My long-standing theory of British general election results is that they are all deserved. This is true not just of big victories e.g. Labour in 1945 and 1997, the Conservatives in 1979 and 2019, but also of no-score draws, such as the two elections of 1974. In our system (though first-past-the-past sometimes exaggerates) the voters
‘We must never hide anything,’ declared the director of the British Museum, Hartwig Fischer, three years ago, when criticised for disrespecting its greatest founding genius, Sir Hans Sloane, because, through marriage, he had profited from slave labour. Sloane’s Rysbrack bust was now to be presented, he said, ‘in the exploitative context of the British Empire’.
As is now well-known, Ulez (the ultra-low emission zone) will expand from 29 August, taking in suburban parts of Kent, Surrey, Essex, Herts. This fact gave Richard Lofthouse, an editor and motoring journalist, an idea. He has done much to help car4Ukraine.com, a volunteer group within Ukraine which seeks gifts of 4×4 pickups abroad and repurposes
Sir Keir Starmer’s piece in the Times on Monday was presumably constructed round the front-page headline Labour wanted – ‘Just Stop Oil tactics are contemptible, says Starmer’. Behind the headline, and therefore unnoticed, was his argument that the Tories are wrong to allow new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, and Labour
For the last time, on Saturday, I stuck the head of the late Queen, without a barcode, on an envelope and posted it. I have kept the two remaining stamps of my sheet as souvenirs. Stamps survive, of course, under the new King, but they are gradually becoming like cash – marginal and out of date.
We now have a reluctant apology from Dame Alison Rose, followed by her even more reluctant resignation. Her departure is a major achievement, but the reluctance is a symptom of the problem. How could she possibly have thought she could stay after she was caught breaking a client’s confidentiality and spreading untruths about him (untruths
Jane Portal, as she was when she worked for Winston Churchill, died last week, aged 93. Lady Williams of Elvel, as she much later became, had an extraordinary life. I encountered her story by chance. In 2015, near us in Sussex, I was told that ‘of course’ (people love saying that when telling you a
The story of the famous BBC television presenter who, at the time of writing, has still not been named, has all the elements of 21st-century-media madness – something allegedly sexual which may or not involve a person too young for such things; a desperate hue and cry to see who will dare to name the
Now that the cost of net zero has become a pressing political matter, I have been re-reading the prescient words of Matt Ridley in the House of Lords when, in 2019, he was one of very few who opposed the government’s ‘net zero by 2050’ pledge. ‘I was genuinely shocked,’ he said, ‘by the casual
When Boris Johnson’s resignation from parliament was announced, we were in the audience for Glyndebourne’s production of Don Giovanni. Controversially, this includes a vast cake which is part of the bacchanals and then reappears, in rotting form, as the statue of the Commendatore approaches to take the antihero to his eternal damnation. Don Giovanni sprawls
When I first heard that the Russians had blown up the Kakhovka dam, I assumed that this was an effective tactic to frustrate the Ukrainian counteroffensive. It will surely slow it. But a Ukrainian friend raises an additional possibility – that these are the scorched-earth tactics the Germans used in much the same places 80
Last week, I visited Ukraine – Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kramatorsk. Impressions crowded in. Here are a few: When the Russians attacked Kharkiv last year, they strafed a Holocaust memorial on the way into town. It is particularly poignant to see the monument’s large seven-branch candlestick reduced to five branches. Across the road is Kharkiv’s vast
The police have said sorry for arresting anti-monarchy protestors under the wrong legal rubric on Coronation Day, but is that really a lead news story, as it was on Tuesday’s Today programme? If the police had failed to contain the mini-mob and a couple of them had, as they intended, obstructed the processional route, there
Perhaps we have not focused enough on the fact that we are crowning a king, rather than a queen, as monarch. It is nearly 90 years since this last happened, so no one alive today has an adult memory of what was expected. There is a further difficulty, in that the coronation of Charles III occurs
On 25 October last year, Thérèse Coffey became Defra Secretary. On 2 November, Sir James Dyson wrote to her. The famed inventor, who is the biggest owner and active farmer of agricultural land in Britain, outlined the problems of producing food sustainably and profitably, inviting her to visit one of his farms and meet him.
Although it cannot be stated publicly, Labour and the Conservatives have much common cause in Scotland now. They won’t stand down in each other’s favour at the next election; but expect ‘paper’ candidates in constituencies where one is much stronger than the other and the Nationalist is vulnerable. Wavering SNP supporters can be divided into
To celebrate this week’s 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the European Movement has launched a ‘powerful intergenerational film’ which, it says, ‘exposes Brexit as the biggest threat to peace since the 1994 ceasefire’. The film contains ‘true stories of how… Europe’s mission, commitment and hope for a peaceful future transformed Northern Ireland, changed
Easter Monday marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. One of the most interesting things ever written by its most famous architect, Tony Blair, appeared (in the Sunday Telegraph) at Easter 1996, two years earlier. The piece, largely devoid of his vague boosterism, suggested he had thought about his subject. Under the title,
When you read the Guardian free online, a yellow notice appears asking you for money (‘Will you invest in the Guardian?’) to support its fearless journalism. But now arises a donor’s dilemma. After two years’ work, the paper has just produced a full report on and apology from its current owner for its founders’ involvement
Obviously it is not the fault of Ofsted that a headteacher, Ruth Perry, killed herself after her school, formerly rated ‘outstanding’, was downgraded to ‘inadequate’ by its inspectors. Suicide is, by definition, the decision of the person committing it. It is also true that second-rate schools and teaching unions detest inspections precisely because they keep
