Boris johnson

Thursday

Chris Mullin

Blonde with a bombshell: Sasha Swire’s revelations about the Cameroons

Ten years ago, reviewing Alastair Campbell’s diaries for The Spectator, I concluded as follows: Who will be the chroniclers of the Cameron government? Somewhere, unknown to his or her colleagues, a secret scribbler will already be at work, documenting the rise and, in due course, no doubt, the fall of this administration. Well, here it is. It comes from an unpredictable source deep inside that privileged little caste who governed us between 2010 and 2016: Sasha Swire, wife of Hugo, a middle-ranking minister MP for a safe seat in rural Devon and a man who, for all that he was a low-key figure, has a very sharp wit and is

Richard Dobbs

Boris’s Dunkirk moment

It’s hard to deny that Boris Johnson’s government has so far had a ‘bad war’ against the pandemic. Our death toll is high compared with other countries and our economy is in worse shape. We face rising cases, increased hospital admissions and more restrictions. It’s all so bleak; yet that is why now is precisely the moment for Boris to imitate his great hero, Winston Churchill. In the coming months, Britain can play as pivotal a role in a global victory against the virus as we did in the second world war. The war analogies only go so far, of course. We are fighting a virus, not an evil ideology.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Time for me to be more assertive

In the light of recent articles in The Spectator, I think it is vital I should point out here and now that I thought Boris Johnson was crap long before Toby Young and our editor, Fraser Nelson, did. I remember suggesting more than a year ago that the entire Johnson clan was a bit thick and borne aloft simply by depthless ambition and droit de seigneur. I felt a bit bad about it because Boris was a former boss of mine here and also a kind of mate. But you have to be ruthless in this job, get in quick with your bludgeon, even if it’s your own granny on

Thursday

Christopher Meyer

The Special Relationship was never very special

I have a book of essays from 1986 by a group of British and American scholars called The Special Relationship. The editor, Professor Roger Louis, was advised to give it another title. The director of Chatham House, the late David Watt no less, called it ‘rhetorical nonsense’. Yet, as Louis noted: The ‘Special Relationship’ would not go away. Indeed it haunted the discussions. Eventually it was referred to as the ghost, ever present yet elusive, derided by some but acknowledged by all. Thirty-four years later the ghost is still floating around. Ian Buruma’s new book is the latest attempt to exorcise it. I suspect that it will be no more

Toby Young Toby Young

I admit it: I was wrong to back Boris

A friend emailed me earlier this week in despair about the Prime Minister. ‘Boris reminds me of a hereditary king — Edward II or Henry VI — who is so staggeringly incompetent that he must be removed before doing too much damage,’ he wrote. ‘I felt the same way about May but Boris is worse.’ He is not the only person feeling like this. It pains me to say it, but I too have given up on Boris. The final straw was hearing him talk about his plans to create an army of ‘Covid marshals’ last week — Britain’s very own, curtain-twitching version of the Stasi. What on earth happened

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Joe Biden weighs in on the Brexit stand-off

Today has not been a good day for the government. The government’s decision last week to be so explicit that the Northern Ireland clauses of its Internal Market Bill would break international law in a ‘specific and limited way’ has caused all sorts of problems. First, it created a Tory backbench rebellion on the issue. A chunk of Tory MPs felt that the government’s position meant that they just could not support the legislation as proposed. The government has today pacified this rebellion by agreeing to table an amendment ensuring that the Commons would get a vote before these clauses are used. It is not a massive climbdown — the

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

In praise of Boris Johnson’s justice shake-up

It ought to be a good day at the office (at last!) for Robert Buckland, the Secretary of State who has outraged the legal profession. He spent most of last weekend on the media rack defending the government’s position that it might break international law to defy an agreement with the EU that it had negotiated.  Today is much more straightforward. His ‘get tough’ sentencing white paper contains a myriad of proposals that will resonate with ordinary people baffled by a justice system ever more remote from the idea of public protection and punishment, lost in abstractions, passing sentences that bear little relationship to the gravity of the crime. So while

Monday

Gavin Mortimer

Is Britain a nation in fear of safetyism?

It should come as no surprise that Britain’s city centres remain, in the words of CBI chief Carolyn Fairbairn, ‘ghost towns’, and nor is it a shock to hear a civil service union boss shoot down Boris Johnson’s plea for public sector workers to head back to the office. Safety first, said the union man, echoing the caution of his teaching counterparts. As Trevor Kavanagh wrote in the Sun last week, Britain is ‘a scaredy-cat nation of masked hypochondriacs who won’t leave home for fear of dropping dead’. A poll last month bore this out, revealing that while two thirds of workers in France, Spain and Italy were back at

Sunday

Bruce Anderson

Can Simon Case restore stability to the heart of government?

Boris Johnson does not get everything wrong. The appointment of Simon Case to be head of the civil service at such a young age is bold and imaginative. Those who have observed his performance in senior roles all seem to regard him highly. But there could be two problems, both related to his youth: he has never run a large organisation and he has never really experienced failure. By the time that most officials and politicians reach his level of seniority, they usually know what is meant by ‘after such knowledge, what forgiveness.’ They are aware that what goes up can also come down; that an idea which, on the

Thursday

Andrew Sullivan

My run-in with the New York Times

It’s never a good sign when you’re watching a scene of street terror in yet another gut-churning YouTube video and you find yourself thinking: ‘Hang on a minute, that’s around the corner from my apartment!’ But there’s a now infamous video from last week where a mob of enraged millennials with their fists pumped in the air surrounded a lone young woman sitting outside a Washington restaurant where I often eat. Like a scene from the Cultural Revolution, the crowd demanded she shout certain slogans and raise her clenched fist in solidarity — or be damned as a racist. Most of her fellow diners took the path of least resistance.

The Spectator

Boris Johnson’s non-existent get back to work campaign

This week was built up by the Prime Minister to be the moment that would mark the return of economic and social life to robust health. But there was no real attempt by his government to urge people to go back to the office. Even Number 10 has admitted there never was a back to work campaign. In London, the number of Tube journeys made at the beginning of the week — as good an indicator of economic vitality as any — was still far below last year’s levels. In spite of repeated assurances that returning to school is safe and necessary for children’s health, a YouGov poll suggested that nearly one in

James Forsyth James Forsyth

To save the Union, negotiate Scotland’s independence

The first cabinet meeting of the new term and Boris Johnson’s summer holiday were both dominated by one concern: how to turn the tide on Scottish nationalism. Johnson’s foray into the Highlands was intended to demonstrate his own personal commitment to the Union; it also allowed him to find out for himself how awful mobile phone coverage is in much of rural Scotland. The cabinet on Tuesday discussed how to stop the Scottish National party turning the legislation that will underpin the UK’s post-Brexit internal market into their latest argument for independence. The Prime Minister is confident about his chances of knocking back the Nationalists. The decision of the Scottish

Toby Young Toby Young

The best leader we never had

I spent Monday afternoon with The Wake Up Call, a new book by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge that lambasts the West for its grotesque mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis. Despite an upbeat chapter towards the end, in which they dust off the standard menu of reforms, it makes depressing reading. They contrast the cack-handed response of the authorities in countries like America, Britain and Italy with those of China, Singapore and South Korea and conclude that, absent a political miracle, the world will soon resemble the 17th century again, with Europe beset by war and corruption and Asia in the ascendant. There’s a good deal in the book to

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Boris’s PMQs performance was the perfect birthday present for Keir Starmer

It was woeful. It was ugly to behold. It was beyond gruesome. Even Boris’s most faithful supporters had to watch PMQs from behind the sofa. Sir Keir Starmer, who turns 58 today, got a fabulous birthday present – a stunningly inept performance from the Prime Minister. Sir Keir demanded a ‘straight answer to a straight question’: when did Boris know ‘there was a problem’ with the algorithm used to decide A-level grades? ‘May I congratulate him on his birthday,’ said Boris – making it clear he hadn’t the foggiest what to say. The Prime Minister then started firing off random phrases in the hope that a coherent sentence might accidentally

Tuesday

Katy Balls

Boris’s U-turn defence

Is Boris Johnson’s government jumping from one crisis to the next or is No. 10’s agenda progressing roughly as planned? It depends who you ask. After a difficult few weeks, there are plenty of Tory MPs who believe it’s the former. Many of whom don’t even feel the need to keep their grievances anonymous.  Charles Walker MP recently used an interview to complain that it was becoming ‘increasingly difficult’ for Tory MPs to defend government policy: ‘too often it looks like this government licks its finger and sticks it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing’. His colleague Bernard Jenkin MP made a similar observation – saying a pattern appears to

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: BBC drops songs, museum drops Sloane, and KFC and John Lewis drop slogans

Home Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, made pupils wear face-coverings in school corridors. It didn’t take long for the UK government to follow suit in England, for secondary pupils in areas of high transmission. The chief medical officers of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales said that the fatality rate for those aged five to 14 infected with coronavirus was 14 per million, lower than for most seasonal flu infections. Sally Collier resigned as chief regulator of Ofqual, which had been caught up in the chaotic assessment of A-level and GCSE candidates. It was ‘vitally important’ for children to go back to school, said Boris Johnson, the Prime

Thursday

Lloyd Evans

How No. 10 outsmarted Alastair Campbell

LBC broadcaster Iain Dale has moved his Edinburgh Festival ‘All Talk’ series to Zoom, and yesterday he spoke to Alastair Campbell – the two clashed from the start. The former spin-doctor was seated in a strange, beige-tinted room which looked like a sauna. Dale asked where Campbell was, doubtless knowing that he likes to spend the summer holidays in the south of France. I’m enjoying the last few months of the UK being part of [what is] probably the greatest peace-keeping institution on the planet. Dale facetiously responded to Campbell, ‘Oh. You’re in Nato’. Asking about his support for the People’s Vote campaign and attempts to thwart Brexit, Campbell said

Steerpike Steerpike

Justin Trudeau’s prorogation memory loss

A prime minister better known for his charisma than his policy achievements proroguing parliament to ride out a political storm. Sound familiar? No, it is not Boris Johnson, but the quintessential liberal heartthrob Justin Trudeau. Trudeau’s party promised not to use prorogation to ‘avoid difficult political circumstances’ When Johnson suspended parliament a year ago, Nicola Sturgeon immediately branded him a ‘tin-pot dictator’. Mr Steerpike will wait with bated breath for a similar SNP comment on the Canadian PM. Trudeau’s decision to prorogue parliament amid concerns over his conduct has sparked much controversy, and means that the hearings into the issue by the Canadian parliament’s ethics committees will not be able to resume until 23

Thursday

Alex Massie

Here’s Nicola: can Boris Johnson stop Scottish independence?

Boris Johnson is far from being the first prime minister to holiday in Scotland. David Cameron used to slip off the radar at his father-in-law’s estate on the Isle of Jura, and plenty of other Conservative premiers have enjoyed a Scottish August on the grouse moor. But Johnson may be the first to holiday north of the Tweed as a matter of political calculation and convenience. He comes to Scotland to show his commitment to what he calls the ‘magic’ of the Union. About time too. At last — at long last, Scottish Unionists might say — the cabinet has recognised it has a problem in North Britain. Indeed, the

Thursday

The Spectator

Economies run on confidence – the government mustn’t undermine it

Throughout the past few months the government has appeared to face an unenviable choice between saving lives and saving livelihoods. Nevertheless, a fortnight ago the path seemed clear. The numbers of Covid infections were falling, but the economic news was dire — hence Boris Johnson was engaged in a drive to reopen the economy as quickly as he could without prompting objections from his scientific advisers. Now things feel rather different. Economic figures from recent days have surprised on the upside: the CBI’s figures for retail sales in July show a sharp V-shaped recovery. Sales of cars and houses were running ahead of last year — during July at least.