Bruce Anderson is The Spectator's drink critic, and was the magazine's political editor
There has never been such a dramatic political decline. Three months ago, Tony Blair was full of plans for his third term. Now, he is a corpse waiting for a coffin. Three months ago, the Blairites were blithely dismissive of Gordon Brown. Now, they are frantically sucking up to him. The PM may have been
Michael Howard is a Powellite, at least in one respect. Talking about immigration, Enoch Powell said that numbers were of the essence. Mr Howard would agree, although his numerical restrictions would be far less severe. The Tory leader is really more of a Blairite. ‘Every country must have firm control over immigration and Britain is
The battle of the slogans will now be joined and could still have a significant effect on the election result. We already know what Labour will say about the Tories’ new economic policy. ‘The Tories claim that they can increase spending and cut taxes. And pigs will fly.’ The Tories will counter this with something
Gordon Brown’s defects are under scrutiny. His critics identify petulance, vanity and vaulting ambition. Much of Westminster, including many Labour MPs, several Cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister, now agrees with Alastair Campbell that Mr Brown is psychologically flawed. But this is a serious underestimate, both of his strengths and of his weaknesses. He is
When Michael Howard became Tory leader, time was desperately short. For six and a half years, the Tories had been unable to convert Labour’s negatives to their positives. They had failed to re-establish their political identity. They were still allowing their opponents to define them, and there were only 18 months to go before the
There is a contrast between John Monckton and almost everyone who has written about his murder. He was better prepared for his death than they were. He believed in divine grace and in eternal life. He was certain that the victories of evil are transient and that good will ultimately prevail; that death shall have
It sometimes seems as if we no longer know how to think about our soldiers, or how to treat them. Last week, three men of the Black Watch fell in battle in Iraq. A sad event certainly, but it was hardly a reason for national mourning. Yet much of the media became hysterical. Some of
Paris ‘Toute ma vie, je me suis fait une certaine idée de la France.’ Thus de Gaulle, in one of the greatest first sentences of the 20th century, and he spoke for many humbler Frenchmen — or rather, as ‘humble Frenchmen’ is an oxymoron, let us say many other Frenchmen. This is a strange country,
It is easy to botch reshuffles, although it is unusual to do so twice in succession, as Tony Blair has now managed. But when they change their governments, all PMs have a problem with their colleagues’ sensitivities. Once a shuffle is approaching, press speculation will rampage so that within hours half the Cabinet is feeling
For the Tories, it seemed as if August would be the cruellest month. Earlier in the year, much of the party had embarked on a perilous undertaking. It had decided to allow itself the hazardous luxury of hope. Admittedly, only a few Tory MPs had thought that the party could win outright at the next
It is hardly unprecedented for rising Tories to fall out with their seniors, and vice versa. Before the war, Anthony Eden’s friends used to complain about the ‘Old Gang’ around Neville Chamberlain. The gangsters retaliated by sneering at the ‘Glamour Boys’. Now some of today’s glamour boys are said to be irritated with the ‘bed-blockers’:
Between the revolution and the firing squad, there is always time for a bottle of champagne. In this case, it was Sky TV’s champagne at its summer party on Monday evening. Though a lot of Tory MPs turned up, I did not find one who was cheerful about his party’s prospects. There is a difference
Pictures are more powerful than principles. A few weeks ago, newspapers published photographs of a 12-week-old male foetus. It was not a blob of tissue but a proto-human. Yet for a further 12 weeks after the pictures were taken it would have been legal to kill this pre-baby in the womb. Other stories appeared. A
Bruce Anderson says that the scandalous events of the past week show that the Arabs can take brutality — but not from American women Anyone who wants to understand the peoples of Arabia and the surrounding regions ought to start with Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands. He was writing about the late 1940s and, as he
Bruce Anderson says the Tories’ revolutionary new education policy will devolve power to schools and parents In 1874, Disraeli told the House of Commons that ‘Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.’ Over the subsequent decades, few senior Tories would have disagreed — yet hardly any of
For nearly seven years, Tony Blair’s caution was the Europhiles’ despair. They wanted him to make the case for Europe and exploit his hold over public opinion. Their confidence exceeded his. Mr Blair was not prepared to take electoral risks for Europe. As recently as December, when the EU constitution seemed lost in the long
I wants to make your flesh creep,’ is the Fat Boy’s refrain in the Pickwick Papers. In Berlin last week, I was at a conference which the Fat Boy would have enjoyed. The subject was terror; the threat that weapons of mass destruction in terrorist hands would pose to the West, during the foreseeable future.
I am not an expert on the sleeping habits of adolescents. But I have consulted a number of authorities, viz parents. Their conclusions were unanimous. Cherie Blair’s claim that anxieties over Hutton had disrupted her teenage/student children’s sleep is not credible. It may be difficult to persuade such youngsters to go to bed. Once they
Until well into the 1980s, the death penalty was a problem for aspiring Tory candidates. Local associations were almost always in favour, strongly. This led to much wrestling with conscience. Conscience often lost. Matters were easier for card-carrying intellectuals. Any constituency prepared to consider one of them had already braced itself for bizarre opinions. But
Pompous, lobotomised-Lutyens details strive to rescue it from banality. They fail. Conservative Central Office looks like just another bog-standard 1950s office block. The appearance is deceptive. It is far worse than that. Whatever ‘bad karma’ means, Central Office has it. The atmosphere sets one’s teeth on edge, while encouraging the inhabitants to stab one another