London

Friday

Steerpike

Does Evgeny Lebedev fancy being Mayor of London?

While the Tories scrabble around for a candidate for the 2016 London Mayoral election, Mr S hears one millionaire is already eyeballing the 2020 race. Barely an edition of the Evening Standard fails to feature either an interview by (or with) their proprietor Evgeny Lebedev. His face is regularly found across the pages of both his publications the Standard and the Independent, most recently in an awkward interview with David Cameron. His father Alexander must have been proud, as he uploaded a photo of the two to Instagram: Evgueny recently interviewed D.Cameron.Hope a question about UK/Russia relations was raised. A photo posted by @alexanderelebedev on Feb 21, 2015 at 10:36am PST While most have put all this

Thursday

Simon Jenkins

The myth of the housing crisis

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/the-snp-threat-to-westminster/media.mp3″ title=”Simon Jenkins vs James Forsyth on the housebuilding myth” startat=1215] Listen [/audioplayer]There is no such thing as the English countryside. There is my countryside, your countryside and everyone else’s. Most people fight just for theirs. When David Cameron told the BBC’s Countryfile he would defend the countryside ‘as I would my own family’, many of its defenders wondered which one he meant. In the past five years a national asset that public opinion ranks with the royal family, Shakespeare and the NHS, has slid into trench warfare. Parish churches fill with protest groups. Websites seethe with fury. Planning lawyers have never been busier. The culprit has been planning

Tuesday

Steerpike

Kirstie Allsopp comes to Sir Malcolm Rifkind’s defence

Sir Malcolm Rifkind’s decision to stand down as the MP for Kensington at the next election after a ‘cash for access’ sting hasn’t pleased everyone. In fact the good people of Kensington seem rather dismayed by the move. While Rifkind’s claim that his salary of £60,000 is not enough to live on received ridicule from many lefties, those who reside in the affluent borough can at least see his point of view. Kirstie Allsopp, the television presenter, has voiced her sadness that her local MP is to quit. Oh bugger it, I might as well say it – Malcolm Rifkind is my local MP & I doubt very much they’ll manage to replace him with someone better. — Kirstie Mary

Monday

Rod Liddle

Should we actually be worried about the Syria-bound schoolgirls?

Are you terribly worried about those three London ‘schoolgirls’ who have gone off to fight for the Islamic State in Syria? I must admit I haven’t lost an awful lot of sleep over it. The BBC ran the story at interminable length on Sunday night, the implication seeming to be that we should strain every sinew to get the poor mites back home to their loving and undoubtedly well-integrated community. I don’t think they should be allowed back in any way, as it happens. And by and large, the more similarly disposed Muslims who feel an attraction to Isis actually go to Syria, the better, frankly. Or is this callous and unfeeling of

Thursday

Tanya Gold

Rowleys is Did Mummy Love Me Really? food – and it’s perfect

I think Rowley’s is the perfect restaurant; but I am really a gay man. Rowley’s is at 113 Jermyn Street (the Tesco end). It was made in homage to the Wall’s sausage and ice-cream fortune, although it opened in 1976, after the Wall’s sausage and ice-cream company (I call it that because it sounds magical) was sold to Unilever (less magical). So it is quite a late homage. The Wall’s sausage and ice-cream fortune, how I love to type the words; did you know that Mr Wall moved into ice-cream so as not to sack staff in the summer months, when no one — except me and George IV —

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Bet on a swift Grexit

‘Will Greece exit the eurozone in 2015?’ Paddy Power was pricing ‘yes’ at 3-to-1 on Tuesday, with 5-to-2 on another Greek general election within the year and 6-to-4 on the more cautious ‘Greece to adopt an official currency other than the euro by the end of 2017.’ I’m no betting man — as I reminded myself after backing a parade of point-to-point losers on Sunday — and I defer to our in-house speculator Freddy Gray, who will offer a wider guide to political bets worth having in the forthcoming Spectator Money (7 March). But on the Greek card I’m tempted by the longer odds on the shorter timeframe, because this

Wednesday

Steerpike

Dippygate: Natural History Museum’s diplodocus sacrificed on the commercial altar

There was outcry last month when it was announced that ‘Dippy the Diplodocus’ is to be removed from the Natural History Museum’s vast Hintze Hall, where he has been greeting visitors for the last 35 years. Instead a giant skeleton of blue whale will be suspended from the ceiling, in what they spin as an ‘important and necessary change’. Officially, ‘the blue whale symbolises’ the museum’s ‘desire for people to be completely engaged in current issues about humans’ impact on the natural world and our chance to build a sustainable future.’ Or so a spokesman of the museum says. However, a source tells of a more cynical explanation for the

Saturday

Steerpike

Tory Black & White Ball tempts Nancy Dell’Olio into politics

One of the more glamorous attendees of this week’s Tory Black and White ball was Nancy Dell’Olio. The former girlfriend of Sven Goran Eriksson attended the Conservative fundraiser as the guest of Ivan Massow, the London mayoral hopeful. When Mr S caught up with Dell’Olio after the ball, it seemed the presence of political leaders was starting to rub off on her. ‘It was good to be there, I enjoyed David’s speech,’ the Italian lawyer told Steerpike at the Fernando Botero Private View at the Opera Gallery, before talk turned to her own career. ‘I’ll tell you what, I could apply to change my passport, one of my passions is politics. My friend

Thursday

Toby Young

Immigration, not money, will improve Scotland’s most deprived schools

I suppose we should be thankful that Nicola Sturgeon has acknowledged there’s a problem with Scotland’s public education system, even if she’s hit upon the wrong solution. Earlier this week, the First Minister announced that the Scottish -government would be trying out its version of ‘the London challenge’, a programme carried out by the last government, to address the chronic underachievement of Scotland’s most deprived children. In the past, the SNP has deflected criticisms of its education record by pointing out that Scottish 15-year-olds did marginally better than their English counterparts in the 2012 Pisa tests. But the difference between the two groups is minuscule and both have declined dramatically

Sinclair McKay

EastEnders wanted to show Thatcher’s Britain. These days it would make Maggie proud

Albert Square full of Thatcherites? You ’avin a larf? No, it’s true. EastEnders, conceived 30 years ago partly as a means of enraging the Conservative party, has blossomed into a Tory commercial. Iain Duncan-Smith could watch all the wealth-creating activity in Albert Square with a syrupy smile; George Osborne could visit Phil Mitchell’s garage in a hi-vis jacket and look perfectly at home (Boris Johnson has already had a cameo pint at the Queen Vic). EastEnders portrays small businesses built up through hard work; it implies that turning to the state won’t get you anywhere; they even sent swotty teenager Libby Fox to Oxford. Never mind the affairs and addictions,

Andrew Taylor

Cybersex is a dangerous world (especially for novelists)

Few first novels are as successful as S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, which married a startling and unusual premise to a tightly controlled and claustrophobic thriller. Its only drawback was that it was a hard act to follow. Novelists tend to dump all their brilliant ideas into their first book, and the white heat of originality compensates to some extent for any want of craft. Second novels lack both advantages, and have the additional problem that readers come to them laden with expectations. Like its predecessor, Second Life is a slice of domestic noir with a woman narrator. It is set mainly in affluent corners of London, with

Thursday

Tanya Gold

Rivea: a London annexe to the world’s maddest expensive restaurant

Rivea (stupid name) is in the bowels of Bulgari in Knightsbridge, a hotel which looks like a vast Virgin Upper Class lounge. It sits opposite One Hyde Park (stupid name), an apartment block which looks like a vast Virgin Upper Class lounge and which I am fairly certain appeared two weeks ago in a very silly television show called Silent Witness, in which a plutocrat was murdered with scented gas after being chased by the FSB. Was he Litvinenko, or Berezovsky, who I think was murdered for suggesting that Vladimir Putin is really Dobby the masochistic elf from Harry Potter? Who knows, but it is always gratifying when the BBC

Melissa Kite

The Tooting poisoner and the relentless rise of the urban fox

Cowering in the corner of a pet shop, I edged towards the door to try to escape as a stranger yelled at me. The man’s face was so puckered up and puce with anger that I feared I was moments away from being beaten to death with a ball-thrower or ham bone. I had only popped in to buy some dog food for the spaniel and now the spaniel was hiding behind me as a fellow customer shouted abuse. The lady who owned the pet shop was trying to appease the shouting man, who had his own dog with him, a scrappy little terrier who looked as terrified as the

Charlotte Moore

Powers of persuasion: how Churchill brought America on side

In time for the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death comes this pacy novel about his attempts to persuade the Americans to join the war. It is January 1941; President Roosevelt’s special envoy Harry Hopkins arrives in Blitz-torn London and is subjected to Churchill’s charm offensive. Hopkins, a chain-smoking, hard-drinking man of principle with a dislike of hereditary privilege, finds himself guided down every corridor of power. It’s port and cigars at Downing Street, roast pheasant at Chequers, even champagne in the prime ministerial bathroom while the great man fires questions at him from the tub, ‘a pink, round, gleaming Michelin man’. In between times, Hopkins drinks at the Black Cat

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

The implosion of Scottish Labour means the battle for Britain has only just begun

Gordon Brown is holding an adjournment debate on the union this evening, which comes after an Ashcroft poll which shows precisely what danger the union is in. If today’s polls were tomorrow’s election result, the SNP would have 55 out of 59 seats in Scotland. It’s even set to lose Coatbridge, where it picked up 67pc of the vote at the last election. Yes, all this will help the Tories in the short term: Cameron needs the SNP to destroy Labour in the north and the SNP need Cameron in No10 – remember, their political model is based on grudge and gripe. Without a villain, Alex Salmond won’t have a pantomime. But back

Thursday

Ismene Brown

London International Mime Festival review: on juggling, dance and Wayne Rooney’s hair transplant

January is something of a palate-cleanser for the year, as the London International Mime Festival flies in plane-loads of companies bearing gnomic names in a kind of dance-world Desperanto that’s equally incomprehensible in every language. Like cars or tourist T-shirt slogans, titles like Plexus or Ephemeral Architectures label what’s now called ‘visual theatre’, with copious explanatory notes translated between four languages, gaining comic value at every stage. I don’t know why they don’t just write, ‘We’re playing. The sponsor paid.’ (Mark Morris is the only choreographer I know who says, ‘I make up dances and you watch ’em.’) In LIMF you get acrobats, puppetry and circuses, but also some pretty

Thursday

Tanya Gold

Quaglino’s, the vampire brasserie

Quaglino’s is an ancient subterranean brasserie in St James’s, a district clinging to the 18th century with cadaverous fingers. It was founded in 1929 by -Giovanni Quaglino, who once wrote a book called The Complete Hostess; do not buy a haddock that weighs over 2lbs, he counsels, among other things. Quaglino’s is called a ‘grande dame’ by the sort of critic who confuses ‘grande’ with louche. Quaglino’s initially catered to posh idiots who thought they were ‘edgy’ because they listened to jazz during the abdication crisis. The Queen came once — the first time a reigning monarch had dined at a restaurant — and Princess Margaret repeatedly, but the Queen

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Why Switzerland should have listened to Hong Kong on currency pegs

The Swiss National Bank usually ticks away as quietly as one of its nation’s more expensive timepieces, but when the cuckoo does occasionally burst out of the clock, all hell breaks loose. After a policy was introduced in September 2011 to depress the Swiss franc against the euro (as traumatised investors continued to pour money into safe-haven Switzerland), governor Philipp Hildebrand resigned when it came to light that his wife Kashya had sold a huge bundle of francs ahead of her husband’s market intervention, then bought them back at a handsome profit. Now, weeks after Hildebrand’s successor Thomas Jordan called the informal fixing of the franc at €1.20 ‘absolutely central’

Thursday

Toby Young

David Sedaris was right: litter is a class issue

David Sedaris is my new hero. Not because he’s such a funny writer, but because he’s obsessed with litter. He told a group of MPs last week that he spends up to five hours a day picking up fast food containers and fag ends around his home in Pulborough, west Sussex. Thanks to his unstinting labours, he’s become a local hero and has had a rubbish lorry named after him. I’ve some way to go before I qualify for such an honour, but I do my bit. For instance, on Monday I spent an hour clearing the litter from the flowerbed outside the West London Free School in Hammersmith. This

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

How long will it be before the climate forces us to change?

This time last year, homeowners in Oxfordshire and Berkshire were recovering after storms had brought down power lines and blocked roads. Soon, power cuts were the least of their problems. The Thames flooded. In the south-west, the emergency services evacuated the Somerset Levels, and the sea wall at Dawlish in Devon collapsed — cutting the rail line to Cornwall. Political Britain burst its banks. Ed Miliband demanded action. David Cameron convened emergency committees. TV reporters brought us urgent reports as water lapped their boots, while newspaper correspondents named the guilty men. As in twenty20 cricket, you enjoy a quick intense hit with 24/7 news, then move on to the next