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.
Obviously Ruth Kelly is a ‘hypocrite’, but the hypocrites in her party are more admirable than the consistent ones. At least the former show some human feeling. There must be Labour ministers who know that their children would be better off in a private school, can afford to send them there, and still don’t, because
Charles Moore pays tribute to his friend Frank Johnson, editor of The Spectator 1995–99, who died on 15 December: a man of awesome learning — and light touch ‘In the Fifties, job advertisements used to read “smart boy wanted”. That’s me,’ Frank Johnson would say. The joke tells you a good deal about Frank. First,
For most of my life I have disliked the run-up to the British Christmas, on religious grounds. Advent is intended to be like Lent, a time of abstinence. Your thoughts are directed to the Four Last Things — Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. The Twelve Days which begin on 25 December are the time for
It is strange to find myself at odds with several fellow Thatcherites, but it seems to me obvious that David Cameron’s first year as Tory leader, which falls this week, has been a success. What his critics cannot get into their heads is that opposition is completely different from government. You can’t do: you must
As the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery in this country approaches, Tony Blair expresses ‘deep sorrow’ for British involvement in the trade. As the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery in this country approaches, Tony Blair expresses ‘deep sorrow’ for British involvement in the trade. Extraordinary that he should feel the need to adopt
While David Cameron was in Darfur, pointing out how Islamist leaders in Khartoum give evasive answers about the mass killings in the region, his shadow attorney-general, Dominic Grieve, was attending a rally in central London called to protest about ‘Islamophobia’. The publicity for the rally said this was manifested by a campaign of ‘physical attacks,
The current row about how Oxford University should be governed illustrates two problems of our culture. The first is about how institutions work. The modernisers want organisations to work more purposefully, and they are right. But the traditionalists are suspicious of reforms which separate the people who know about the content of their institution from
‘It’s a milestone round his neck’, I heard a football manager saying on the Today programme. ‘It’s a milestone round his neck’, I heard a football manager saying on the Today programme. It was not what he meant to say, but it seems apposite to my own case, since I am writing this on my
There is a yet another plan to reform the House of Lords, getting rid of lots of life peers, proposing partial direct election and, as always with these ideas, the fuller representation of ethnic minorities. Commentators and politicians may be tempted to look at these plans ‘on their merits’ and go through them minutely. This
These notes are being written on 17 October, the day when, at the invitation of the History Matters campaign, we are all supposed to keep a diary for a day. Like Tom Lehrer on National Brotherhood Week, ‘Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year.’ We are overwhelmed with diaries. The politicians’ ones are the
From time to time, the parliamentary lobby journalists invite us to admire a particular politician. Minister X or shadow minister Y is suddenly presented as quite intensely able etc. For some time, Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary, has occupied this enviable position. Has anyone any idea why? Obviously he is less mad and vain
Bournemouth The current Tory position on tax cuts is rather like the doctrine of the Trinity. It makes no sense unless you know the questions that lie behind it. It is not really a position about tax cuts, but a position about how to go into an election campaign. In 2001, Oliver Letwin was chased
Richard Dawkins is an evangelical. The cover of this book, with its red explosion and large writing, reminds one of those popular volumes by Protestant pastors which purport to prove that JESUS IS ALIVE. Dawkins has all the fervour and anger of such persons, and their well-meaning puzzlement that so many cannot see what to
Juba, Southern Sudan A columnist in the English-language Khartoum Monitor has it right. Under the headline ‘Blair; prove to us this is yogurt, not hot soup’, Mohamed Osman Adam reflects on the Egyptian saying that ‘he who has been burned by a hot soup, will blow at a bowl of yogurt’. His argument is about
Because of what John Prescott calls the ‘dustbin of last week’, we now know that a new leader of the Labour party will be elected this year or next. This will be only the second time in history that a Labour leader will have been chosen while the party has been in office. The first
Last week I discovered that I have to have two separate checks made on me by the Criminal Records Bureau. One is because I am a trustee of a charity which works with children. The other is because I sometimes serve at the altar at Mass and therefore come into contact with children who do
Perhaps it will take allegations of ball-tampering to focus on the role of Pakistan in modern British life. There is a certain sort of upholder of national sovereignty who thinks that ethnic and religious problems can be solved if only the national borders are shaped to reflect the divisions. The British partition of India surely
As the conflict deepens in the Lebanon, the word on many lips is ‘proportionality’. Israel keeps being told that her actions are ‘disproportionate’. Proportionality is, indeed, a key moral concept in wars, but how is it to be calculated? The question becomes more complicated in an age in which opponents often prefer terrorism to formal
Writing this column in 90˚F heat on the edge of a normally bleak and chill Yorkshire moor, I reflect on the relationship between political culture and weather. Montesquieu, who attributed great importance to climate and geography in the political spirit of nations, thought that heat contributed to despotism, suppressing the active disposition of a people.
Because everyone can see that the government can no longer do anything worth doing, there is a widespread assumption that its days are numbered. But this is a non sequitur. In the past, Labour governments could do things only in the short gap between their election victory and their sterling crisis. Conservative governments had a