That England should have a 3–0 lead in the present Test cricket series against West Indies is something that, only a few years ago, would have exceeded the most insane expectations of its supporters. In great measure the success is down to the discovery of excellent talent — Flintoff, Strauss and Key notably — and
On Monday, just as people settled down for the summer holidays, Michael Howard returned from his. He slipped back into Britain and at once set to work. He is already two thirds of the way through the probable term of his leadership. Just eight months remain until the general election, most likely to be called
Dick Pound, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee, speaks for many when he says of the Greeks: ‘They think things being ready at 11:59 is plenty of time. It drives the rest of the world nuts.’ It has become commonplace over the past months to portray the modernday Greeks as unworthy inheritors of
Listen hard and you can hear J. Bonington-Jagworth grumbling loudly. The Association of London Government has announced that it is to fine motorists up to £100 a time for driving in the capital’s cycle lanes. The RAC Foundation, one of the many real-life organisations which have come to ape Peter Simple’s splendid Motorists’ Liberation Front,
But why is Diana’s fountain being closed? Some people are decently embarrassed at the failure of this £3.6 million waterwork. Some people may be secretly amused. They look at the bone-dry channels of the Hyde Park memorial, and the metal security barriers that now surround it, and they feel that distinctive British joy in architectural
As the 1960s drew to a close, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking on the Moon, pop’s dopeheads were experimenting with ten-minute-long guitar solos, and a mop-haired Tony Blair was in the sixth form at Fettes where, in between canings for insolence, he was railing against fagging. Now, we are led to believe, the
You can tell when high summer comes to Westminster. Smartly dressed groups, lost and ill at ease — the women in hats and best frocks — wander through Westminster Hall in search of Buckingham Palace garden parties. The Catalpa trees in New Palace Yard burst into bloom, and their viscous, sickly scent spreads everywhere. These
The most blissfully satirical moment during Lord Butler’s press conference was his remark that Iraq contained ‘a lot of sand’. His point was that the fabled weapons of mass destruction might yet turn up, buried in the dunes. The former Cabinet secretary is known as a man of boundless optimism. It may be that all
Just before the 1966 World Cup the England manager Sir Alf Ramsey remarked that his talented midfielder Martin Peters was ‘ten years ahead of his time’. Peters himself was displeased by the observation, but Ramsey was in reality being flattering. He meant that his player was not truly at ease among the clodhopping defenders and
Too much theory and not enough practice. Those were the words used this week by a lifelong shire Tory to describe what has become of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She meant that the two societies have become unhealthily
As any investment banker will tell you, share prices in ailing companies rarely go down in a straight line. The process of decline is typically punctuated by periods of stagnation, known by technical experts as a ‘false bottom’. But these treacherous episodes are not nearly as perilous as the moment when a share price in
There was one thing surprisingly absent from last Monday’s handover of Iraq’s sovereignty by Paul Bremer, leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority, to Iyad Allawi, Iraq’s new Prime Minister. It wasn’t an extravagant ceremony involving a star-spangled banner lowered to the accompaniment of a military band and a tearful speech by Paul Bremer. It was
There has been a remarkable new buoyancy among Labour MPs this week. This can be partly accounted for by the apparent improvement in Iraq, England’s footballing triumph over Croatia — and the fact that the government has not yet woken up to the full scale of the humiliation that awaits it at next month’s Leicester
It is a seldom acknowledged benefit of rail privatisation that for ten years we have not had a national rail strike. This happy situation will come to an end at 6.30 p.m. next Tuesday when, in the middle of the rush hour, 15,000 members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) walk out on
Parliament was never designed for glorious weeks of high summer like this one. Its book-lined corridors; its snug bars; its beery, false jocularity; the stench of thwarted ambition; those great thick walls; the badly kept secrets; the formal dress code; those fat, florid, middle-aged men: all this makes Westminster a winter place. Summer weeks like
From Marks & Spencer to Network Rail, from Shell to Enron, this truth becomes daily more self-evident: it is not the poor bloody workers who cause the trouble, but the rich bloody management. The latest ‘senior management team’ to prove the point is a GCSE and A-level examination board. Last week the Assessment and Qualifications
Basically, these June elections are only about one thing: a massive vote of no confidence in the political class. It looks likely that the European election results, not to be announced until Sunday night, will throw up an astonishing statistic: half the voters have now abandoned the two mainstream parties. This figure is pregnant with
On the day that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States in 1981, superstitious observers believed his fate was determined. Since 1840, they pointed out, every president who had been first elected in a year ending with a zero had died while in office, from William Harrison, who caught a
Just four weeks ago there was a powerful view at Westminster that it would be all up for Tony Blair after next week’s elections. This opinion was most widely expressed within the Labour party itself, where the Prime Minister was candidly seen as a liability. Labour’s campaign literature reflects this. Photographs of the Prime Minister
If you vote for the United Kingdom Independence Party you will cheer up Tony Blair. So said Michael Howard on Tuesday, and he is clearly right. The Conservatives are the only party (apart from Labour) that can remove Mr Blair from government; they have made impressive progress under Mr Howard’s leadership, and their momentum will