Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
A swan won’t take your eye out, says Rod Liddle. So why the health and safety paranoia? Never mind hung parliaments and the ending of the two-party dominance of British politics (a notion I seem to remember being mooted in about 1982) — here’s the important question of the week: was the BBC right to
What question should I ask David Miliband on tomorrow’s (Friday) edition of the Campaign Show on BBC News? All contributions gratefully received, even those which are not obscene or make references to the Liebore Party, etc etc. There may be another politician on the show who will keep you amused for a while. In the
I suppose it is the perfect expression of how and why the Labour Party has lost the white working class vote in the last fifteen years; it has only contempt for them. Opposition to immigration – as we know from Neathergate, well before Bigotgate – is seen by Labour has being rooted in a stupid
I’m a bit late to this, so apologies, but there’s a very good piece in the current issue of the magazine by Andrew M Brown, about why almost everybody is fat. Andrew suggests that as a consequence of the class system breaking down, we no longer know when we are supposed to eat and so,
What should we do about Steven Mulvain, the young civil servant who suggested that the Pope, when he arrives for his visit here, should be asked to open an abortion clinic, or sponsor a new brand of “Benedict” condoms? If you haven’t already read about the case, here it is. Mulvain’s email is certainly typical
I find the way the Prime Ministerial debates have been spun by the media and commentators more interesting than the debates themselves. It seemed clear to me that Gordon Brown was the real loser of the first debate, as all the post-event polls suggested, and yet the media – even the Tory papers – stuck
It doesn’t matter what the Lib Dem leader stands for, says Rod Liddle. In the era of X Factor politics, people can decide, on a whim, that he should be Prime Minister Is Nick Clegg better than Winston Churchill, as a recent opinion poll seemed to suggest? The obvious answer is yes, of course —
Terrific stuff from Nick Clegg, reported in the Daily Mail here. Nick suggests Britain has a misplaced sense of superiority as a consequence of winning the second world war, should recognize that Germany has become a “vastly” more prosperous country and that we have a “greater cross to bear” than the Germans for the events
I notice that the journalist Suzanne Moore is standing against Diane Abbott in Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Good for her. I know some of you may consider an Abbott-Moore contest to be on a par with, say, Gaddafy versus Assad, but Suzanne is at least not a hypocrite. She’s got a fight on her
A quite bizarre report from the IPPR which attempts to prove that it is not immigration which tempts people to vote BNP, but a lack of “resilience”. This fatuous word, resilience, is used more and more by government and quangos and local councils, usually to transfer blame to ordinary people for the crimes of those
Anyone seen any political posters up in windows and gardens etc? I’ve been around a few constituencies and have seen one placard – for the Tory candidate for Redditch – in a field on the edge of her territory, and that’s it. The general lack of enthusiasm for this election at least in part explains
Gordon Brown’s latest campaign slogan — ‘Vote Labour or Die of Cancer’ — has a certain apocalyptic vigour about it, don’t you think, even if it was implied rather than directly stated? The party sent out 250,000 ‘postcards’ to women, although they were not the sort of postcards you get when your Aunt Jemima’s been
Keep those excellent observations flowing in, please. Here’s one I found in the introduction to the Labour Manifesto, published yesterday. Gordon Brown wrote it, apparently: ‘This is a Manifesto about the greater progressive change we need because of the tougher times we are living through. There are no big new spending commitments, but there is
Does anybody understand the Labour cancer leaflets story? I’ve listened to be about five BBC News reports and am no better off as a consequence. Labour apparently sent 250,000 cards out to women voters warning them that the Tories would renege upon Labour government promises for cancer tests. The question comes down to how those
Alien life-forms have been cutting holes in sheep in Shropshire with highly powered lasers and strange glowing balls of light. According to a local farmer, reported by an oddly credulous chap from the Daily Telegraph, there is a ‘corridor’ of 50 miles stretching from Shrewsbury towards the Powys border where UFOs arrive quite regularly and
You will be hearing a good deal of mind-numbingly stupid, meaningless or plainly inaccurate quotes from politicians over the next four weeks. So instead of buying a pump action rifle and crouching in combat gear at the end of your local high street out of frustration and fury, send the worst ones to me here:
A few more points about the PCC adjudication; apologies if you’re getting bored. The first is indisputable: if I had blogged on a website of my own, rather than here, then they would have not got involved. So the upshot is that blogs associated with newspapers will end up not being like blogs at all
I dunno how this passed me by, just missed the news I suppose. But apparently Alex Chilton died a week or two back – which is no great surprise, in one way, but sort of shocking in another. He was one of two or three heroes of mine in that limited but enlivening medium, rock
There’s a revolt growing in the Surrey East Conservative Association about the candidate imposed upon them by David Cameron – a black businessman called Sam Gyimah. Some locals insist that Sam’s business ventures have been rather, you know, iffy and they were not terribly happy to have “selected” him from a shortlist which contained no
Rod Liddle fears he may be doomed — although the modern Church of Englandis reluctant to admit that anyone at all suffers eternal damnation Not so long ago, when I was making a film about some aspect of Christianity for Channel 4, I asked a Church of England bishop about the concept of heaven, what