Our dismal education system means that too often poverty is a life sentence, says Michael Gove. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Schools can be freed from stifling state control I owe Peter Bazalgette an apology. A very big apology. Peter is the man who brought Big Brother to our TV screens. His
He who controls the past, George Orwell argued, controls the future. Orwell’s warning resonates all the more powerfully as the government considers the erasure of history from the primary curriculum. A sense of the past is a precious thing. And not to know history, as Cicero argued, is to remain a child for ever. Orwell,
There are few feuds as destructive as the squabble over a legacy. In Bleak House, the case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce provides Charles Dickens with one of fiction’s most debilitating contests — a battle over an inheritance which blights all those involved. But Westminster is still, nevertheless, absorbed by the struggle to lay claim to
Seldom can a New Year have dawned so bleakly as 2008 and rarely can a news story have spoken of evil so starkly as the New Year’s Day report from Kenya of children being deliberately burnt alive inside a church. The calculated, heartless wickedness of the act recalls one of the most notorious atrocities of
John O’Sullivan has done much more with this book than provide three potted biographies; he has laid out a compelling account of how the Cold War was won, furnished us with a manual of political leadership and told us the inner secrets of a love story. At the heart of this story of the Eighties,
Between the revolution and the firing squad, a Russian aristocrat once observed, there is always time for a bottle of champagne. Between the demographic disaster and the collapse of Western civilisation, Mark Steyn appears to believe, there’s always time for a rip-roaring op-ed and a series of blistering jokes. No writer I can think of
One of the most dangerous tastes any British politician can admit to is a tendresse for the Teutonic. During the first world war the Liberal cabinet minister Haldane was compelled to resign because of his pro-German sympathies. It was not that Haldane harboured any political affection for Wilhelmine militarism, or had exhibited any slackness in
No job quite prepares you for life as a parliamentary candidate. But I suspect that a period as a monk would equip you pretty well. We are not actually obliged to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience but observance of the last two is certainly advisable. And life on the hustings does require a
Watching Labour’s 2005 election campaign unfold, I’m afraid words fail me. The great Democrat governor of New York Mario Cuomo once remarked that ‘we campaign in poetry but we govern in prose’. And even though I struggle to find the language to do justice to Labour’s campaign, one poet does capture their approach perfectly: Rudyard
As a journalist I got used to asking questions. As an apprentice politician I’ve had to get used to answering them. And that has meant learning all over again that the simplest questions to ask are the trickiest to answer. Most of my acquaintances have been extraordinarily encouraging about my decision to relinquish a journalistic
In all its long history, the parliamentary Tory party has never been so depressed. If a doctor were to observe its current behaviour, he would put the patient on suicide watch. When I spoke to Conservative MPs this week it was hard to find any spark of optimism, breath of hope or relish for the
A melancholy anniversary recently passed virtually unnoticed: it is now more than a decade since the Conservative party fell behind in the polls. Never has a major opposition party been so unpopular, with so many, for so long. If Conservatives are ever to govern again, they must do three things. They have honestly to appreciate
Why didn’t the Tories invite Pete Waterman to speak at their conference? The guru behind Kylie Minogue who has become a familiar television face as a judge on ITV’s Pop Idol certainly wouldn’t have felt out of place. He’s used to helping nervous unknowns who want to make it big. And his experience sitting beside