As a rule of thumb, it is wise to ignore anything said at any summit beginning with the letter G. When Harold Wilson went to the G6 summit in 1975 there was a point: there had just been an oil crisis so Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States got together to
The Afghans would be entitled to feel a little aggrieved at the way the West has criticised their ‘fraudulent’ elections. Doubtless Hamid Karzai rigged the system to get the result he wanted, but in doing so, he was following a fine European tradition. The United Nations are suspicious that Karzai’s share of the vote was,
On the anniversary of the 11 September attacks, Britain has learned just how close it came to its own version. The trial of the Heathrow plotters, three of whom were convicted this week, shows how developed the jihadi menace had become in our country. They planned to bring down six aircraft, in all likelihood killing
There’s one present a parent can give a child in modern Britain that they will prize above all others. It’s not a Playstation or a puppy or even an iPhone. If a boy today has any sense, he’ll instead insist on having a certificate diagnosing him with the popular personality syndrome Attention Deficit Disorder. This
So who to believe? Saif al-Gaddafi, son of the Libyan dictator, has said that the release of Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi was ‘on the table’ during trade talks with Britain. Lord Mandelson, who was holidaying with the young prince of Tripoli in Corfu a few weeks ago, says such a suggestion is not just wrong but
Senator Edward Kennedy lived in the shadow of Chappaquiddick, but his life deserves just as much celebration as it does censure. Like his brothers, he exemplified his clan’s customary mix of vice and virtue, he was irrepressible and impossible to predict. Though a Rabelaisian figure — a great playboy and drinker — he was disciplined
In contrast to Gordon Brown’s dull and worthy holiday working as a volunteer on community projects in his constituency, there is something rather refreshing about Lord Mandelson’s taste for extravagant vacations on Corfu in the company of wealthy moguls. Moreover, his holidays are a godsend for deskbound journalists in London struggling for a good political
The Spectator on Culture — and our new team blog This week’s issue concludes our guide to 40 poems you should know, hot on the heels of The Spectator’s (controversial) choice of the best 50 films of all time. The response to both lists has been passionate and powerful: it comes as no surprise that
A party striving to make the huge leap from opposition to office must speak with one voice, maintain scrupulous clarity and ensure iron discipline. It must reassure the voters relentlessly, persuading them at every available opportunity that it has changed and that it grasps why it has been defeated in prior general elections. Yet a
Not since Ian Botham has a cricketer so captured the public imagination as Andrew Flintoff has these past few years. Flintoff’s appeal comes from the fact that he brings the game of the village green to the Test match arena. He plays the sport as all those of us who have put on whites would
The Spectator on the plight of Britain’s vulnerable children Families are the raw materials from which society is constructed. They constitute the foundations of our civilisation. And it follows that there are few more unnatural actions that the state can undertake than to invade the relationship between parent and child or even to sever it.
The success of the open primary held by the Tories in Totnes could mark a turning-point in British politics. A candidate is usually selected by party members, but in Totnes all constituents were allowed to vote and they achieved a remarkable result: a turnout of one in four. Also remarkable was the candidate they chose:
There is no set of results a bank could have declared this week which would have pleased the general public. A bank which made losses was inevitably going to be accused of continuing incompetence, while one which made profits was sure to be condemned for its greed. As John Varley, chief executive of Barclays, hinted
‘Twat’ is not a swear word. This may come as a surprise to those of us who have studiously avoided using it in front of our mothers-in-law and elderly relatives. But after David Cameron said it in a radio interview, Tory press officers were quick to point out that Ofcom does not consider it to
‘You’re going to feel some pressure,’ say dentists as they prepare to inflict pain. The more honest they are, the more tolerable the experience tends to be. So it is with political actions that have foresee-able adverse consequences: as much as voters dislike those consequences, they dislike being lied to even more. David Cameron’s interview
Having your prospects in life determined at birth is the most pernicious and fundamental form of inequality. So the present political focus on improving social mobility is to be welcomed on principle. To think that all the advantages and disadvantages of background can be ironed out is delusional; short of a Spartan-style nationalisation of child-rearing,
The world does not hold its breath during US-Russia summits as it did in the days of Kennedy and Khrushchev or Reagan and Gorbachev. But they are still important moments of (mostly choreographed) dialogue. Without Moscow’s co-operation, Barack Obama will find it far harder to make progress in Afghanistan or in his diplomatic strategy to
As Mark Earls writes on page 16, the rush to mourn Michael Jackson has been matched only by the surge of instant jokes about the singer — many of them in catastrophically poor taste. Our very own Taki lets one or two out of the bag this week (see page 44). Some say these one-liners
Tuesday was a busy day for Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. Not only did he launch ‘Your Child, Your Schools, Our Future’, the government’s new White Paper on schools reform, a document which he claimed enshrined ‘a radical devolution of power to head teachers, backed up by stronger accountability,
The Spectator corrects a recent article Correction: In the version of Victoria Floethe’s story that appeared in this week’s magazine, we inadvertently referred at one point to the Wall Street Journal instead of the New York Post. We accept that there is no basis for suggesting that the WSJ might have indulged in an act