David cameron

Wednesday

Brendan O’Neill

No, Britain doesn’t need to pay reparations for the slave trade

A Jamaican official has called on David Cameron to ‘personally atone’ for the slave trade, and especially for his ancestors’ involvement in it. I hope Cameron tells this guy to do one. The PM has nothing to apologise for, far less self-flagellate for. He bears no more guilt for the slave trade than Justin Bieber does, or Mother Teresa, or Barack Obama, or any of the other millions of people born years after the slave trade ended. The pressure on Cam to weep publicly over the sins of his forefathers, to atone for a wrong he did not commit, is an ugly, medieval spectacle. Cameron’s trip to Jamaica is being

Ed West Ed West

Never trust an internet meme (apart from this one)

There has recently been a craze for people posting pictures of a Syrian refugee next to a snap of the same guy dressed in Isis uniform two years back, showing that they are on their way to destroy us. It was nonsense, inevitably. But then they always are. The same goes for the photos of overcrowded migrant boats doing the rounds, which are actually of an Albanian ship from 1991 (an interesting story in itself, told here).   As a rule never trust a meme, especially one that makes some profound point, because it’s almost certainly untrue. Among the most popular is an image of a matador sitting down next

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs like Jeremy Corbyn’s PMQs style

Jeremy Corbyn knows he has a lot to prove at his party’s conference, which starts on Sunday. The highlight of his leadership so far has been his new tone at PMQs, which did catch attention, even if the questions he asked rather turned the session into an opportunity for David Cameron to look Prime Ministerial. The Labour leader knows he needs to make changes from that first attempt (his first ever stint at the dispatch box), but he’s not the only one mulling how to manage the session. A number of Tory MPs have told me that they have received a good load of letters and emails since that PMQs

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 24 September 2015

Home In a speech at the Shanghai stock exchange, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a feasibility study into the trading of Chinese and British shares in both countries. At least half of all British banknotes in circulation are held overseas or used in the black market, a Bank of England report suggested. The political impasse in Northern Ireland continued. Sir David Willcocks, the director of choirs, died, aged 95. Brian Sewell, the art critic, died aged 84. Jackie Collins, the author of titillating blockbusters, died aged 77. An outbreak of highly drug-resistant gonorrhoea was detected in the north of England, from Oldham to Scunthorpe. Lord Ashcroft, who

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Exclusive: Steve Hilton jetting in to help with Cameron’s conference speech

Steve Hilton is, I understand, returning to help with David Cameron’s conference speech. Cameron’s one time political guru is now based in California, where he has launched the US political fundraising website Crowdpac. But he has made a point of returning each year to work on Cameron’s conference speech before heading back to the US. The decision to invite him to help out this year is particularly interesting given his view that Jeremy Corbyn is being underestimated. Hilton tweeted a few days ago that ‘cynical, pompous Westminster bubble trashes #Corbyn first week because he can’t play their game. not a pretty sight’. In response to Corbyn winning the Labour leadership,

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the great British kowtow and do all right wingers have bad music taste

Britain’s policy towards China appears to be quite simple: doing exactly what China wants. On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Jonathan Mirsky and Fraser Nelson discuss this week’s Spectator cover feature on George Osborne’s visit to China and our interview with the Dalai Lama. Why is the Chancellor so keen to please the Chinese government? Is David Cameron wrong to say he will never meet with the Dalai Lama again? And what does the Dalai Lama think of the Prime Minister’s position? Rod Liddle and James Delingpole also debate whether they have bad music tastes, following revelation that Delingpole enjoyed listening to Supertramp with the Prime Minister at university. Do

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The great British kowtow

Any British Prime Minister who meets the Dalai Lama knows it will upset the Chinese government — but for decades, no British Prime Minister has much cared. John Major met him in 10 Downing Street, as did Tony Blair. These were small but important nods to Britain’s longstanding status as a friend of Tibet. Of course the Chinese Communist Party disliked seeing the exiled Buddhist leader welcomed in London — but that was their problem. How things have changed. Now China is far richer and Britain is anxious, sometimes embarrassingly so, to have a slice of that new wealth. From the start of his premiership, David Cameron has been explicit

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

I knew it! All these toffs have depraved tastes

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreatbritishkowtow/media.mp3″ title=”Rod Liddle and James Delingpole debate if all right wing people have bad music tastes” startat=700] Listen [/audioplayer]A friend of mine once watched Jeremy Corbyn try to rape an owl. This was the early to mid-1980s. The Labour leader used to come round to my squat in Leytonstone and we’d sit cross–legged on the floor, sniffing glue from a large plastic bag, and listen to Camper Van Beethoven’s ‘Take The Skinheads Bowling’. Jeremy was on the periphery of our little clique and we were suspicious of him because he was posh. Sometimes, when we were passing the glue bag around, we’d miss him out from sheer spite. Eventually

James Delingpole James Delingpole

The truth about me, Dave and the drugs

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreatbritishkowtow/media.mp3″ title=”Rod Liddle and James Delingpole debate if all right wing people have bad music tastes” startat=700] Listen [/audioplayer]This week I woke up shocked to find myself on the front page of the Daily Mail. Apparently I’m the first person in history to have gone on the record about taking drugs with a British prime minister. But it’s really no big deal is it? Had I thought so, I’d never have spilled the beans. In fact, I think it’s one of those perfect non-scandal scandals in which all parties benefit. Dave acquires an extra bit of hinterland and is revealed to have been a normal young man. I get

Aidan Hartley

Pigs, pranks, but no Dave

I attended the Piers Gaveston Society in the mid-1980s, when I was at Oxford in the year above David Cameron. The parties were debauched and tremendous fun. But Dave was not there. The most remarkable figure at the heart of the Gaveston was Gottfried von-Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor’s great-great-grandson who, after his untimely death at just 44 in 2007, was said by the Telegraph to have led an ‘exotic life of gilded aimlessness’. The paper’s beautifully written obituary almost paid tribute to this ‘louche German aristocrat with a multifaceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies…’ I did not

Wednesday

Steerpike

Charlotte Church takes #piggate to Tory conference

With yet more allegations concerning David Cameron published today as part of the Daily Mail‘s serialisation of Lord Ashcroft’s Call Me Dave, the Prime Minister will be hoping that ‘piggate‘ will soon be all but a distant memory to most. Alas, while the press feast on fresh revelations that Cameron once allegedly said that he was born with not one, but two silver spoons in his mouth, next month’s Tory conference is expected to put pig firmly back on the news agenda. Anti-Tory activists are planning to wear pig masks as they protest outside the conference. Organisers at the People’s Assembly Against Austerity have even shared a link with protesters which

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Exclusive: the Dalai Lama lambasts David Cameron’s China policy

The Dalai Lama was in London on Monday and met his old friend (and Spectator contributor) Jonathan Mirsky. Time was when he could expect to see the British Prime Minister too – but Beijing was furious that David Cameron met him three years ago and outrageously demanded that the Prime Minister apologise for it. Cameron did what Beijing wanted. He said in public that he had ‘no plans’ to meet the Dalai Lama again. Such was his hunger for Chinese deals, which has been on full inglorious display in George Osborne’s giant kowtow in China this week. Jonathan has known the Dalai Lama for 35 years, and asked him what

Aidan Hartley

The Piers Gaveston society was far too libertarian for David Cameron

I attended the Piers Gaveston Society in the mid-1980s, when I was at Oxford in the year above David Cameron. The parties were debauched and tremendous fun. But Dave was not there. The most remarkable figure at the heart of the Gaveston was Gottfried von-Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor’s great-great-grandson who, after his untimely death at just 44 in 2007, was said by the Telegraph to have led an ‘exotic life of gilded aimlessness’. The paper’s beautifully written obituary almost paid tribute to this ‘louche German aristocrat with a multifaceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies…’ I did not ever know

Tuesday

Steerpike

David Cameron injects extra venom into his feud with Lord Ashcroft

While Number 10 has refused to comment on the claims made in Lord Ashcroft’s David Cameron biography, the Prime Minister did manage to make a small reference to the book at a dinner last night at the Carlton Club. James Landale, the BBC’s deputy political editor, says that Cameron appeared to acknowledge his old foe Ashcroft’s book — which includes accusations of drug taking and intimate relations with a dead pig — during a speech at a Conservative fundraising dinner at the London club: ‘He told the 300 guests that he had had to go to hospital earlier in the day for a bad back, the result of some over-energetic wood chopping in

Steerpike Steerpike

Emily Thornberry risks another Twitter gaffe with pig jibe

Emily Thornberry has only just made it back onto the frontbench after she had to resign from the shadow cabinet over a tweet she sent of a photo of a house covered with St George flags during the Rochester and Strood by-election. However, despite discovering the dangers of Twitter first hand, the Labour MP has not been put off using it to share her more risqué thoughts. Following yesterday’s #piggate scandal involving David Cameron, Thornberry has tweeted a photo of some curiously titled cured meat, along with a pig emoticon: With many users on Twitter taking it to be a dig at the Prime Minister over the unconfirmed claim he once

James Delingpole James Delingpole

The truth about me, David Cameron, drugs and Supertramp

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreatbritishkowtow/media.mp3″ title=”Rod Liddle and James Delingpole debate if all right wing people have bad music tastes” startat=700] Listen [/audioplayer]This week I woke up shocked to find myself on the front page of the Daily Mail. Apparently I’m the first person in history to have gone on the record about taking drugs with a British prime minister. But it’s really no big deal is it? Had I thought so, I’d never have spilled the beans. In fact, I think it’s one of those perfect non-scandal scandals in which all parties benefit. Dave acquires an extra bit of hinterland and is revealed to have been a normal young man. I get

Monday

Douglas Murray

The shocking truth about the Piers Gaveston society? It’s incredibly dull

Regarding the pig’s ear of a story currently circulating thanks to Lord Ashcroft’s vendetta against David Cameron, perhaps I could add a codicil. As many readers will know, the allegation is that at a Piers Gaveston event attended by David Cameron while a student at Oxford, our present Prime Minister went through an initiation ritual which involved him putting his private member into a pig’s mouth. I doubt that anybody – not even Labour spin doctors or Lord Ashcroft – seriously believes the story. It stinks of the university-years version of a Chinese whisper, whereby any exaggerated urban legend is attributed to the person who becomes most well known after

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Labour press office taunts David Cameron with Percy Pigs

With the Downing Street press office declining to comment today on allegations from Lord Ashcroft involving the Prime Minister and a dead pig, Labour has also stayed quiet over the claims. However, members of the Labour press office were unable to resist ignoring the alleged incident completely, with press officers giving out sweets to hard-working lobby journalists. The choice of candy? Percy Pigs, of course.

Steerpike Steerpike

Revealed: Boris Johnson’s Piers Gaveston porkies

With Lord Ashcroft’s claim in today’s Daily Mail that David Cameron once enjoyed intimate relations with a dead pig, talk has soon turned to which unnamed Tory MP was the source of the story. With the incident allegedly taking place at an initiation ceremony for the Piers Gaveston dining society – which is named after Edward II’s alleged male lover — it has been suggested that one of Cameron’s Oxford university contemporaries could be the source. While Steerpike is yet to discover which MP is behind the Ashcroft tale, Mr S couldn’t help but remember that one Tory MP previously got himself into trouble for telling porkies concerning Piers Gaveston. When Boris Johnson was

Toby Young Toby Young

Is that really the best Lord Ashcroft could dig up?

My first reaction on reading the extracts from Lord Ashcroft’s muckraking biography of David Cameron in today’s Mail was, ‘It that it?’ Ashcroft has been digging for dirt about the Prime Minister for the best part of five years, even luring Isabel Oakeshott away from the Sunday Times to wield the shovel, and all he’s been able to come up with is that he smoked cannabis with James Delingpole when he was a student and may have been present while someone else took cocaine at his house. And, of course, there’s the pig story. I’m dubious about the pig episode and I’m better informed than most, having been a contemporary of