This week, the nation beholds Parliament with a collective contempt unrivalled in living memory. We need a modern-day Trollope to do justice to this wave of revulsion, triggered by the remarkable revelations in the Telegraph. Gilbert Burnet, the great ecclesiastical and political historian of his time, wrote of the corrupt MPs elected in 1710 that
At a moment of such alarming disconnection between the political class and the electorate, it is cheering to be reminded that not every part of our constitution is faltering, or at odds with the grain of public opinion. On Tuesday, the Prince of Wales addressed the Royal Institute of British Architects, 25 years after his
We did not need to be told to keep calm and carry on — that seems to be our instinctive, collective British reaction to crises. In the case of swine flu, as with bird flu, (or even Spanish flu) the public has reacted with commendable common sense. There has been no mass absenteeism from work, no
The Prime Minister’s epic catalogue of early summer mishaps, mistakes and misjudgments lengthens by the day: if he is not making a fool of himself on YouTube, he is misreading the mood of the Commons on MPs’ expenses, or posing in front of swastikas. But, as wretched as they are, these incidents pale into insignificance
‘In 1918, half a million Americans died. The projections are that this time, the virus will kill one million Americans.’ These were the words of the President’s chief health adviser, as he warned about the dangers of swine flu. But he wasn’t speaking this week. The year was 1976, the President was Ford, and the
Thirty years ago this Sunday, Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister with a Commons majority of 43. In the 11 years that followed, she took an economic basket case, the sick man of Europe, an offshore banana republic, and transformed it: inflation was curbed, penal tax ended, the unions tamed, and Britain’s confidence on the
On Budget Day, Alistair Darling achieved something rare among chancellors of the exchequer and unique among members of this Labour government. He actually made us feel sorry for him. By common consensus, he faced — with a stoical calm that has come to be admired even by his opponents — an almost impossible job. Markets
In his long preparations for next Wednesday’s Budget, Alistair Darling must have constantly asked himself: could the challenge possibly be more gruelling? The task facing the Chancellor was always going to be formidable: he cannot go on borrowing without limit, amassing undreamed-of fiscal deficits in order to maintain inflated levels of public spending. Indeed, the
The naming and shaming of MPs who are abusing the expenses system is becoming a Sunday ritual. Each week the papers carry a fresh set of revelations; each week public cynicism about our elected representatives becomes more deeply entrenched. This would be bad enough if the MPs involved in these scandals were merely time-serving backbenchers.
As Oscar Wilde quipped of Little Nell’s death, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh. On 24 November, Alistair Darling told the Commons: ‘I, too, am forecasting that output will continue to fall in the UK, for the first two quarters of [2009]. But then, because of decisions taken in
The Labour government has been spinning aggressively that British troops are withdrawing from Iraq because the job is done. Major General Andy Salmon, the British Commander, has even made the rather dubious claim that Basra is now safer than Manchester. It is true that the progress made in recent months has been remarkable: there have
We at The Spectator would like to say sorry to the Prime Minister. When he declared in October that the world needed a ‘new Bretton Woods’ — a reference to the 1944 conference that established the global financial system — we took him at his word. And when he swore that the G20 summit in
A series of selective leaks had suggested that the second edition of the country’s counter-terrorism strategy, released on Tuesday, would see a shift from trying to tackle violent extremism to tackling extremism per se. This would have been a welcome development. Counter-terrorism in Britain has been crippled by a strategic failure to match policy to
Jade Goody was propelled to a very strange form of modern stardom by the reality TV show Big Brother, and even learned of the cancer that finally claimed her life last weekend on the Indian version of that programme. The title of the show was Orwellian. But what the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four could never
A momentous shift occurred in British politics this week: the National Union of Students accepted the principle that graduates should contribute to the cost of their degrees. This U-turn is proof that the argument that graduates should pay for their tuition has at last been won, 11 years after the introduction of fees in 1998.
At The Spectator, we are anti-Marxist but pro-musical. So it is with mixed feelings that we learned that Chinese producers in Beijing are to turn Das Kapital into a stage show, complete with big dance numbers and catchy songs. The director, He Nian, told Wen Hui Bao newspaper that ‘the particular performance style we choose
For Sinn Fein, the terrorist atrocity on Saturday night that left two British soldiers dead came at the worst possible time and involved the worst possible category of victim. Up until 2007, it seemed possible that the party would soon be in government on both sides of the border. This would have allowed it to
If Prince Charles is guilty of anything in selling the ‘Duchy Herbals Detox Tincture’, now the subject of a hysterical scientific controversy, it is the sin of euphemism. The food supplement is marketed as a way to ‘eliminate toxins and aid digestion’. What this means, in the Queen’s English, is that it aspires to be
‘Nobody rings a bell at the bottom of the market,’ says an old adage in the investment world — and anyone who thought they had already heard a distant peal signalling the low point of the current financial crisis has been proved woefully mistaken this week. Some stock-market investors, for example, had begun to feel
The sight of massed ranks of public sector workers and Labour backbenchers furiously protesting against a threat of privatisation surely belongs to a past era. Today’s major political trend is in quite the opposite direction, towards nationalisation of banks, and interventions by government in industry to save jobs and avert financial catastrophe. It seems jarringly