one shadow ministerial resignation, with the threat of more to come. It is enough to make Gordon
Here is what Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, told a Fabian Society and Progress debate for the Labour deputy leadership contenders on 16 May: ‘For our party audience, if you said, yes, we will ban those grammar schools where they exist at the moment, it would get a round of applause. The reason why the
For some time, David Cameron has been looking for an unpopular education policy. To be heard, he believes, one needs to be attacked. He has already been denounced for his ‘hug a hoodie’ speech and for promoting the family. The ensuing arguments, he feels, moved the party forward. So how to repeat the trick with
The most perceptive indictment of the Blair era was delivered, in an admirably candid speech last September, by Alan Milburn (interviewed by Fraser Nelson on page 14). Describing his own rise from a council estate to the ranks of the Cabinet, Mr Milburn asked, ‘Do we think that for a child growing up today in