Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. His books include Not Zero, The Road to Southend Pier, and Far From EUtopia: Why Europe is failing and Britain could do better
In her early campaigning days as Conservative leader, Mrs Thatcher had the gift of being able to relate the national economy to the domestic finances of ordinary voters. The battle against inflation commenced with her and her shopping basket, nattering away with voters over the cheese counter. It is a skill which David Cameron needs
Like the War of Jenkins’ Ear in 18th-century Anglo-Spanish relations, Heathrow is becoming something of a totem in the fight for the soul of the Conservative party. Whether you prefer your new runways to the east or west of London positions you on the other great issue of the day: who should be leader. If
The Chinese have excelled at London 2012, much to the annoyance of their Western rivals. In this week’s issue of the Spectator, Ross Clark argues that the claims against swimmer Ye Shiwen reflect irrational suspicion of her country. Here is an edited version of Ross’s article (you can read the full version here): The story
The prominent story of London 2012 has been that of a country which was once an underachiever in the Olympic games but which, through sheer hard work on the part of its athletes, has hauled itself to the top of the medals tables, producing in the process one of the most dramatic world records in
Many a Conservative MP will spend the summer dreaming happily about what the party should do in office once it has freed itself from the shackles of coalition. Few even consider the painful truth — that the coalition party most likely to survive the next election is not the Conservatives but the Lib Dems. Imagine
There is nothing as dangerous, they say, as the zeal of the newly converted. So it was when Labour under Tony Blair suddenly discovered capitalism. What had been a small-scale pragmatic policy under John Major’s government, the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), was taken up with huge gusto in order to see the rebuilding of hundreds
The fact that you cannot perform a U-turn in a train is one of the limitations of that form of transport. When the line ahead is blocked, locomotives form long queues, unable to go anywhere until the problem is solved. It is scarcely any easier performing a U-turn with a high-speed rail project, especially after
On 27 July millions will drown in syrup as Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee, delivers his usual platitudes about international togetherness and sport without boundaries. He might, for example, do something close to reciting the mission statement of the IOC’s world conference on Sport for All, held in Beijing last September: ‘to
The PM’s problem is not poshness, but impoliteness Premierships do not end in failure, as Enoch Powell once asserted, but in tragedy. They start with a beaming figure disappearing behind the door of No. 10 — even Edward Heath, immortalised now as the Incredible Sulk, entered with a radiant grin. And they end with a
The latest issue of The Spectator is out tomorrow, of course – but we thought CoffeeHousers might like to read this piece by Ross Clark in advance. It’s about what he calls David Cameron’s ‘tragic flaw’: impoliteness. Premierships do not end in failure, as Enoch Powell once asserted, but in tragedy. They start with a
Was a political brickbat from the left ever more elegantly lobbed than J.K. Galbraith’s jibe that conservative governments create ‘private affluence and public squalor’? It came to sum up perfectly the feelings of many people towards Britain in the 1980s, when Londoners would step over the homeless as they made their way back to flashy
Chris Huhne wants to know why we don’t shop around more for our utilities. I’ll give him one reason. The liberalisation of utility markets has created an impression of bewildering choice, but when things go wrong you realise that there is no choice at all, just the same old creaking infrastructure, owned and operated by
Young people say capitalism has failed them. They’re right. We must change the system to save it It would be easy to attack the London spin-off of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which manifested itself in the form of a 300-tent encampment outside St Paul’s last weekend. Their political agenda? The same, meaningless, Dave Spartesque
Messy deals and fudged compromises: an inevitable feature of coalition politics. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the resulting policy will always be bad. As a result of grubby negotiations in Downing Street, it looks as if we might just end up with a change in direction of tax policy which should have been made years ago.
In Switzerland, declared Harry Lime in The Third Man, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock. He would now surely have added the International Baccalaureate. There is no Swiss product which rates so highly with the British middle classes. Certainly not Nescafé,
It is, as David Cameron says, a time to pause, listen and reflect: reflect that for every granny starving and dehydrating on an NHS ward there is quite possibly a patient in a private hospital being pulled screaming into a cold shower. If it wasn’t already obvious that private provision is no panacea for public
‘Localisation’ is an expensive path to greater political corruption The last time the Dorset village of Cerne Abbas played a part in national debate was in the 17th century, when — recent studies suggest — locals carved a rude chalk parody of Oliver Cromwell into a hillside. It failed to unsettle Cromwell, but the village
Despite promises, the London Olympics is set to leave us with a legacy of unwanted buildings. We should cut costs and have flatpack movable stadia, says Ross Clark The complex used for the 1908 Olympics became known as White City. For 2012, the challenge is not to create a White Elephant City. While gymnastics can
In ten years’ time Oxford and Cambridge universities could be shining examples of social diversity, their student bodies reflecting the exact composition of the British population, a few sons of aristocrats educated alongside the children of benefit claimants from Teesside and a greater mass of suburban middle classes; all of them learning how to rub
The first time I heard of a crammer school I assumed it was a 16th-century foundation by Thomas Cranmer, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, where boys walked about the cloisters in long cloaks with copies of the Book of Common Prayer stuffed under their arms. I guess we didn’t take revision quite so seriously in