Melanie Phillips makes three allegations about the UK Drug Policy Commission in her 22 May Spectator Blog, “Britain’s Drug Wars”. First is that we are a “bunch of self appointed busybodies of no status or authority whatsoever”. As a charity we may be self-appointed but a quick look at our web-site would have shown that our
On 19 February 2005 The Spectator’s cover bore the arresting headline: ‘Goodbye England’, and the sombre silhouette of a lone huntsman. The issue attracted much attention, capturing, as it did, the sense of something ancestral and precious being needlessly slaughtered, as hunting with hounds finally became a criminal act. This was a feeling that spread
Before the campaign for an English parliament has time to gather critical mass, its goal may already be achieved. The first vote David Cameron’s government holds on health will be a unique constitutional event: all Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish MPs will be banned from the voting lobbies. There is likely to be no fanfare,
A German economist visiting Britain was recently said to have declared himself baffled that a report about rising house prices was deemed to be good news. In Germany, he retorted, inflation in house prices, like inflation in food or energy prices, would be considered quite the opposite. By implication, there is an intellectually respectable case
Is David Cameron feeling his way to a winning political narrative? In a number of recent speeches he has begun to spell out a new debate about the size of the state. It is definitively post-Thatcherite. The battle lines are not the traditional ones of cutting public provision and leaving the private sector to fill
Now that Francis Maude is no longer lurking around Conservative headquarters dampening any high spirits he might encounter, bubbles of optimism are allowed to float with impunity around Team Cameron. For the last three weeks, the Tories have enjoyed double-digit opinion poll leads. The consensus in Westminster is that the Conservatives (or, more accurately, Boris
Yet again, New Labour’s predilection for spin and misleading statistics has landed the government in trouble. Ministers have long been fond of making the argument for immigration on the basis that it increases the country’s GDP. But as the House of Lords Economics Affairs Committee rightly points out in its new report, adding more people
The Spectator on the Government’s handling of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill To date, the government’s hand-ling of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has resembled what might be called ‘Vicky Pollard politics’. Challenged to grant MPs a free vote on these far-reaching and ethically contentious proposals, the Prime Minister’s officials sent hugely confusing signals: ‘Yeah but
Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Gordon Brown is right to concede the need for a full-scale inquiry into the war. He is wrong, however, to postpone the investigation on the grounds that it might ‘divert attention from supporting Iraq’s development as a secure and stable country’. There have already been four limited inquiries
How much better it might have been if Alistair Darling had heeded the advice of the director-general of the CBI, Richard Lambert, and kept his first budget speech to no more than six simple paragraphs. On a day that began with news that central banks around the world had just pumped £100 billion of emergency
It says much about Alistair Darling’s predicament that he used his first Budget to win back a title once used to insult him — being the most boring man in British politics. His office had promised there would be no false scents, no attempts to deceive, no ‘rabbits pulled out of the hat’. The magician
One of the most compelling arguments for the existence of the House of Lords is what political scientists, borrowing the language of biologists, call ‘redundancy’. We have two eyes and two kidneys in case one malfunctions. In the case of the repackaged EU Constitution — now called the Lisbon treaty — the House of Commons
It is a story that could have been scripted to boost morale in Conservative headquarters. At five o’clock one morning, security guards at 10 Downing Street were called in to intercept an intruder only to find the Prime Minister trying to enter his own office. Apart from the delicious image this conjures of Gordon Brown
The Spectator on why the Speaker is further besmirching the reputation of Parliament The Speakership of the House of Commons has been aptly described as ‘the linchpin of the whole chariot’. This is why the lamentable conduct of Michael Martin, who has occupied the Speaker’s Chair since 2000, is more than just another parliamentary ‘sleaze’
Lloyd Evans reports on the latest Spectator / Intelligence Squared debate Intelligence Squared squared up to intelligence last Tuesday. How do we get the best from our brightest youngsters while not chucking the dimwits on to the educational scrapheap? Chris Woodhead, former chief inspector of schools, proposed the motion, ‘All schools, state as well as private,
There are few feuds as destructive as the squabble over a legacy. In Bleak House, the case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce provides Charles Dickens with one of fiction’s most debilitating contests — a battle over an inheritance which blights all those involved. But Westminster is still, nevertheless, absorbed by the struggle to lay claim to
History may not judge the Northern Rock fiasco to be Labour’s Black Wednesday. Instead, the banking saga might yet become to Gordon Brown what ‘sleaze’ was to John Major. The potential symmetry is one of form, not content (there is no hint of personal corruption in the saga of the collapsed bank). Just as ‘sleaze’
He is the longest serving of our major party leaders. He could be Prime Minister next year. He has had publicity that many a politician would kill for. Yet how many voters can answer a simple question — what does David Cameron really think? That is what I have been trying to do for a
If there is a posture that will be indelibly associated with the Chancellorship of Alistair Darling — brief though it may turn out to be — it is that of a man forced into retreat under a hail of ridicule. Last month he backed away from ill-thought-out proposals to reform capital gains tax in the
If a museum were built to honour the ancestral political class, it would not look much different from the House of Commons. Its corridors are lined with portraits of the political greats and its staircases are adorned with old Vanity Fair caricatures. ‘Honourable members’ are still treated as if they were just that, with the
