Charles Moore

Charles Moore

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.

The ugliness of zero-carbon

The government is trying to get onshore windfarms going again, defying the damage they do to unique environments. I am perplexed by how its zero-carbon policies can be reconciled with its wider economic aims of ‘levelling up’ or of fostering a beautiful environment. It is an odd fact that Greens can be extremely hostile to

Jean Vanier’s sad fall from grace

The fall from grace of Jean Vanier is truly a sad story. The founder of the L’Arche communities did extraordinary work, practical, intellectual and spiritual, to advance the idea that those suffering mental handicap had much to teach the rest of us. His was a radical idea about what community can be. Now, however, L’Arche

The perils of owning an erotic Nazi toy

My parents told me that their wartime childhoods were punctuated by the expression: ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ It was used as an excuse for not attending to something urgent. The modern equivalent is the phrase ‘climate emergency’ (leading to ‘extreme weather events’). This emergency is supposedly so great that billions have to

Does anyone really think HS2 will be good for the country?

How depressed should one be about the HS2 go-ahead? The cost is stupefying. The offering to the north — considered so important politically — seems to be unappealing to plenty of northerners and, like a parody of British railway late arrivals, won’t reach its destination until the mid-2030s. Worse, perhaps, is the sense, especially when

The BBC’s big problem is its obsession with itself

One reason people are disillusioned with the BBC is its obsession with itself. Here is the text of a question asked by the corporation’s deputy political editor, Norman Smith, at a speech last week by the minister responsible for broadcasting, the Culture Secretary, Lady Morgan: ‘You say the BBC needs to adapt to the new

Philip Pullman is right about the Oxford comma

It was with regret that I read that Albert, retired King of the Belgians, has finally had to admit, following litigation and then a DNA test, that an artist called Delphine Boël is his natural daughter. It is not that I wish to take sides in the dispute; it is simply that there is a

Charles Moore

The reason our civil service is soft on China

The creation of the National Security Council under David Cameron was supposed to join up parts of British government which had not previously had the right forum. We would now be able to survey all functions of security right across government. How odd it is that this coordination was not applied to the issue of

Charles Moore

Do alarmists know the difference between weather and climate?

Until recently, those expressing scepticism about climate-change catastrophe have been hauled over the coals (or the renewables equivalent) for not understanding the difference between ‘climate’ and ‘weather’. The lack of global warming at the beginning of the 21st century was not to be taken, chided the warmists, as evidence that climate change was not happening.

Anyone for a Sussex Royal potato?

Earlier this week, we accompanied our daughter-in-law, Hannah, to her British citizenship ceremony, she having passed the necessary tests. (Hannah is American, from the great state of Montana. She retains her American citizenship.) She had been offered the opportunity of attending a free ceremony with about 20 others, but this fell on the due date

In defence of the Today programme

There is anxiety at the BBC, where the Cummings effect is thought to threaten the Today programme. If ministers are told not to appear on it, people ask how it can survive. Although a supporter of the Cummings frost towards the BBC, I feel it would be perverse if Today were the victim. It is well-edited, with a much

Why bother joining the Labour party?

Now that there is yet another chance to vote for a leader of the Labour party, if you are prepared to pay £25 next week, lots of my friends, none of them Labour supporters, are joining up. Their idea is to vote for the Corbyn ‘continuity candidate’, who seems to be Rebecca Long Bailey, thus

Am I in the mainstream now?

The moment of Boris’s victory makes me stop and look back. In the referendum of 1975 — my first vote — I voted ‘Yes’ (i.e. Remain), but I remember feeling a twinge of admiration for Orkney and Shetland, the only area to vote ‘No’. At Cambridge afterwards, I learnt and liked sovereignty arguments from people

What a relief Jeremy Corbyn never became PM

It is worth fixing for posterity the feelings which, on polling day, swirled in the breasts of many who wanted a Boris victory. Being a journalist, I normally enjoy the electoral scene with some detachment. I cannot claim to be neutral, since I have never, even in Tony Blair’s pinkish dawn of 1997, wanted a

The mysteries of the Corbyn world-view

It is worth fixing for posterity the feelings which, on polling day, swirled in the breasts of many who wanted a Boris victory. Being a journalist, I normally enjoy the electoral scene with some detachment. I cannot claim to be neutral, since I have never, even in Tony Blair’s pinkish dawn of 1997, wanted a

My run-in with Westminster’s TV news circus

Leaving an evening meeting in Westminster on Monday night, I walked to Charing Cross. Approaching the public path which runs across College Green by Parliament, I found, as so often nowadays, that it was fenced off to allow those pop-up studios which the big television channels erect to create their instant news circus. Fed up that the normal