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.
If you are not part of the ‘selectorate’, you feel annoyed at the suggestion that Gordon Brown can become prime minister by acclamation and without a general election. It is not so much that another candidate might be better — though I rather like the look of Alan Johnson, the Trade and Industry Secretary —
Even in successful parliamentary democracies there comes a time when no political party is confronting the questions which matter most, and so the voter feels cheated. The worst time for this in Britain was the 1930s. Conservative appeasement seemed more and more inadequate, but the Labour party, then in pacifist mood, did not offer a
When a disaster or a war happens, very large estimates of the number of dead quickly emerge in the media. These tend to be propagated by two groups — those seeking money to deal with the problem, and those wanting to blame somebody for it. Thus, on 11 September 2001, some early estimates spoke of
At the weekend, I was in Frederick the Great’s palace at Potsdam, attending a conference inspired by the indefatigable George Weidenfeld. As the elections approach, excitement is beginning to mount that Germany might be run by a woman for the first time. Angela Merkel must be irritated by the comparisons with Mrs Thatcher, because they
Our children recently went to the stage version of Billy Elliot and, like most, loved it. I am sure it is an inspiring tale about aspiration, disadvantage and dancing. But the politics…. The miners, striking for a year in 1984–85, sing ‘Solidarity solidarity/ Solidarity forever’ while their police antagonists sing: ‘Keep it up till Christmas,
What was amazing about John Ware’s ‘A Question of Leadership’ on Panorama last Sunday was that it has taken nearly four years since 11 September for such a programme to be made. It simply and successfully did the basic journalistic job of asking difficult questions. The chief object of the questions was Sir Iqbal Sacranie,
There are certain political moves which have now become regular, almost ceremonial features of our national life. One is the IRA’s announcement that the conflict is over. This is repeated once a year or so, flagged by the BBC and No. 10 as ‘historic’, and used as a reason for further concessions to Sinn Fein.
The late Sir Edward Heath was notoriously uneasy with women, but there was one, Sara Morrison, who was a good friend and an important political confidante. She was with him when he died on Sunday. Sara was robust enough to be able to withstand the strange manners and see through to the vulnerable and honourable
On the whole, I believe in what politicians like to call ‘the innate good sense of the British people’, but the reactions of so many friends to last week’s bombings depress me. There is a funny mixture of complacency — ‘We will always be stronger than they are’ — with fatalism — ‘There’s absolutely nothing
What a scramble for Africa. A full-page advertisement in Monday’s Guardian, rather cautiously worded, said that its signatories ‘supported the overall aims’ of those lobbying the G8 leaders and recognised ‘the complexities of the challenge in hand, but commit ourselves to asking our leaders to make positive and practical steps forward to help lift millions
The renewed interest in Our Island Story on its centenary takes me back to the first history book I read. It is called A Nursery History of England, by one Elizabeth O’Neill who was, I now see but did not notice at the time, covertly sympathetic to Catholicism (Mary, Queen of Scots was ‘not vain
Last week I went to hear Jung Chang and Jon Halliday talk about their new biography of Mao Tse-tung at a lecture in memory of the Great Helmsman of Moderation, Roy Jenkins. Almost every claim made in favour of Mao, they argued, is untrue — that peasant villages rose up in support of the Communists
What do we think of children? Boarding schools are out of fashion because they represent ‘delegated parenthood’ and we are taught to believe that we should be very ‘hands on’ with our children, and that everyone else’s hands are suspect. We are horribly mistrustful of Michael Jackson where our grandparents loved the equally strange J.M.
It is proverbial that the British press is disgusting and contemptible, but would we ever have got ourselves into the extraordinary situation of our Continental counterparts? In France, no national newspaper, except for the Communist L’Humanité, called for a ‘No’ vote in the referendum on the European constitution. The nearest any major Dutch paper came
I wish I could share the widespread joy at the great European ‘No’. Yes, the word ‘No’ is good. Yes, I feel the normal human pleasure at the discomfiture of the politicians. I have enjoyed seeing Peter Mandelson trying to worm round the result and Neil Kinnock raging against his former friends on the French
Turning on what I thought was the Today programme on Monday, I heard the voice of Kenneth Clarke, talking about Dizzy Gillespie. Another shameless plug by the BBC, I thought, for the man they are always trying to make Tory leader. Perhaps I was right, but the immediate cause was that there was no Today
The election has brought out the tension between Scotland and England (see last week’s Notes). The Conservatives won more votes than Labour in England and, as before, managed only one seat in Scotland. Labour has 41 seats in Scotland, without which it would lack an overall majority. England heavily subsidises Scotland, allowing, for instance, state-funded
Les événements in France have provoked self-congratulation here. Apparently, the French model of assimilation is bad. If they had our multiculturalism, the celebration of diversity and ethnic monitoring, everything would be much better, it is said. The French are 20 years behind us, etc. It seems but yesterday that I read praise of France for
Another week of this, and I think I would have ended up voting Labour. Ann Toward, the widow of Guardsman Anthony Wakefield, who was killed near Amarah, southern Iraq, on Monday, said that Tony Blair was to blame for her husband’s death. Although it is obviously true that if there had been no war in
Fascism is a bigger part of this election than most people realise. We know about the BNP already, but the growing force is Muslim extremism. The tactics are nasty. Look at the website of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) and you will see lists of MPs whom MPAC wishes to make the victims of