As this country stumbles towards a Labour victory at the next election, the mood on the left remains subdued. The problem is not Keir Starmer’s personal charisma, achingly absent though that may be. No, it lies much deeper than that, in what Tony Benn liked to call the ishoos. The cry goes up from focus
Thirty-five years ago, the late Christopher Hitchens published a book about the Elgin Marbles. Unsurprisingly, it was a polemical work; he was passionately campaigning for the return of the sculptures to Athens. But that was not the reason why I wrote a scathing review of it for The Spectator. Parts of it were plagiarised, as
Soon after the date for the EU referendum was set, Timothy Garton Ash published a piece in this magazine under the title ‘A conservative case for staying in’. He was followed by Ian Buruma, attacking the idea that, having left the EU, the British would be more free. And then, after the Obama visit to
Available from Heywood Hill, 10 Curzon Street, London W1J 5HH Producers of ‘period dramas’, on film or television, go to tremendous trouble to create the right ‘period look’. In the late Victorian town house, everything is late Victorian; in the Regency rectory, everything is Regency; and so on. All of which is, of course, absurd
If a week is a long time in politics, how long is 12 years? The last time I wrote this column was in September 1991. Tony Blair was just a front-bench spokesman on employment; Gordon Brown ditto on trade and industry. These I had at least seen and heard. But if anyone had said to