Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 21 January 2006

You would have thought that old people would wield ever greater power

issue 21 January 2006

Jack Straw says that military action against Iran is ‘inconceivable’. The President of Iran says he wants to wipe Israel ‘off the map’. Why doesn’t an interviewer ask the Foreign Secretary whether, if Iran tried to do this, military action would still be inconceivable? If he says yes (and if that is the policy of the West), then Iran will know that it can go ahead.

There has been no more touching story in recent days than the complaint of Alexander Chancellor, the great former editor of The Spectator, that he has been dropped from Today’s Birthdays in the Guardian. Alexander, who is 66 this month, protested, and was told that he was dropped ‘because of space’, which somehow only makes it more wounding. And it seemed particularly hurtful that the paper which jettisoned him — he still appears in the Daily Telegraph and the Times — is the one for which he writes a column.

Charles Moore
Written by
Charles Moore

Charles Moore is The Spectator’s chairman.

He is a former editor of the magazine, as well as the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph. He became a non-affiliated peer in July 2020.

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