Charles Moore

The Dispatches programme which entrapped Messrs Hoon and Byers, Patricia Hewitt et al wanted to set them up as villains (which, indeed, they seemed). So it failed to notice the rather sad undertow of what they were saying. Geoff Hoon put it most clearly: ‘There’s nothing in my diary for April.’ Stephen Byers confirmed it when he said, when caught, that he had been ‘exaggerating’. The simple point is that these people are desperate, and virtually unemployed. They are largely pretending that companies beat a path to their door. What Mr Hoon described as ‘Hoon work’ — as opposed to the work for which the taxpayer pays him — is not coming his way in big enough quantities.

Much was made, in advance, of the fact that Samantha Cameron was at last speaking in public. She did it on Sunday night, interviewed by Trevor Mcdonald — very well, and in a surprisingly old-fashioned way. She looked lovely when she said that she was proud of her husband and that it would be ‘an honour’ to be married to a Prime Minister. But what the pre-released publicity did not prepare viewers for was Mrs Cameron’s accent. It was perfect estuarial. The words ‘really, really’, for example, came out as ‘reelly, reelly’. I could not detect a hint of the tones of her father, Sir Reginald Sheffield, 8th baronet. Sam could have passed herself off as a call-centre worker from Essex, or a weather forecaster, without exciting suspicion.

At last, the BBC has caught up with me. Readers may remember that I have been keeping and watching my television, but refusing to pay my television licence, for as long as the BBC continues to employ Jonathan Ross. (I sent the sum to Help the Aged instead.) The anti-Ross campaign has had some effect and Ross’s contract will not be renewed, but he continues to collect his £6 million a year from the Corporation until July, so I won’t contribute until he is off the books. I have just received a Summons, which begins ‘Brenda Curry TV LICENSING of TV Licensing, PO Box 88, Darwen, BBS 1YX says that you committed the offences listed on the following pages’, and tells me to appear at Hastings Magistrates’ Court on 1 March.

Part of the purpose of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war is what has become known, post the end of apartheid, as ‘truth and reconciliation’. Part of the purpose of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war is what has become known, post the end of apartheid, as ‘truth and reconciliation’. That is why it does not matter much that material already studied closely in the Hutton and Butler reports is being gone over again: this time, the hearings are public. The trouble is that truth and reconciliation are rarely compatible with general elections. In a classic example of the lack of courage for which he is known, Gordon Brown neither refused to have the inquiry at all, nor agreed to have it as soon as he became Prime Minister.

It was half an hour before the Spectator’s Christmas carol service, at which I was to read a lesson, and I was just putting on a tie in my London flat. It was half an hour before the Spectator’s Christmas carol service, at which I was to read a lesson, and I was just putting on a tie in my London flat. The intercom bell rang and a man said that he had come to see me. Then the receiver started squeaking with feedback and I could hear nothing more. The porter of our mansion block then rang me. Two men, he said, were on their way up in the lift. Since I had no idea who they were, I asked him to take them back into the hall and find out. He did so, and rang back. They were called, I think they said, Roger Spriddell and Denis Clayden, and they were from Capita.

On Sunday night, I went to Wellington College to defend God. The Almighty does not need human help, of course, but I was asked to oppose Professors Richard Dawkins and A.C. Grayling, and — with Lord Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford —  propose the motion that ‘Atheism is the new fundamentalism’. I had hoped that the audience would consist largely of the stalwart pupils and parents of Wellington, which would have had our side in with a chance. But in fact the event was run by the brilliant, Notting-Hilly debating organisation Intelligence Squared. This meant that 1,500 people turned up, cramming the vast sports hall. It also meant that the Wellington clientele was swamped by a very different crowd.

On Monday I attended a party at the Carlton Club for a new book about the Conservative Research Department, now 80 years old. Traditionally, this would have been a dusty occasion: the Research Department has almost prided itself on its separation from the vulgar worlds of media and power. But it was all rather glamorous. The fact is that, for the first time ever, its alumni have taken control of the Tory high command. George Osborne and Oliver Letwin began political life there; so did Cameron’s closest assistants, Steve Hilton, Ed Llewellyn and Kate Fall; and so did David Cameron himself. As Andrew Gimson discusses on page 19, Mr Cameron is the first CRD product ever to have led the Tory party.

Only a little more than a year ago, Gordon Brown was considered very clever when he had a word with Sir Victor Blank at a cocktail party and encouraged him to merge Lloyds and HBOS to help save the British banking system. Not long afterwards, Sir Victor was forced to resign after the merger produced chaos and stupefying losses were exposed. Mr Brown, however, is still here, and this week, with equal brilliance, he has ordered the break-up of the bank he merged, in order to help save the British banking system again, while he puts a further £5.8 billion of government money behind it. It is not easy to resist Mervyn King’s recent suggestion that the relationship between government and the banks is the greatest system of moral hazard ever created.

In the early Cameronian period, which now feels prehistoric, the only news was good news. It shows how the recession has turned everything topsy-turvy that this week the Tories have actually been aiming for ‘bad’ headlines. They have succeeded: cut invalidity benefit (weekend press), make people retire later (Tuesday), the ‘new age of austerity’ (Wednesday). This inversion also means that a boring speech is considered a good one. On Tuesday, George Osborne came on to the platform here. ‘Platform’ was the right word, because the set, a photograph of suburban houses from first-storey level, made it look as if George was waving goodbye to his family from an elevated railway before jumping on to the 8.14 from Esher.