Political reporters always overstate the power of personality in politics. Meanwhile, we understate or entirely overlook other factors. We are gripped by surface phenomena and captivated by the gaudy and the transient. The causes we ascribe to great events are hopelessly short-term, inadequate and trivial. We attribute something like mystic powers to the ability of
Millions of people are yearning for the Tory party to get its act together and provide a more audible opposition. It almost brings tears to the eyes of some supporters, therefore, to read that the party is determined to have a row about the square root of nothing. It is reported, perhaps unreliably, that there
Blackpool For the last 20 years the annual TUC conference has occupied a subsidiary role in the political season. During 18 years of Tory government, the unions carried no weight. Their autumnal seaside rumblings could be ignored with a clear conscience. Nor did they relinquish this peripheral role when Tony Blair first came to power
Children, to judge by school exam results, just keep on getting cleverer. But in the inexorable rise of official literary and numeracy levels, there is sure to be a little blip: among those who began school in the autumn of 2002. When, in a dozen or so years’ time, prospective employers are shaking their heads
The greatest part of the Blair premiership has been notable for its sideways, crablike movements. Even on the occasions when the Prime Minister has been clear in his own mind about his destination, he has been opaque with the public at large and even with colleagues. There is an embedded belief in No. 10 that
This being the first anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, I feel that prudence requires anyone writing a Diary in The Spectator – which has become the principal launching-pad for Mark Steyn’s state-of-the-art verbal missiles – to use the main part of his diary to commemorate this event. So let me start
Saddam Hussein is a dangerous and evil man, and the world would be a better and safer place if he were removed from power. A killer from early adolescence, he is brutal and psychopathic even by the high standards of inhumanity prevailing in his region. His constant and unremitting search for weapons of mass destruction
Pessimism among Conservative candidates, extending to anguished doubt about their deficiencies as public speakers and their general ability to stay the course, is nothing new. As Chips Channon asked himself in his diary for 20 February 1934: Am I wise to embrace a Parliamentary career – can I face the continued strain? James Willoughby told
When it comes to doing his bit to save the planet, no one has a right to feel more smug this week than President Bush. No amount of power showers will lift his personal carbon consumption to the level of the 105 world leaders who, unlike him, will be blazing trails of noxious pollution through
Few phrases in modern political history have done more damage than Margaret Thatcher’s notorious remark that ‘there is no such thing as society’. It was made to the magazine Woman’s Own in 1987, when Thatcher was at the height of her power. It has been used against her ever since. The former prime minister’s political
Hard cases make bad law, and cases do not come much harder than that of the two young girls recently abducted and murdered. The temptation must be considerable for the government to respond by doing something rather than nothing, to demonstrate that it is responsive to the will of the people and that it marches