Parliament is back and I can relax. A tiresome cliché holds that MPs have a three-month summer break. If only. I have spent more time canvassing, selling tombola tickets and doing politics than ever before. And then on the eve of the Commons returning there is pure political Wagner. Boris fires Blair! Mandy returns! Like
Monday Everyone in a panic about our Greek taverna line. Am starting to wish I never mentioned it. DD keeps ringing up to tell Gids about big game hunting. ‘I know, I know,’ I told him. ‘You’d better be sure you kill with the first shot, etc.’ Sometimes the old ones are the best. Sometimes,
Nominations continue to roll in for the inaugural Spectator’s Readers’ Representative. This week saw several MPs nominated for their campaigning work. Richard Hamilton proposes Nadine Dorries. Hamilton commends Dorries for addressing the issue of term limits for abortion with a ‘tenaciousness and passion that caught the public’s attention in a remarkable way’. He applauds her
Gordon Brown’s critics are confused. For months they have been accusing him of dithering, of timidity, of being unable to make the bold moves that are needed if his government is to get a grip on the unfolding problems in the financial sector and, now, in the economy as a whole. Now that he has
The Spectator on the Government’s £50 billion bailout Though largely forgotten now, the headlines ten years ago this week had an uncanny resemblance to those of the past few days. There was an emergency bail-out, demands to slash interest rates, bankers warning that the world’s economic system was in danger of systemic collapse — countered
The blame game Sir: While I do not flinch from looking on the Clinton era as a disaster for its neglect of the threat to global security posed by bin Laden et al and the tacit encouragement of Enron-style corporate accounting, I think blaming the Democrats for the credit crunch may be going a little
