Among the many organisations which donors to Comic Relief have generously helped to support is Tar Isteach, a Dublin-based group of former IRA terrorists led by Tommy Quigley, who was jailed in 1985 for three murders. The group recently received £80,000 for its programme of events supposedly aimed at rehabilitating prisoners released under the Good
The last time I wrote about the deranged, unEnglish and presbyterian socialism which Gordon Brown longs to inflict upon us, I had a letter from a doctor. He said my piece was basically worthless because it had missed the fundamental point. ‘Mr Brown,’ the doctor wrote, ‘has Asperger’s Syndrome.’ Not being a medical man, I
Amid the mayhem in Baghdad this week, it would be easy to overlook a significant development towards international peace and security. It came in a letter from Pascal Lamy, EU trade commissioner, and Franz Fischler, agriculture commissioner, to the trade ministers of all 148 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The EU, they wrote,
All my life, till this month, I have felt more proud than I could say to be British. I felt there were special and irreducible things that we stood for and would, if necessary, fight for: freedom, decency, fairness, humanity, the rule of law. Of course there have been blots — the Amritsar massacre, Bloody
It is an unfortunate facet of modern life that many parents feel they cannot let their children play outside by themselves for fear of their meeting a similar fate to that which befell Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham on the evening of 4 August 2002. It is no less unfortunate that when Maxine
There is a substantial monograph to be written on the relationship between the Prime Minister and Margaret Thatcher. It began with abject, one-sided adoration. Colleagues recall Tony Blair, as a youngish MP, meeting Thatcher. They say it was embarrassing, the look of dog-like devotion he gave her. The second stage came when Tony Blair was
Romano Prodi conducts himself like a bolshie and narrow-minded innkeeper, who simply cannot be bothered to find room beneath his roof for the many people waiting outside who need shelter. The President of the European Commission announced last Sunday that the European Union will soon be full, and that there is no prospect of countries
Everyone knows that moment in the Bugs Bunny cartoons when the rabbit dashes over the cliff. For a few moments the creature remains aloft, suspended in space, little legs busily pumping away. Then he makes the mistake of looking down, realises the gravity of his predicament, and starts to plunge precipitously downwards. Tony Blair is
Putting The Spectator together in a week of postal difficulties is always an awkward task because we can never be quite sure when our subscribers are going to get to read the magazine. We can’t be certain that by the time it drops on to your doormat in Woking the government will not have fallen
‘With lip-quivering intensity,’ to use the words of Michael Howard, the Prime Minister ventured into the House of Commons on Tuesday to announce that he will, after all, allow a referendum on the proposed European Union constitution. Mr Blair has styled himself as the man with no reverse gear, added Mr Howard, but ‘today we
As Tony Blair mulled matters over last week at Government House, Bermuda, where he and his family spent Easter at a very reasonable £27 per night, the future must have looked ghastly. It was not just the prospect of this weekend’s meeting with President Bush, tricky though that undoubtedly is. The Bush visit was at
Margaret Thatcher is to blame for the abominable rudeness with which parents and children nowadays treat schoolteachers. So said Pat Lerew, president of one of the main teaching unions, earlier this week, and while it is preposterously unfair of her to hold Lady Thatcher personally responsible for the lack of respect in which teachers are
The longer they stay in power, the more prime ministers lose their political touch. This seems to be an unbreakable rule, and Tony Blair is emphatically not an exception. For most prime ministers, however, there is an important compensation. The longer they stay in Downing Street, the more accomplished they become at the art of
In ten months’ time, according to America’s timetable for the handover of power, Iraqis will be going to the polls. Men and women with large rosettes and wide grins will be walking the streets, kissing babies and expounding on their plans for schools and hospitals. Thereafter, the members for Baghdad South and Basra Central will
After the 2001 general election massacre, a consensus swiftly established itself in the Conservative party. William Hague had fought on the wrong issues. Instead of Europe and asylum, his chosen battlegrounds, he should have championed health and education. Hague’s mistake, so conventional wisdom held, doomed the Conservatives to be the rancid voice of the malcontents,
As day broke on 11 May 1941, Londoners could survey the devastation wrought by 100,000 incendiary bombs. Whole streets had been razed. More than 1,400 Londoners had been killed; many thousands more were lying terribly injured beneath the rubble. The difference between this and the killing of 200 railway passengers in Madrid three weeks ago
Spring has come late this year, punctuated by news of three horrible, doom-laden terrorist atrocities: the bombing of Shia worshippers in Iraq and Pakistan, the slaughter in Madrid, and the Israeli assassination of the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. In Westminster there is an air of grim expectation. People’s habits are starting to change. I
Over the next few weeks, Britons all over the country will be filing into town halls for a series of public meetings over the future of the EU. Others will be participating from their homes and offices via the Internet, before debate culminates in a vote on the question: should Europe have a constitution and
Could terrorism turn the British political landscape on its head, much as it has done in Spain? Government sources naturally give this scenario short shrift. They argue that Tony Blair faces no comparable electoral test here any time soon. They add that the war in Iraq, though never popular, has never been quite as universally
In a democracy, the sovereign people are entitled to sack the politicians who serve them. But this was a dangerous moment for the voters of Spain to exercise that right. They have not only dispensed with a successful government that had a sound economic record in favour of an opposition that never expected to win