Charles Moore is The Spectator’s chairman.
He is a former editor of the magazine, as well as the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph. He became a non-affiliated peer in July 2020.
Why does it follow that, because an artist or performer is an appalling human being, his work should be banned? Speaking at Oxford in the late 19th century, Paul Verlaine introduced himself thus: ‘Je suis Paul Verlaine — poète, ivrogne, pédéraste.’ His work survived. Yet nearly a century and a half later, Michael Jackson has
How to classify the story that there are a thousand fewer UK-born undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge than there were ten years ago? For those (seemingly all three main political parties) who love subjecting education to social control, is this good news? Is it a roaring success for ‘diversity’ (in the same period, Oxford numbers
I have praised in print before Mr Corbyn’s magnificently opportunistic handling of the Brexit issue. His aim is to ensure that Brexit happens, but that it is very badly done, and can therefore be attacked as a ‘Tory Brexit’. Who can say he’s failing? His apparent conversion to a second referendum looks to me like
One could smell a rat in the fact that so many ministers have recently been allowed publicly to break with government policy and condemn ‘no deal’ flat-out, and even threaten resignation. Three ministers co-wrote an article in Tuesday’s Daily Mail (over the undead body of Paul Dacre) in this sense. They would never have dared
Jeremy Corbyn never ceases to attack Mrs May for trying to run down the clock. She has certainly done that, but she is also quite capable of running up the clock. This she is now doing with her threat of an extension of Article 50. She is like the mouse in the nursery rhyme, with
Where will these nice Independent Groupies end up? If the SDP example applies, they will wander through the political wilderness, some of them coming to rest in existing parties. All the following were in the SDP. Greg Clark is a Tory cabinet minister. Danny Finkelstein is a Tory peer, excellent journalist and wordsmith to David
The BBC reported on Tuesday that the proposed closure of Honda’s plant at Swindon was largely caused by the prospect of a no-deal Brexit. The collapse of ‘just-in-time’ procedures would do for the factory, it said. That’s odd, I thought as I listened: why would you close a whole factory because of something that might
Banks are trying to change our ways. Our own recently wrote to tell us that it will no longer send us cheque books unless we positively demand them. And now a battle is beginning to close down cash machines. It is reported that there are none at all in Stoke; and when I accosted an
The sad announcement of John Humphrys’s departure from Today has provoked once again the suggestion that the programme has dumbed down. There is supposed to be too much showbiz. The implication is that news people who, in their own phrase, ‘know their onions’ (almost always, perhaps not coincidentally, men) are being pushed aside by others (usually, perhaps
On Tuesday, Le Monde published a piece it had commissioned from me to explain why, from a British point of view, Brexit is not mad. (I was told that all the paper’s readers think it is.) I enjoyed doing this for two reasons. The first was seeing how my English came out in French. Le Monde
It is 30 years since the fatwa against Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses, and 40 since the triumph of the Iranian Revolution. The two are related, since the Ayatollah Khomeini, driven to rage by illness and military failure, wanted to mark the tenth anniversary of his glory days by doing something nasty. I have reminded
I am in a small minority in turning off the news when it is not about Brexit. The slow, agonising process fascinatingly brings out what people in public life really think. Do they care about representative government, or not? My estimate is that 60 per cent of the House of Commons do — while differing
Matthew Parris (2 February) attacks those who warn that failing to leave the EU would cause civil unrest: ‘…there is something deeply unConservative about this tack. A proper Conservative does not pray in aid of his argument by citing criminal elements that may otherwise be unleashed.’ Broadly, that sounds right, although frustrating a major democratic
Private Eye recently featured a tweet by Titania McGrath in Pseuds’ Corner. She was advertising her new book Woke: a Guide to Social Justice: ‘I have written the most important book of 2019. Do not buy it for my sake, but for the sake of humanity.’ The magazine was fooled. Titania is a spoof, and her book, out
I am in a small minority in turning off the news when it is not about Brexit. The slow, agonising process fascinatingly brings out what people in public life really think. Do they care about representative government, or not? My estimate is that 60 per cent of the House of Commons do — while differing
The House of Commons does work better than it seems to, I promise you. When a big subject comes up, it spends weeks, months, even years, posturing and sparring, but it has a way of working out when a choice is truly important. Brexit has taken years, and is truly important. We saw the first
What to do about the coming shortage of green groceries of which several supermarkets warned yet again this week if there is a no-deal Brexit on 29 March? I am just old enough to remember when fresh fruit and veg were in short supply at this time of year. People used to know how to
What to do about the coming shortage of green groceries of which several supermarkets warned yet again this week if there is a no-deal Brexit on 29 March? I am just old enough to remember when fresh fruit and veg were in short supply at this time of year. People used to know how to
The House of Commons does work better than it seems to, I promise you. When a big subject comes up, it spends weeks, months, even years, posturing and sparring, but it has a way of working out when a choice is truly important. Brexit has taken years, and is truly important. We saw the first
This column has laughed before at the BBC’s satirical wit in having a slot called ‘Reality Check’ on Brexit. If ‘Reality Check’ were serious, it would ask every MP each time one appeared: ‘How do you intend to carry out parliament’s promise, both before and after the referendum, to implement its result?’ Orders from Davos
