Rishi Sunak thinks David Cameron will be a round peg in a round hole in the Foreign Office. I think (as I have written elsewhere) that he is right. If foreign secretaries could be bought at Harrods, Mr Cameron is the model discerning customers would prefer. But the underlying problem, which provoked this reshuffle, is
At a time when almost everything gets worse, it is nice to recount that this State Opening of Parliament was better than the last one. Last year, there was a wintry sense of fin de régime, as the Prince of Wales stood in for his ailing mother. Now that Prince is King. Everyone wanted it
UK-China Transparency (UKCT) was formally launched this week (see Notes, 16 September). Its aim is in its name. There is sadly little transparency about UK-China dealings, especially in our universities. I first reported this problem early in 2020 when I investigated the behaviour of Jesus College, Cambridge, and its China Centre, run by the CCP
Taipei I arrive here shortly after Taiwan National Day, which is 10 October. The day might seem strangely chosen, because the date commemorates the Wuhan Uprising in 1911, the spark for the revolution which overthrew China’s last imperial dynasty and created the Republic of China. At that time, the island of Taiwan did not benefit.
The pattern of Israeli/Palestinian conflicts is always forced by coverage into what people call a ‘narrative arc’. The attacks are usually started by Palestinians. They are briefly condemned across the world, but in terms which allow the Israeli response later to be characterised as ‘overreaction’. Thus a sighing Lyse Doucet, for the BBC, edging away
It was a story that Rishi Sunak was not saying what he would decide about the future of HS2. But was it the story? The BBC thought so. On Tuesday, Today’s reporting of the Conservative party conference consisted chiefly of Nick Robinson and Chris Mason gleefully commenting on how the Prime Minister was avoiding their
In March last year, when the bosses of Jesus College, Cambridge, lost their legal battle for a ‘faculty’ to take down the 17th-century memorial of the college’s benefactor, Tobias Rustat, because of slavery connections, from their college chapel, they did not appeal against the verdict of the ecclesiastical court. They knew they would not have
In 2014, Rolf Harris was convicted of sexual offences against girls. I wrote in this space that this would have represented more of a cultural change in the treatment of celebrities if he had been unmasked at the height of his fame. Current stars, I suggested, are much more rarely denounced: ‘I would not dream
China is so obviously a ‘potential risk to UK safety or interests’ that if there is an ‘enhanced’ tier under our Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, China should be on it. We keep re-learning, but then forgetting, that China is always using covert means to extend its power over western countries, thereby undermining trust. Our government
My long-standing theory of British general election results is that they are all deserved. This is true not just of big victories e.g. Labour in 1945 and 1997, the Conservatives in 1979 and 2019, but also of no-score draws, such as the two elections of 1974. In our system (though first-past-the-past sometimes exaggerates) the voters
‘We must never hide anything,’ declared the director of the British Museum, Hartwig Fischer, three years ago, when criticised for disrespecting its greatest founding genius, Sir Hans Sloane, because, through marriage, he had profited from slave labour. Sloane’s Rysbrack bust was now to be presented, he said, ‘in the exploitative context of the British Empire’.
As is now well-known, Ulez (the ultra-low emission zone) will expand from 29 August, taking in suburban parts of Kent, Surrey, Essex, Herts. This fact gave Richard Lofthouse, an editor and motoring journalist, an idea. He has done much to help car4Ukraine.com, a volunteer group within Ukraine which seeks gifts of 4×4 pickups abroad and repurposes
Sir Keir Starmer’s piece in the Times on Monday was presumably constructed round the front-page headline Labour wanted – ‘Just Stop Oil tactics are contemptible, says Starmer’. Behind the headline, and therefore unnoticed, was his argument that the Tories are wrong to allow new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, and Labour
For the last time, on Saturday, I stuck the head of the late Queen, without a barcode, on an envelope and posted it. I have kept the two remaining stamps of my sheet as souvenirs. Stamps survive, of course, under the new King, but they are gradually becoming like cash – marginal and out of date.
We now have a reluctant apology from Dame Alison Rose, followed by her even more reluctant resignation. Her departure is a major achievement, but the reluctance is a symptom of the problem. How could she possibly have thought she could stay after she was caught breaking a client’s confidentiality and spreading untruths about him (untruths
Jane Portal, as she was when she worked for Winston Churchill, died last week, aged 93. Lady Williams of Elvel, as she much later became, had an extraordinary life. I encountered her story by chance. In 2015, near us in Sussex, I was told that ‘of course’ (people love saying that when telling you a
The story of the famous BBC television presenter who, at the time of writing, has still not been named, has all the elements of 21st-century-media madness – something allegedly sexual which may or not involve a person too young for such things; a desperate hue and cry to see who will dare to name the
Now that the cost of net zero has become a pressing political matter, I have been re-reading the prescient words of Matt Ridley in the House of Lords when, in 2019, he was one of very few who opposed the government’s ‘net zero by 2050’ pledge. ‘I was genuinely shocked,’ he said, ‘by the casual
When Boris Johnson’s resignation from parliament was announced, we were in the audience for Glyndebourne’s production of Don Giovanni. Controversially, this includes a vast cake which is part of the bacchanals and then reappears, in rotting form, as the statue of the Commendatore approaches to take the antihero to his eternal damnation. Don Giovanni sprawls
When I first heard that the Russians had blown up the Kakhovka dam, I assumed that this was an effective tactic to frustrate the Ukrainian counteroffensive. It will surely slow it. But a Ukrainian friend raises an additional possibility – that these are the scorched-earth tactics the Germans used in much the same places 80
