Peter Oborne writes for Middle East Eye.
A peculiar arrangement prevailed in 8th-century France, during the final decades of the Merovingian dynasty. The power of the kings, once savage and formidable, had subsided and then collapsed. They continued to enjoy the title of monarch, but the real power was exercised by officers of the royal household, the so-called ‘mayors of the palace’.
As The Spectator went to press this week, the Conservative party hovered on the edge of the greatest electoral catastrophe of its history: a third consecutive election defeat and the certain prospect of 12 years in the wilderness. Nothing like this has ever happened before. It was not nearly so bad after the famous reverses
Next Thursday Tony Blair will be re-elected with a fairly generous margin of victory: not less than a 50-seat majority, but probably not much more than 100. The Tories will make some progress, but not much. Anything more than 200 seats after 5 May, and Central Office should open a small case of champagne. This
The 2005 general election has been, by a very great distance, the dullest in recent British history. It is far duller than 2001, and that was very dull indeed. It is so exceptionally dull that even the broadsheet newspapers — forget the tabloids — have become extremely reluctant to put political news on the front
It is now clear that the most important event of the 2005 general election took place before campaigning formally started, when Downing Street aides travelled to Scotland to broker a deal between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown over the Easter weekend. The settlement was reached on the Chancellor’s terms, as Wednesday’s Labour election manifesto suggested.
Peter Oborne reveals the calculations that led the Prime Minister to ditch the royal wedding in favour of the Pope’s funeral Fifty years ago, almost to the day, Winston Churchill retired as prime minister at the grand old age of 80. On the eve of his retirement the great man gave a private dinner for
Jim Callaghan, who died last Saturday, was the last British prime minister in the commonly accepted sense of the word. After him several factors — the degradation of the Gladstonian idea of a disinterested Civil Service, the collapse of Parliament, the emergence of a professional political elite and the rise of the media class were
The signs of an imminent general election now abound. The government has started to churn out announcements as it clears the decks before Parliament rises. The most vicious of these came from John Prescott, who has changed planning rules to permit a new generation of out-of-town shopping centres and complete the destruction of our country
The general election of 2005 is starting to develop along curiously similar lines to 1987’s. A dominant ruling party is seeking a third consecutive election victory. The Prime Minister is no longer the electoral asset he was: furthermore, he is disliked, in some places hated, by an ever growing number of his own MPs. An
Mr Len Cook lives with his wife in a flat near Victoria and can often be seen eating a modest lunch at Goya, a quiet family restaurant in Pimlico. In the evenings he is a keen theatregoer. Later this year he returns for good to his native New Zealand. In the meantime he faces two
By far the most interesting event of this week was the serialisation of the diaries of Piers Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror. Ebury Press paid more than £1 million for this work, while the Daily Mail unloaded £250,000 on the serialisation alone. Piers Morgan is one of a circle of louche, not always
Shortly before Christmas last year I went off to write a book about a malign modern trend, the rise of political lying. Regrettably, during the two months I have been absent, the lying has continued unabated. In other respects, however, British politics has changed. Back in December there was a widespread assumption, bordering on certainty,
Easter comes unusually early this year, on 27 March, which is not quite without political significance. The Prime Minister will probably wait for a few days beyond the festival before announcing the date of the general election, most likely to be held on 5 May. To put it another way, just 16 weeks remain before
The universal predicament which confronts the western world at the start of the 21st century concerns the breakdown of boundaries. Philosophers blur the distinction between good and evil; society no longer protects family life; sociologists applaud the collapse of class barriers; globalisation challenges national borders; postmodernism asserts that truth and falsehood are the same. The
Jack Straw, though by no means a distinguished foreign secretary, nevertheless possesses animal cunning. He is an acknowledged master of dissimulation, contrivance, machination, manoeuvre, evasion, guile, trickery, craft, diversion, disguise, distortion, persiflage, falsehood, deception, sophistry, stealth, artifice, sharp practice, underhand dealing, sleight of hand, subterfuge, prevarication and every other stratagem of concealment and deceit. Occasionally,
Peter Oborne reveals that the Tories have a secret weapon — the Voter Vault — which has identified the 900,000 swing voters the party needs to capture at the next election According to all objective criteria the Conservative party leadership ought to be very low in the water. The assassination of Iain Duncan Smith almost
Events are now moving very fast. By this time next week, the Bill to ban hunting will have received royal assent. The fight to halt this oppressive piece of legislation is moving away from Parliament, into the courts and, probably, on to the streets. The government is preparing with great care for the looming battle.
Not long before midnight on Tuesday, a mood of dogmatic certitude overcame the throng of British MPs, ministers and journalists assembled at the traditional election-night party at the American embassy in Grosvenor Square. We knew that John Kerry had won, and dismissed with knowing contempt the warnings of our hosts — whose election, after all,
Very few political decisions achieve nothing but good: one of them was the abolition of exchange controls exactly 25 years ago. This week the Adam Smith Institute rightly marked the anniversary with a dinner at the St Ermin’s hotel. Geoffrey Howe, the chancellor who masterminded the stroke, reflected on how monumental the judgment — so
I was brought up near Warminster in Wiltshire, and love this quiet, unassuming country town. Its proximity to the Salisbury plain has ensured it the role of local garrison, a position viewed with at best mixed emotions by the locals. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the Royal Irish Rangers, unable to serve back home, incessantly