Charles Moore is The Spectator’s chairman.
He is a former editor of the magazine, as well as the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph. He became a non-affiliated peer in July 2020.
I like to think that Boris Johnson’s rambling performance at the CBI this week was a satire against the organisation which he (rightly) dislikes. But I may well be wrong: it is equally likely to have been a Johnsonian cock-up. Either way, he did well to get memorably on the right side of Peppa Pig,
At the National Trust’s annual general meeting last week, the voting was much more unusual than the public will have learnt from media reports. In most resolutions, the numbers voting exceeded 100,000. In past years, the figures have been lower than 40,000. The reason for this high turnout was the controversies of the past 18
When I went to Poland not long before Covid, I found a country more bitterly divided by a culture war even than we are. So I would not rule out EU leaders being right that the current government there has intruded on the independence of the judiciary for its own political ends. This is the
Rarely does a piece of journalism bring a tear to my normally cynical eye, but I did find this happening when I read Tom Woodman’s piece (‘You must be kidding’) in last week’s edition. He and his wife would not have children, he wrote, because climate collapse means that ‘I can’t give them a future’.
On the one occasion when I spent any time with Angela Rayner, she was funny, direct and friendly. We were both on the BBC’s Any Questions? in Alan Partridge territory and dined together beforehand with Sir Vince Cable. She got through a whole evening without identifying me, either privately or on air, as one of
Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, has begun this academic year by announcing it will be his last in the post. Professor Toope says, no doubt truthfully, that he wants to see more of his Canadian family, dissevered from him by Covid. But I think it reasonable to relate his departure to wider issues. When
From time to time, people get worried and ask one another: ‘Is the world falling apart?’ I imagine this is a universal phenomenon, but my experience of it is largely confined to the West (here meant more as a cultural than a geographical expression). It happened in the 1930s, when the broadly correct answer to
This week, the media pressure was on the British government to extend the deadline for the evacuations from Kabul airport. The government had no power to do this unilaterally: it duly asked the United States, and was duly turned down. The issue was almost beside the point. It is doubtful, given the burning desire of
This week, the media pressure was on the British government to extend the deadline for the evacuations from Kabul airport. The government had no power to do this unilaterally: it duly asked the United States, and was duly turned down. The issue was almost beside the point. It is doubtful, given the burning desire of so many to
Q. Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable? The President: No, it is not. Q. Why? The President: Because you — the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable… Q. Do you trust
Diplomatic negotiations are rarely fully described by their participants in books, for two reasons. They are usually secret until much later, and their intricacies can be boring. Politicians often include brief accounts in their memoirs, but these seldom reveal much about the process as a whole because, as I discovered by interviewing scores of them
Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?The President: No, it is not. Q. Why? The President: Because you — the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable… Q. Do you trust handing over
The tale of A-levels shows how ministers can sometimes find themselves in a position when it is simply too dangerous to admit something that is true. To the exterior eye, it is obvious that the temporary abolition of exams and its replacement by teacher assessment has produced grade inflation. This year’s A-level cohort has not
On Monday 2 August, the BBC Today programme offered its ‘Countdown to COP26’. For the rest of the month, Amol Rajan announced, Chris Packham would give us ‘a different suggestion’ about climate change EVERY DAY. I make that 26 Packham slots — Sunday being Today-free — on the main national news magazine programme. Chris’s Day
On Tuesday, I chaired a session at Policy Exchange addressed by Tony Abbott, the eloquent former prime minister of Australia, now an adviser to the British Board of Trade. Although he acknowledged severe recent difficulties, he declared himself optimistic that free-trading democracies, such as his country and ours, can combine to strengthen rules-based, transparent trade
On Tuesday, I chaired a session at Policy Exchange addressed by Tony Abbott, the eloquent former prime minister of Australia, now an adviser to the British Board of Trade. Although he acknowledged severe recent difficulties, he declared himself optimistic that free-trading democracies, such as his country and ours, can combine to strengthen rules-based, transparent trade
Anyone who thinks Boris Johnson lacks statecraft should pay attention to Dominic Cummings’s attacks on him. They often to seem to show the opposite of what Dom intends. Cummings now reveals that, in January 2020, he and his allies were saying: ‘By the summer, either we’ll all have gone from here or we’ll be in
Anyone who thinks Boris Johnson lacks statecraft should pay attention to Dominic Cummings’s attacks on him. They often to seem to show the opposite of what Dom intends. Cummings now reveals that, in January 2020, he and his allies were saying: ‘By the summer, either we’ll all have gone from here or we’ll be in
A special animus is aimed at Priti Patel, perhaps because the combination of being Indian, female and firmly Tory is unbearable to the left. The BBC’s Chris Mason, though paid to report, not pass judgment, speaks of the Home Secretary’s ‘at best equivocal stance’ about racist insults in football. The particular anger against her is
In deciding whether or not to wear a mask after 19 July, I am sure Boris Johnson is right that one must consider the feelings of others. But I notice this consideration is argued only one way: those not wearing masks are asked to consult the sensitivities of those wearing them. Should not people who
