Matthew Parris is a columnist for The Spectator and The Times.
No popular impression is more precious to those who govern than the impression on the part of the governed that more is known than can be divulged. William Whitelaw understood this better than most. When I was a callow young Tory MP in the 1980s, and he was home secretary, I was briefly caught up
Brainwaves are unusual in the governance of men and it is rare that a knotty political problem invites a simple solution nobody had thought of before. But a conversation last week with The Spectator’s newly appointed bullfighting correspondent (Lord Garel-Jones deplores the term but there is no other) has led us to a Eureka! moment.
Sometimes one’s creed points logically where one is intuitively reluctant to go. The flesh is willing but the spirit is weak. Item: we should not give money to women begging with babies as this only encourages them. Item: this is a beggar and she is carrying a baby. Conclusion: …er …fumble in pockets for change.
They asked me how I knew/My true love was true…. Or so the song goes. But who were they, and why did they ask anyway? They don’t appear very sympathetic – they with their sneering inquiries about how I knew my love was true. Are they the same They as the They who don’t know
My diary said eleven in the morning so I turned up in good time at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster last month, ready to do a turn for a sixth-form conference on politics. For half an hour or so I was to talk to an audience of about 1,000 youths and youthettes about the
There has been another huge rise in the numbers of those seeking asylum in this country. That the figure for the last quarter is 20 per cent higher than for the equivalent period in the preceding year is disturbing enough. That it is 11 per cent higher than the preceding quarter suggests that the rate
Compared with the woes besetting our own royal family, the problems faced by the Swazi monarchy in adapting to the 21st century are minor. King Mswati III has just chosen his tenth wife. The wedding will not affect his marriage to the existing nine. There may be lessons here for Prince Charles. I have recently
This cracking book is missing something and the want is telling. Jeremy Paxman virtually discounts the possibility that people might go into politics driven by ideas or conviction. These being the spur politicians routinely claim, Paxman’s study becomes a detective hunt for ulterior motive or unacknowledged greed. ‘This fellow says he wants to make the
This is a reflection on boys and fathers. It may be different for girls. See what you think. Is ours the first generation, or the first for a long time, when boys know more than their fathers? I am not speaking of wisdom, whatever that may be. The older generation will always believe it possesses
Threatening letters on 10 Downing Street-headed notepaper are scary and I admit taking fright. My autobiography, Chance Witness, was on the verge of publication, and I was heading for the Grapes in Narrow Street for lunch with a Foreign Office friend when my mobile phone rang. Would I call my editor’s office urgently? I did.
GROUCHO Marx’s disinclination to join any club which would accept him suggests a corollary that Groucho never mentioned: the club anxious to recruit just the sort of people who would not dream of joining. The Tories may be headed that way, and if they are not they should be. For its parliamentary candidates, the principal
Until the collapse of communism, America’s experience as a great power had been of a world in which there was always (as she saw it) one great evil in the universe, committed to her total destruction. She stood for more than national self-interest; she stood, she believed (and often rightly believed), for the forces of
We had not expected a border post. This was not a border. Way over the other side of a high pass through the Carpathian Mountains lay Romania, but this small village nestling in a valley by a rushing river was in Ukraine, wholly in Ukraine, and we were anyway not taking the turning for Romania
In Manchester, a friend at university there tells me, a new word has entered smart parlance among the young. The word is ‘raped’. The expression is moderately strong, and casual. It is a way of saying that one has in some way been done over, done for, or done in. ‘I was completely raped,’ a