More from The Week

Politics | 30 August 2008

Denver, Colorado Just as high street stores send spies to the Paris fashion shows in order to copy all the latest designs, so British political parties send agents to American conventions in search of ideas and inspiration. Several Brits were skulking around the Democratic National Convention in Denver this week, carefully noting the new soundbites

Taxing questions

Demoralised Labour backbenchers, watching helplessly as their government disintegrates and the prospect of electoral humiliation looms, have at last found a cause to which they can rally: higher taxes on the ‘super-rich’, both private and corporate. In the first of those categories, the target is anyone with an annual income of £250,000 or more. In

The Benetton candidate

When R.A. Butler, quoting Bismarck, described politics as the ‘art of the possible’, he was spelling out the pragmatist’s creed. Yet, if nothing else, Barack Obama’s rise to become the Democrats’ candidate for the White House shows that ‘the possible’ can still be extraordinary. Only four years ago, Obama was a mere state senator in

Politics | 20 August 2008

It is dangerous, almost reckless, for a British Prime Minister to leave the country while in a jam at home. Had Margaret Thatcher not gone to Paris during the Tory leadership contest of 1990, she would probably have found the two extra MPs she needed to survive. Had Callaghan not jetted off for a Caribbean

Clear and present danger

Russia’s actions in the past week should not have taken anyone by surprise. The fact that they did illustrates just how gravely in denial the free world now is about the threats that it faces. Before 9/11, all too few people could imagine a terrorist attack on a Western city killing thousands — even though

Simon Carter

Matthew d’Ancona on the late Spectator quiz compiler, Simon Carter I still get letters about the Impossible Quiz which Simon Carter set for our Christmas special issue. An infernally complex blend of merciless logic, M.C. Escher’s art, and very tough questions, the Thirty-Nine Steps quiz that Simon compiled and adjudicated was, in its way, a

Politics | 13 August 2008

Irwin Stelzer reviews the week in politics  There are several ways one might look at Gordon Brown’s leaked plan to send £150 to each of the seven-plus million families receiving child benefit. The first, and kindest, is as an attempt to ease the coming winter’s budget strain on what Sir Brian Bender, permanent secretary at the

China in our hands

For many people, watching the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics will be like trying to enjoy a party above the din of police cars taking away uninvited guests. However much you turn up the music, you can still hear the sirens: the oppressed of Tibet and other rebellious provinces, the silenced dissidents, the Western

Leader of the lemmings

So madly introspective and self-obsessed has Labour become that it seems almost impolite to intrude upon its private agonies. Yet since the party is still notionally governing the nation it is our duty to knock on the door, and ask what all the tears and shouting are about. The conduct of the government since the

Must Try Harder

The wonder of the National Curriculum Tests marking scandal is that it has taken a decade for the inadequacies of the school exam system to become widely known. As Liz Brocklehurst, a former exam marker, reveals in this issue (see page 21), the exam system has been in crisis since being politicised in David Blunkett’s

Politics | 26 July 2008

The political year ends with a sequel. Labour leaders, trade unionists and party members gather at Warwick university for what is billed as Warwick Two. The original version took place at the same location shortly before the last election. Like many sequels the outlines of the narrative for Warwick Two are precisely the same as

Global Warning | 19 July 2008

These things are sent to try us: I’m speaking now of circular letters from the General Medical Council. I recently received a second such letter about the Council’s Ethnicity Census from the president of the Council: Toward the end of 2007, I wrote asking for your help with an important project designed to help us

The mugger’s accomplice

‘Inflation,’ Ronald Reagan declared, ‘is as violent as a mugger.’ In response, the world pursued zero-tolerance policies for two decades, to the point at which politicians and central bankers began to believe they had actually eradicated the menace. When Gordon Brown used to boast that there would be ‘no more boom and bust’, he was

The Glasgow Doctrine

In an unexpected plot twist, David Cameron and Gordon Brown are fighting over a woman: not, we hasten to add, as suitors, but as public moralists. The Prime Minister has long been a fan of Gertrude Himmelfarb, the American intellectual best known for her studies of the Victorian era. Now, Mr Cameron has paid homage

The Spectator/IQ2 debate

Motion: Prince Charles was right: modern architecture is still all glass stumps and carbuncles. New rules at Intelligence Squared. For the debate on architecture the speakers were offered the use of a slide projector. Opening for the motion Roger Scruton described modern architecture as ‘a grammarless chaos’ in which buildings ‘aren’t made for the city

The NHS needs its Reformation

The government has promised that from next year everyone aged between 40 and 75 will be offered an ‘MOT’ of their health. The patient most in need of a health check, however, was 60 this week: the NHS itself. To a limited extent the government has recognised the inadequacies of what for its first three