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.
From our UK edition
How much longer should the IMF be run by a European? The job of the fund is to assist any member country which is in trouble, not to advance the dream of European integration. So far, since it all began after the war, the IMF’s managing directors have been Europeans, most commonly French. The current
From our UK edition
If Greece does vote Yes, and Mr Tsipras has to go, who is left to run the country? The voters have tried all the main parties, only to find them broken by the demands of the eurozone. The only category left is the extreme right, so there would be a sort of desperate logic in electing
From our UK edition
I find it almost frightening to be stuck in London in a heatwave. It is not just the bad air. It is also the sense that this is something that does not suit the British. White northern people have never discovered an elegant means of wearing little in public. We look dreadful and behave as if
From our UK edition
‘The Greek people,’ the Financial Times leading article said on Monday, ‘would be well advised to listen closely to the words of Ms Merkel. The plebiscite will be a vote for the euro or the drachma, no less.’ It is interesting how menacing powerful ‘moderate’ institutions can become when popular feeling challenges them. In the
From our UK edition
‘The Greek people,’ the Financial Times leading article said on Monday, ‘would be well advised to listen closely to the words of Ms Merkel. The plebiscite will be a vote for the euro or the drachma, no less.’ It is interesting how menacing powerful ‘moderate’ institutions can become when popular feeling challenges them. In the
From our UK edition
‘Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which our children will never see’, says Pope Francis in his gloomy encyclicalLaudato si. Can this possibly be true? Over the past 500 years, 1.3 per cent of birds and mammals are known to have become extinct — 200 species out of 15,000. There
From our UK edition
People write about ‘Grexit’ and ‘Brexit’ as if they were the same, but they need not be. Grexit is about leaving the euro. Brexit is about leaving the EU. It seems, however, that the Greeks fear that leaving the euro would mean leaving the EU, and so feel paralysed. It simply is not clear what
From our UK edition
It is natural to assume that, if a majority votes No in the referendum on Britain’s EU membership, we shall then leave. It is not automatically so. After the vote, we would still be members. The government would then — morally at least — be mandated to negotiate Britain’s withdrawal. In theory, unlikely though it may currently
From our UK edition
This is an extract from Charles Moore’s Notes in this week’s Spectator, out tomorrow. Subscribe from just £1. In a few weeks, I shall have finished the second volume of my threepart biography of Margaret Thatcher. I am now at the checking and revising stage — 3,000 endnotes to be made shipshape, 2,000 quotations to be cleared with
From our UK edition
Two beautiful volumes in a cloth-bound case reach me. They are Speeches and Articles by HRH The Prince of Wales 1968-2012, published by University of Wales Press. The explanatory list of abbreviations and acronyms alone gives a charming sense of the range of subjects covered — ‘Foot and Mouth Disease, Foreign Press Association, Forest Stewardship
From our UK edition
After the general election, Edward Llewellyn, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, was made a Privy Councillor. Any member of the Privy Council is addressed as ‘Right Honourable’ and these words well describe Llewellyn’s character, so there is no problem there. But why should an adviser be given this role? If you study the list
From our UK edition
Listening this week to someone from the Electoral Reform Society droning on about how we have just had the least representative election ever, I suddenly had an aperçu. Until now, I had argued that it was true that ‘first past the post’ was unfair, but this was a small price to pay for the way
From our UK edition
We in the West all hate Sepp Blatter, so we pay too little attention to the manner in which the Fifa executives were arrested. For what reason, other than maximum drama, were they all ensnared in a dawn raid on their hotel in Zurich? Are we really satisfied that the US authorities should behave in
From our UK edition
We in the West all hate Sepp Blatter, so we pay too little attention to the manner in which the Fifa executives were arrested. For what reason, other than for maximum drama, were they all ensnared in a dawn raid on their hotel in Zurich? Are we really satisfied, if we think about it, that
From our UK edition
Now that Ireland has voted Yes to same-sex marriage, it will be widely believed that this trend is unstoppable and those who oppose it will end up looking like people who supported the slave trade. It is possible. But in fact history has many examples of admired ideas which look like the future for a
From our UK edition
Amnesty International and others have placed a large newspaper advertisement telling Michael Gove ‘Don’t Scrap Our Human Rights’. The ad asserts that ‘A government cannot give human rights or take them away’, which, if true, makes one wonder how it can scrap them. Human rights are philosophically a confused idea; but their political power consists
From our UK edition
Leon Brittan’s memorial service on Tuesday packed the West London Synagogue, but there were some notable absentees. We in the congregation were informed that the government was represented by Lord Howe (the Earl Howe, not Geoffrey). He is an estimable man, but well below Cabinet level. Since Brittan had been Home Secretary, it would normally
From our UK edition
Who benefits from Prince Charles’s handshake with Gerry Adams? Not the victims of IRA violence, including the 18 soldiers who died at Warrenpoint on the same day as Lord Mountbatten was murdered. Not the moderate parties in Ireland, north or south, who never blew up anybody and so can get no kudos for pretending to
From our UK edition
David Cameron is taking a bit of trouble to unite his parliamentary party. Having built a coalition outside it last time, he knows he must now build one within. The best way to do this lies to hand. It is to return to the pre-Blair custom of having Prime Minister’s Questions twice a week. Advisers
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As the news of John Whittingdale’s appointment as Culture Secretary came through, I happened to be sorting my pile of threatening letters from TV Licensing. It was taking me a bit of time, as there are 34 of them, accumulated over the past two years or so. Faithful readers of this column may remember that
