Matthew Parris is a columnist for The Spectator and The Times.
Much nonsense is being written about new ways for the Conservative party to choose its leader. The plan being floated — that MPs might offer constituency chairmen a shortlist to choose from — is absurd. It would have produced Iain Duncan Smith. Everybody can guess who the five would be this time, but one or
The late Peter Campbell, sometime professor of politics at the University of Reading, would have enjoyed the irony. He died just before the general election. His funeral was hastily arranged for Friday 6 May, mid-morning, in Reading. For me these were a couple of days of little sleep and intensely hard work. So Peter will
Catch your opponent unawares. Hit him with an accusation which he cannot come straight back at and answer. While he flails, change the subject fast. Move to a new charge. Keep changing the subject before your opponent has got to grips with the last one. Be like a Boy David with his sling, light on
I well remember the Conservative party’s shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport. As I never tire of reminding him, in days long gone, before John Whittingdale became the Member of Parliament for Maldon & East Chelmsford, he and I were young Turks together at the Conservative research department. Our boss was Chris
I was surprised to hear about Chris Smith. His revelation in last Sunday’s papers that he had been HIV-positive for the past 17 years was news to many of his friends. Sombre, I suppose, but in a loose-tongued age it is satisfying to find a really well-kept secret, and one salutes Chris (as I saluted
In scene 9 of William Congreve’s The Way of the World, amid a fiendish tangle of desire, deception and general waywardness (Sir Wilfull Witwoud: ‘Ahey! Wenches? Where are the wenches?’), Lady Wishfort speaks for many of us as she cuts the discussion short. ‘This will never do!’ she declares. This will never do. To my
A growing band of us do not believe the opinion polls. We cannot entirely explain our doubt. We argue backwards from our hunch — that the voters do not wish to give Tony Blair anything like the thumbs-up they gave him before — to an array of rationalisations about how, whatever today’s polls may suggest,
The Conservative party is handling the United Kingdom Independence party problem in a worrying way. Ukip is not an embarrassment; it is not a distraction; it is not an understandable but naive reaction to the issues of the day; it is not a theoretically appealing movement whose practical consequences could sadly prove perverse. And supporting
What guff people do talk. To read the hysterical press which greeted last week’s pitch-invasion in the Palace of Westminster you would have thought the unguarded nature of the Commons Chamber was news to anybody. You would have thought the pro-hunt protesters had found a loophole which nobody had thought of. You would have thought
At Cerro de Pasco, we found a bus for Huànuco. Cerro is a mining town in the high Andean plain, and feels like it: stark, cold and treeless, thin air, thin dogs, thin people. But busy: it was dusk and half the town seemed to be milling around the bus station contemplating the same journey
‘Put your left foot here, into this stirrup’ — I glanced down at a decorated steel half-shoe hanging on a leather strap — ‘and grip this stubby thing with your left hand….’ — I looked up at a sort of leather knob about the size of an orange set into the prow of the saddle
Unless I am much mistaken, obituarists and tribute-writers have this week been poring over the Fleet Street archives, beset by a difficulty as unexpected as it has been puzzling. We have been looking for brilliant, extended passages of the late Bernard Levin’s writing to offer modern readers a sample (and older readers a reminder) of
I hastened last Friday to the Grays Inn studios of five news on Channel 5 to be interviewed for their 7 p.m. bulletin alongside Nick Watt of the Guardian, on the sensation of the hour. The sensation was the planned appointment of Mr Peter Mandelson as an EU commissioner in Brussels. On time, Mr Watt
Tom and I borrowed our friend’s Mini to drive to Canary Wharf. We had been lent it to collect for him a consignment of lighting fittings ordered from John Lewis, which he had no time to collect. This was kind of us. Motivated thus by charity we drove off towards the smart new shopping centre
It came upon me powerfully, momentarily and quite unexpectedly. Perhaps a couple of vodkas at a bar by the railway station in St Petersburg were to blame. But all at once I realised that if I were a 50-something Russian living in the former Soviet Union today, I would be a communist. It happened a
People who buy shares in a company just because its share price is already rising are liable to be made fools of. People who puff the future prospects of the United Kingdom Independence party just because those prospects are better now than they were a year ago may be making a similar mistake. I’ve enjoyed
David Aaronovitch writes for the Guardian. He has suggested (‘Why do they hate Blair so much?’, 18 May) that opposition to Tony Blair has driven some of us crazy. I fear Mr Aaronovitch is right, and will try to explain why. His argument is straightforward and, though directed more to Mr Blair’s critics on the
Last Sunday I collected a waistcoat made from my own pet. From the same source came a hat, gloves, scarf, and a teddy bear wearing a little waistcoat of its own, though (saucily) no trousers. A lady called Chan Brown, from Chesterfield, has organised this for me. I keep llamas, and she spins. She belongs
New South Wales The name of the station seemed to ring a bell. An hour or so south of Sydney, and through the window of my double-decker Australian railway carriage, I could read the sign ‘Thirroul’. Wasn’t that the little seaside town where D.H. Lawrence stayed with his wife, Frieda, and where he began his
‘Two quick sprays to your tongue release the natural energy you need to find inner calm again. Restoring your centre and focus, even after you’ve reached the end of your tether. With the natural formula created by Dr Bach, in a bottle sized to fit any handbag, Rescue Remedy is the calming exercise you can