Few issues have highlighted the more shameful qualities of the Blair government quite as starkly as hunting: its moral turpitude, instinctive mendacity, fundamental gutlessness, endless dithering, ugly populism and blind conformity to suburban prejudice. Labour MPs who favour a ban feel understandable resentment that after six years no Bill has reached the statute book. Tony
Dr Rowan Williams, who was this week ceremonially confirmed as Archbishop of Canterbury, becomes leader of a Church which is among the most mis-reported institutions in Britain. To judge from the press, one would think that the Church of England is obsessed by the issue of homosexuality, with women priests another vexatious issue, and has
The origins of government mishandling of the firefighters’ strike are to be found in the immediate aftermath of the general election in June last year, when Tony Blair failed to sack John Prescott. The Deputy Prime Minister had proved a strikingly incompetent transport secretary during the 1997-2001 Parliament. Commuters are suffering the consequences today. Prescott
Of the many personal mishaps to have afflicted ministers in the last Conservative government, few, ultimately, can have proved as damaging as the revelation that Norman Lamont had exceeded the credit limit on his Access card. No matter that most credit-card holders commit this oversight at some point, nor that the cheap cigarettes and fizz
If the Institute of Economic Affairs has a branch in the heavens, the surrounding clouds must be disturbed by a loud wailing sound emanating from the soul of Sir Keith Joseph. If any man had a reason to cry out about the unfairness of life, it is he. Pilloried in the early 1980s for daring
To watch Tony Blair at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on Monday night was to be reminded that nobody is better at delivering a certain kind of speech. The actual language is unremarkable, and so is the delivery, and so are the jokes. We do not feel ourselves to be in the presence of Demosthenes, or
Turkey has for centuries been a convenient European metaphor for all that is evil, but in truth there is very little that Turkey stands historically accused of which Europe has also not been guilty. Recently, however, M. Giscard d’Estaing – that great and principled defender of democracy, as the people of the Central African Republic
The manner in which Iain Duncan Smith turned and faced his tormentors on Tuesday was reminiscent of the bravery shown by Prang, a bull terrier kept by his father while serving in India with the RAF after the second world war. The Conservative leader recently related how his father saw Prang deal with the danger
Besides secret agents themselves, who face assassination should their identities become known, no man can have been more grateful for the existence of the Official Secrets Act than Ian Fleming. Had it been known back in the 1950s that MI5 and MI6 were inhabited not by suave womanisers but by dull paper-shufflers who go home
To turn this week to the Conservative party, rather than deal with matters of consequence. On Wednesday morning George Jones, political editor of the Daily Telegraph, reported a ‘sharp slump in morale’ in the Tory party at Westminster. He stated that plotters are taking soundings to discover whether they can secure the necessary 25 signatures
Of the many New Labour slogans which the government has tried quietly to drop over the past five years, none can have landed with quite such a thump as ‘ethical foreign policy’. The party elected in 1997, it may hazily be remembered, promised to put an end to the practice of making shady deals with
Tony Blair has been a lucky Prime Minister. Never in his first six years in office has he had to confront the co-ordinated industrial unrest which bedevilled Harold Wilson and destroyed Jim Callaghan. When he entered No. 10 in 1997, Blair found the unions in a state of cowed irrelevance: one of the many legacies
Any public-sector union contemplating a strike is best advised to start by targeting children’s bookshops. It is remarkable how groups of workers who first impinge on the consciousness through the pages of nursery books manage to command greater public affection and higher wage settlements than those who do not. Nurses and train-drivers have done particularly
The new season kicked off with an unwelcome pill for political reporters. As Parliament reassembled after its three months’ recess, lobby correspondents hiked across St James’s Park to the Foreign Press Association at 11 Carlton House Terrace. This fine Nash establishment, hard by the Turf Club, has been the disconcertingly grand London base for a
There has been much sniggering in the Western media over Tuesday’s referendum in Iraq on re-electing Saddam Hussein, since it is obvious that the only permissible answer was Yes. But how different are referendums in the European Union? On Saturday the Irish will be voting for the second time on the Nice Treaty, because when
The memoirs of Joe Haines, now being serialised by the Mail on Sunday, are certain to rank among the most revelatory and important of the 20th century. Joe Haines was Harold Wilson’s press secretary, but in truth – as with Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair – he was far more than that. Wilson told Haines
A coalition with Sinn Fein was never likely to be straightforward for more normal, democratic parties. Only someone culpably naive could have expected it to play by a set of rules that is not of its own making. Sinn Fein is a minority group dedicated to dissimulation, conspiracy and infiltration according to the true and
We are at our best, asserts the Prime Minister, when we are at our boldest. His dictum, however, does not extend to Labour conference delegates, whom he prefers when at their most supine. On Monday, a motion calling for a review of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) was carried by 67 per cent to 32 per
One of the most important political developments of the last ten years has been the abject failure of the Labour Left. Though never remarked upon, the absence of a strong and coherent left-wing voice has been of great moment. Ever since its birth, the Labour movement has been defined as much by a romantic tradition
‘I am in no doubt,’ said the Prime Minister in last Tuesday’s debate in the House of Commons, ‘that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein is serious and it is imminent.’ After reading the dossier on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction released in advance of that debate, most people will share his sentiment. The dossier