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 the astonishing film of Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams together you can see at once that it is Paisley who has lost. Birthrights and messes of pottage come to mind. Smart-looking, cool-headed, smug Adams has gained respectability and power, and the chance to unite Ireland under his leadership without having to renounce any of
Sir Alistair Graham is presented as one of the heroes of our age. He is the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which was originally set up by John Major as what he (Mr Major) called ‘an ethical workshop called in to do running repairs’. Now Sir Alistair has lashed out at
Every winter morning I take a scuttle down to the cellar, fill it with coal and carry it up to light the fire in my study. The coal-dust clings to my shoes and so, as the carpets testify, I have a carbon footprint. David Cameron wants to make it — and everyone else’s — smaller.
When I employed him at the Daily Telegraph, I found John Kampfner, now the editor of the New Statesman, a pleasant and able man. But his recent conduct towards one of his writers deserves a passage in the annals of editorial eccentricity. Nick Cohen, who is a leftwing columnist in the New Statesman, has written
One must keep repeating that the bicentenary being celebrated this year is of the abolition of the slave trade by Britain. From the amount of breast-beating, you would think that it was 200 years since the trade got going. There is huge concentration on the Atlantic slave trade, which is not surprising since this was
The Anglican Communion, trying to hold itself together in Dar-es-Salaam, is like the Commonwealth. Indeed, it exists for the same reason — the inheritance of the British Empire. Like the Commonwealth, it began as a white-dominated organisation, and has gradually ceased to be so. The Episcopal Church of the United States stands in relation to
Was it really an ‘own goal’ for 10 Downing Street to invite people to petition it on subjects of interest to them, and then find more than a million people saying that they opposed road pricing? It was information worth knowing. Politicians should not be frightened to look at new ways of getting people to
At the same time as it tries to loosen things up, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is told by the Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, that schools must put more emphasis on ‘global warming, the British slave trade and the anti-slavery campaign, Britishness, the British Empire, racism and ethnicity, immigration, Commonwealth, cookery’. It would hardly have
Will we look back on the last quarter of the 20th century as the only time since the Reformation when Roman Catholics have really been tolerated in Britain? During the long period in which Cardinal Basil Hume was Archbishop of Westminster, the Catholic Church came out of the ghetto. The row about gay adoption shows
How can a single state school defend itself in court? The question arises because of the 14-year-old Muslim pupil at Wycombe High School who has been forbidden by the headmistress from wearing the niqab, a veil which leaves only her eyes visible. The girl’s father is seeking judicial review. The father gets government money, in
Are you a hedger or a ditcher? The distinction was invented to describe the opposition to Asquith’s threat to the House of Lords in 1911, and it applies today to Euroscepticism. It is not a coincidence that Lord Willoughby de Broke, one of the two Conservative peers who have just joined Ukip, is the grandson
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