If, when you read this, Boris Johnson is the Mayor of London, it will, I have just discovered, be thanks to me. When the idea of Boris’s candidacy was first suggested, I spoke on the telephone to Mary Wakefield, who is now the deputy editor of The Spectator. What did I think of Boris for
Charles Moore’s reflections on the week Actually, there never was much sense in a ten pence rate of income tax. It added complication, and Gordon Brown is right to get rid of it, though wrong to charge income tax on people so low on the income scale. But you cannot help laughing when you look at
Charles Moore’s reflections on the week When informed that this was to be The Spectator’s English Special Issue, I happened to be reading a novel by John Buchan called Midwinter. It concerns an unsuccessful attempt by a young Highland laird, Alastair Maclean, to raise English Jacobites for Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745. Like most Buchan novels,
The opinions of the Sun newspaper are not noted for nuance, so it has been interesting to follow its unusually careful choice of words about the Olympic torch on its way to China. On Monday, under the headline ‘Freedom Wins’, the leading article called the fact that the torch managed, though with difficulty, to continue
The opinions of the Sun newspaper are not noted for nuance, so it has been interesting to follow its unusually careful choice of words about the Olympic torch on its way to China. On Monday, under the headline ‘Freedom Wins’, the leading article called the fact that the torch managed, though with difficulty, to continue
If Boris Johnson wins the contest to become Mayor of London on 1 May, he will not inherit an impartial civil service of the sort to which British national politicians are accustomed. There has only been one Mayor of London so far and he, Ken Livingstone, has made sure that London officials reflect his views.
For some weeks, I was thinking of writing against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, but despair crept over me. What is the point, I asked myself, when opinion seems to have moved so decisively against the idea that a human being is an inviolable entity? Nothing will stop this Bill, I thought. Now it
In the cut and thrust of debate, David Cameron won easily against the Chancellor in the Budget battle. In the cut and thrust of debate, David Cameron won easily against the Chancellor in the Budget battle. He was crisp and effective. But Alistair Darling did not attempt thrust and certainly will not cut. The fact
The battle over the evaded referendum on the Lisbon treaty seems to be following the pattern of all European arguments in this country. The pro-integrationists have used the favourite tactic of claiming that it is all a fuss about nothing. The treaty, they say, is technical, too boring to be worth discussing (although also, mysteriously,
This is what Stubbs’s Constitutional History of England says: ‘That individual members should not be called to account for their behaviour in Parliament, or for words there spoken, by any authority external to the house in which the offence was given, seems to be the essential safeguard of freedom of debate. It was the boon
The United Nations declared last week that, for the first time in human history, more people in the world live in the town than in the country. If true, this feels momentous, though it is not, obviously, sudden. The imagination of mankind has been shaped by rural life more than by anything else, but this
Entering my name in the visitors’ book at the British Embassy in Paris last week, I saw, a couple of lines above, the signature ‘Tony Blair’. The ex-leader is in France a lot just now. Tony is very fond of President Nicolas Sarkozy, and vice versa. Tony is making it increasingly clear that he would
Derek Conway maintains his position. ‘I still believe I have done nothing wrong,’ he told the Mail on Sunday. To understand why he could possibly think that, one has to dig deeper into British class feeling. In wanting to become a Conservative MP, Mr Conway, a working-class boy from Gateshead, seems to have believed not
The appointment of a Permanent Secretary at No. 10 Downing Street shows that the office of Prime Minister is swelling fit to burst. Everyone says that the man with the new post, Jeremy Heywood, is excellent. Nothing is known against him beyond his atrociously New Labour recreations in Who’s Who — ‘child-care, modern art, cinema,
Charles Moore’s reflections on the week President Sarkozy has made the right decision by avoiding the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. The global titans of banking and politics are not looking good: to be photographed having fun with them would be a provocation. Not since the oil crises of the 1970s has there
The news that the circulation of the Sun sank below three million in December, its lowest since the early Seventies, is a landmark. The moment that the Sun’s circulation overtook that of the Mirror, in May 1978, revealed a big shift in the political and social history of this country. No longer were the aspirations
Through all the apparent banality of campaign speeches, politicians do, in fact, convey a message about themselves. There is a vital distinction between candidates who, mentally, face outwards and those who face inwards. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair all faced outwards: they instinctively wanted to communicate with voters, just as good actors
Since our parish newsletter does not have a wide circulation, I feel I am justified in plagiarising an article in the latest issue by its nature correspondent (my wife). She provides useful, or anyway, interesting information for Christmas decoration, with the preface that unless you wait until Christmas Eve before hanging up your greenery and
Charles Moore’s thoughts on the week We all know about spin in theory, but we are slow to notice it in practice. The approved version of the release of Gillian Gibbons, the ‘teddy bear’ teacher in the Sudan, is that the Sudanese government has seen reason thanks to the mission of two Muslim peers, Lord Ahmed
It is undeniably enjoyable to see Gordon Brown squirming about the £600,000 his party will have to pay back to David Abrahams, the man of many aliases. If Peter Watt, the resigning general secretary of the Labour party, really, as he claims, saw something devious about the practice of taking money under other names only