As I write, no one knows what the result of the local elections will be, but it seems safe to predict that the turnout will not be high. Politically minded people tend to worry about low turnout because they find it hard to understand that someone might just not care very much who represents him
The last time there was a scare about the BNP was in the 1970s. People thought that the Labour government was ignoring them about immigration, and started to vote for the National Front, as it was then known. It was to head this off, in early 1978, that Mrs Thatcher, then leader of the opposition,
Yes, the BNP is unpleasant and hate-filled. But why does everyone feel the need to say it so much? Or rather, why don’t people say it about all the other hate-filled organisations in this country, as well as about the BNP? The Socialist Workers Party is hate-filled; so is Respect, so is Hizb ut-Tahrir, so
On Good Friday 1613, John Donne found the direction of his journey on horseback in conflict with the duty of his soul. In his poem ‘Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward’, Donne writes that ‘I am carried towards the West/ This day, when my soul’s form bends to the East’ (where the sun/Son will rise, and
When Bill Clinton was threatened with impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky affair, I was keen that the Daily Telegraph, which I was editing at the time, should add fuel to the flames. A little earlier, I had edited the Sunday Telegraph and our Washington correspondent, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, had done brilliant work — better than anyone
David Cameron’s bold entry into the debate about housing this week reminds one of how strange it is that housing has spent such a long time in the second division of politics. For post-1945 Labour, council housing was the key to getting the right votes in the right places (e.g., Herbert Morrison’s desire to ‘build
‘There is such a thing as society — but it’s not the same as the state’ is the best of the David Cameron soundbites. The row about the funding of political parties offered the Tories an opportunity to put this belief into practice, but they have passed it up. Political parties exist on the principle
The Dunblane massacre took place ten years ago. Its effects on the families of the victims are so terrible that it seems dangerous to speak about them. But there were secondary effects as well. In the aftermath of the horror, the then prime minister, John Major, invited the other party leaders, Tony Blair and Paddy
As so often with people in public life, the career of David Mills is beyond satire. If an anti-Blair left-wing playwright invented him, critics would accuse him of improbability. Mr Mills seems to have done almost everything which traditional Labour supporters hate. He has made a career of advising people, including the loathed Silvio Berlusconi,
Last week our local hunt met at a subscriber’s farm. Because it was a weekday, the mounted field was small — half a dozen or so. As soon as they moved off, they were pursued by 31 masked men, many of them carrying fence posts. When three of the field rode up to them to
Tory criticism of David Cameron has begun. Robin Harris gives the best articulation so far of the case against the new leader in the latest issue of Prospect. This attack was inevitable, and some of it is correct. It is wrong, for example, to disparage grammar schools — and this was a mistake which no
The best thing would have been for all the British papers to have published all the cartoons of Mohammed that appeared in Jyllands-Posten. As well as collectively asserting the right of freedom of speech, this action would have given readers the chance to see what is actually being discussed. The context, satirised in many of
Cyangogu, Rwanda It says something for the change that David Cameron has already wrought in his party that I find myself in Rwanda courtesy of Andrew Mitchell, the Conservatives’ international development spokesman, and Lord Ashcroft (who provided the plane). Aid, trade and conflict resolution provide one of the six policy themes on which the Tories
Jack Straw says that military action against Iran is ‘inconceivable’. The President of Iran says he wants to wipe Israel ‘off the map’. Why doesn’t an interviewer ask the Foreign Secretary whether, if Iran tried to do this, military action would still be inconceivable? If he says yes (and if that is the policy of
This column’s theory that, post-devolution, it is harder for Scottish MPs to lead a British political party seems to be taking some time to come true. Sir Menzies Campbell is considered just the ticket. He looks dignified and trustworthy. Rather as Colin Powell said that he benefited because he was ‘not that black’, Sir Ming
In their New Year newspaper advertisement in the Sunday Telegraph, the Conservatives say, ‘The right test for our policies is how they help the least well-off in society, not the rich.’ That is a good approach, but will it be invariably applied? For example, the clearest way that the rich are privileged in modern Britain
This year the Daily Telegraph has decided not to produce its annual Christmas cards by Matt. I complained when I heard this, because we usually send them and I feel that it must always be a pleasure for the recipients to get a joke from the world’s greatest pocket cartoonist. The reason is interesting, though.
So now conservatives, and particularly Conservatives, must all change ‘the way we look, the way we feel, the way we think and the way we behave’. It is a tribute to David Cameron’s persuasive charm that he makes people want to do these things. He has a knack of appealing to one’s better nature rather
One of the basic divisions in human character is between those who expect the imminent end of the world and those who don’t. This can take a religious form, but in modern times it often appears in other guises. In the early 1980s, the apocalyptists feared nuclear war. Martin Amis wrote that the idea of
It is generally agreed that David Cameron, this magazine’s candidate for the Conservative leadership, did a good job against Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight last week. His skill was to bring out something which is more and more striking about national television political interviewing, particularly on the BBC — its sheer weirdness. I notice this myself