Today

23 Jun 2022
Letters: How to face death

Be prepared Sir: The advice of Jeremy Clarke’s Aunty Margaret that he ‘must “get right with the Lord” as a matter of the gravest urgency’ in the light of his cancer diagnosis is spot on. I say that not just because I’m a vicar, but because I have sat at innumerable bedsides of people in the last days of their lives and have often found myself thinking: ‘You really should have prepared for this a long time ago.’ But by then they were too sick, too tired or too drugged up to think straight about spiritual matters and I have always felt that I would be intruding if I forced the issue. Deathbed conversions such as Lord Marchmain’s in Brideshead Revisited are, in my experience, almost nonexistent. We would all do well to heed Aunty Margaret’s advice and prepare for death ‘as a matter of gravest urgency’.

Letters: How to face death

Thursday

16 Jun 2022
Letters: Boris Johnson might be the leader we need

The leader we need? Sir: Matthew Parris excoriates Boris Johnson for administrative incompetence, mendacity, personal immorality and utter lack of political vision (‘I told you so’, 11 June). Mr Johnson may have multiple personal failings, but surely it is obvious that we live in times which call not for a leader with lofty political vision, but for one who can react instinctively and reasonably competently to exogenous events. Johnson’s refusal to be battered down by successive crises, his cocksure ebullience, and his ability to turn patent negatives into positives clearly irritate his former journalistic colleagues – and infuriate his political opponents. But is it possible that these features of the Prime Minister’s character may be just what is needed to give the country a fighting chance of dodging the many bullets coming its way? Jeff Green Bath Selling themselves Sir: I was impressed by Lionel Shriver’s article ‘Does advertising matter?’ (11 June).

Letters: Boris Johnson might be the leader we need

Tuesday

14 Jun 2022
Wanted: video editors

The Spectator is looking to expand Spectator TV. Our YouTube channel now has more than 160,000 subscribers, and we want to make more videos for our growing audience. We recently started filming Chinese Whispers and Women With Balls, and want to start putting out new shows later this year. We’re looking for talented video editors to help. We don’t care about your background – university students and retirees are equally welcome. All that matters is that you can do the job. To apply, please do the following: 1. Download these files from a recent episode of Chinese Whispers.  2. Using Premiere Pro (a free trial is available here), edit the show however you think looks best. This is how our final cut looked: 3. Cut the video down to 30 minutes.

Wanted: video editors

Thursday

9 Jun 2022
Portrait of the week: A no-confidence vote, a marginal win and the Queen’s Jubilee

Home Boris Johnson won a vote of confidence in him as prime minister among Conservative MPs by 211 votes to 148 (58.8 per cent in favour, compared with 63 per cent in favour of Theresa May in 2018). No more such votes are allowed for a year. Workmen had still been dismantling the staging in front of Buckingham Palace from the Jubilee celebrations when Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, announced that, as at least 54 MPs had written letters requesting it, there would be a secret ballot on the question. Boris Johnson had been booed by people in the crowd as he walked up the steps of St Paul’s with his wife Carrie for the service of thanksgiving for the Queen’s 70 years on the throne. A memorandum had circulated last weekend saying that ‘MPs are having to defend the indefensible, not for the sake of the party, but for one man’.

Portrait of the week: A no-confidence vote, a marginal win and the Queen’s Jubilee

Wednesday

1 Jun 2022
What is the most significant year of the Queen’s reign?

Andrew Roberts The most important moment came on 11 November 1975 when her governor-general in Australia, Sir John Kerr, dismissed the Labour government under Gough Whitlam, doing so in her name. Although the Queen knew nothing about it before it happened (indeed, she was asleep at the time), it reiterated the vital constitutional principle that there is a power above politicians, even elected ones as in Whitlam’s case. Whitlam had driven Australia to the brink of economic and social collapse, but Kerr saved the country using the Queen’s royal prerogative. His decision was enthusiastically endorsed by the Australian people at the subsequent general election, with a landslide victory for Malcolm Fraser.

What is the most significant year of the Queen’s reign?

Thursday

26 May 2022
Boris Johnson’s guilt

An ability to survive narrow scrapes has been one of Boris Johnson’s defining qualities. The pictures of Downing Street’s lockdown social events included in the Sue Gray report were so dull as to be almost exculpatory: staid gatherings of half a dozen people around a long table with sandwiches still in their boxes, apple juice poured into a whisky glass. Far worse happened in No. 10 but Gray did not publish those photos or look into (for example) the ‘Abba’ party in the No. 10 flat, saying she felt it inappropriate to do so while police were investigating. Luckily for Johnson. The more damaging material came from the emails intercepted, with No. 10 staff being clear that they knew they were breaking the rules they had collectively designed and enforced on the country.

Boris Johnson’s guilt

Thursday

19 May 2022
Portrait of the week: Inflation’s 40-year high, Tory MP’s rape arrest and monkeypox in Britain

Home The annual rate of inflation, impelled by energy costs, rose to 9 per cent, its highest since 1982. Unemployment fell to 1.2 million, 3.7 per cent, its lowest since 1974 and below the number of vacancies of 1.3 million. Britain said it wanted to do something about the Northern Ireland Protocol, but the EU said it couldn’t. The Democratic Unionist party said it would not take part in the power-sharing executive of Northern Ireland unless Britain did. Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, told the Commons that a new law would adjust Northern Ireland’s trading status. Maros Sefcovic, vice-president of the European Commission, said the EU would ‘respond with all measures at its disposal’. A South American weevil, Listronotus elongatus, was released to counter the spread of American floating pennywort in British waterways.

Portrait of the week: Inflation’s 40-year high, Tory MP’s rape arrest and monkeypox in Britain