The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

An emperor’s inauguration

From our UK edition

Given that Donald Trump is not the most popular president the USA has ever seen, even among his own party, it is salutary to be reminded what induction ceremonies can be like for those who devised imaginative routes to power. Pertinax, who started life as a schoolmaster, was a governor of Britain and a highly respected consul before succeeding the ghastly Commodus as emperor on 30 December AD 192. But the military did not appreciate his immediate attempts to restore discipline and financial stability, and he was assassinated three months later.

The Spectator

Letters | 19 January 2017

From our UK edition

Particle of faith Sir: Fraser Nelson draws our attention to the most worrying aspect of economists getting it wrong, which is their reluctance to recognise it (‘Don’t ask the experts’, 14 January). Some economists, seduced by sophisticated mathematical models, aspire to the status of, say, particle physicists, who can tell us they have found something called the Higgs boson. The fact that we tend to believe the particle physicists despite being more familiar with prices, jobs and buying and selling than with quantum equations comes down to physicists having a long track record of heeding the biologist E.O. Wilson’s advice: ‘Keep in mind that new ideas are commonplace, and almost always wrong.

The Spectator

Doing Brexit right

From our UK edition

From the start of the European Union referendum campaign, competing visions of Brexit have been advocated. To Nigel Farage, the case for leaving the European Union was all about what we did not like (the diktats, the immigration, etc). This played into the caricature cleverly presented by the Remain campaign: the shaking fist of Little England, a country that had had enough of foreigners and the tolerance that the European project represented. Then came the vision put to Britain by the Vote Leave campaign, articulated by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. It was of a globally minded Britain, fed up with the EU’s parochialism. A country itching to go out and into the world. Theresa May has now firmly endorsed the Boris Johnson vision.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 January 2017

From our UK edition

Home Britain will leave the single market on leaving the European Union, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said in a speech at Lancaster House. Britain will leave the customs union to boot, she said, and ‘Brexit must mean control of the number of people who come to Britain from Europe.’ As for EU citizens living in Britain, she wanted to ‘guarantee their status here in the UK, but we do need reciprocity’. She proposed a ‘phased process of implementation’ of a Brexit agreement, but not ‘some kind of permanent political purgatory’. Parliament would be able to vote on the final agreement between Britain and the EU. In sum, she declared: ‘No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain.

The Spectator

Who commands the sea?

From our UK edition

From ‘Raiders, submarines and some naval problems’, The Spectator, 20 January 1917: At the moment the enemy’s fleet is compelled to remain in its own ports and to challenge us from safe retreats, sometimes behind lock-gates and always behind well-sown minefields. Still, the fact remains that the enemy can come out if they like, though we cannot make them do so when we like, and further that with good luck they can actually smuggle out a raider or two. We are top-dog, but up till now we have not been able to get a good bite at the under-dog, and he remains, though in a humiliating position, quite fit for work and mischief.

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 12 January 2017

From our UK edition

Black background A Morris dancing troupe with blacked-up faces had to abandon its performance in a Birmingham shopping centre after being heckled and accused of racism. — There are several explanations for the tradition of Border Morris groups blackening their faces, but it was certainly established by 1509, when a Shrovetide banquet for ambassadors featured torch-bearers with blackened faces. — Some believe it to have derived from Spain and Portugal, where dancers blacked up as Moors. Others believe that it derives from the practice of poachers blackening up to conceal themselves in darkness. — Blacking up is punished more mildly now than in the 18th century: a 1723 anti-poaching law made it a capital offence to be caught in a forest with a blackened face.

The Spectator

Letters | 12 January 2017

From our UK edition

Freudian slap Sir: In his Notes (7 January), Charles Moore explores the uncharacteristic reaction of Matthew Parris to the referendum result. What is most puzzling about Parris and so many others like him is that their present outrage has so little in common with their rather tepid support for the EU in the run-up to the vote. Such a mismatch of cause and effect suggests a Freudian explanation may be appropriate. When an impulse is felt to be so dire that it cannot be expressed, a new object is substituted and the feelings are thus ventilated. Yet what original threat could be so catastrophic as to provoke such end-of-our-world hysteria in the first place?

The Spectator

No, he didn’t

From our UK edition

The irony of Barack Obama’s presidency is that while it began at a time when it seemed America’s fortunes could only improve, his inauguration day turned out to be his personal high water mark. The retiring President’s speech in Chicago this week contained flashes of the optimism that he brought to a country and a world which was reeling from the banking crisis and mired in the deepest recession since the 1930s. It recalled the sense of hope that he would lift America’s reputation abroad, shattered as it was by the Iraq war. Yet eight years on, even Obama’s keenest supporters are struggling to answer: what exactly is his legacy? ‘Yes, we did,’ he roared to the crowd, in reply to his old rallying cry of ‘Yes, we can.’ But did what?

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 12 January 2017

From our UK edition

Home Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour party, proposed a limit on incomes: ‘I would like to see some kind of high earnings cap, quite honestly,’ he said on the BBC’s Today. The London Underground went on strike for a day and Southern railway workers for three. Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein resigned as the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland in protest against the mishandling of a multi-million-pound energy scheme by Arlene Foster, the Democratic Unionist Party first minister, who was forced out of office in the power-sharing administration by his move. Mr McGuinness, who has spent a decade in the post, was also said to be suffering from a rare form of heart disease.

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Bonds of friendship

From our UK edition

From ‘The Rome conference and bonds of alliance’, The Spectator, 13 January 1917: There may be the greatest possible good, nay, even salvation, in partnership or alliance; but the fact that partnerships and alliances do involve loss of free will, and that a man cannot when he is in partnership be wholly master in his own house or office, must never be forgotten. Yet, strangely enough, this is a fact which is constantly ignored even by our experts in foreign affairs, with results which are often not only exceedingly unfair to the British nation as a whole, but grossly unfair to individuals.

Tuesday

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Full text: Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit speech

From our UK edition

Listen to the whole speech here: Whether you voted to Leave or to Remain, you voted for a better future for Britain. One thing is clear, the Tories cannot deliver that. So today I want to set how Labour will deliver that vision of a better Britain. This government is in disarray over Brexit. As the Prime Minister made clear herself  they didn’t plan for it before the referendum and they still don’t have a plan now. I voted and campaigned to remain and reform as many of you may know I was not uncritical of the European Union. It has many failings. Some people argued that we should have a second referendum. That case was put to our party’s membership last summer and defeated. Britain is now leaving the European Union.

Monday

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Full text: Theresa May’s ‘shared society’ speech

From our UK edition

Thank you for inviting me to be here this morning to deliver the prestigious Charity Commission Annual Lecture. I am delighted to have this opportunity to express my appreciation for all those who work in our charity sector and for those who freely give their time, money and expertise in the service of others. We are a country built on the bonds of family, community and citizenship and there is no greater example of the strength of those bonds than our great movement of charities and social enterprises. But the strength of that civil society – which I believe we should treasure deeply – does not just depend on the ingenuity, generosity and commitment of countless volunteers, social entrepreneurs and philanthropists.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 5 January 2017

From our UK edition

Yet another kind of snob Sir: May I offer another definition of a ‘snob’ to the one described by Bryan Appleyard (‘A different class of snob’, 31 December)? I have always believed that a snob is someone who has risen in the world and now looks down with disdain on those they have left behind. This is an altogether more cynical and divisive form of elitism than that of the serial narcissists Mr Appleyard describes in his article. In the United Kingdom the abolition of grammar schools and the incursion of cheap foreign labour have damaged the legitimate aspirations of those wishing to improve their lot in life, stalled social mobility, and polarised society.

The Spectator

Barometer | 5 January 2017

From our UK edition

Village people The government announced plans for 14 ‘garden villages’. The concept of a garden city or village is attributed to Ebenezer Howard, who founded the Garden City Association in 1899 and Letchworth Garden City in 1903. But he was inspired by his time in Chicago, which had already been nicknamed ‘Garden City’. — The term ‘garden village’, however, was coined by Alexander Turney Stewart, a Northern Irish Protestant who emigrated to the US with a suitcase full of linen and went on to found the world’s biggest department store, on Broadway, New York. — In 1869, looking for new ventures, he purchased 10,000 acres of Long Island.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 5 January 2017

From our UK edition

Home Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s ambassador to the EU, resigned; he had been expected to play an important part in talks on Brexit. In a lengthy email to staff he said: ‘Free trade does not just happen when it is not thwarted by authorities.’ He referred to ‘ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking’ and noted that we do not know the ‘negotiating objectives for the UK’s relationship with the EU’. Southern railways advised hundreds of thousands of commuters not to try to travel during a three-day strike by train drivers, due to begin on Monday. China began a direct freight rail service to Barking in London.

The Spectator

Sir Ivan’s exit

From our UK edition

The wonder about Sir Ivan Rogers’s resignation as Britain’s ambassador to the EU is that he was still in the job. He may have possessed useful knowledge about the workings of the EU, but he was also heavily associated with a failed way of conducting negotiations with it. It was he who advised David Cameron last February on his unsuccessful renegotiations of Britain’s relationship with the EU, which failed to convince the British people to vote to remain in the union. It would have been better and less disruptive had he resigned in the wake of the referendum last June, along with the Prime Minister.

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A killing to celebrate

From our UK edition

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 6 January 1917: The war has been crowded with romantic adventures by sea and land in every part of the world, but perhaps nothing is more sensational, more reminiscent of blue lights and the accents of warning and suspense from the orchestra, than the murder of the monk Rasputin in Petrograd… Whether those who took his life did so on the grounds of private revenge or of patriotism remains to be seen. In any case, we agree with Reuter’s correspondent that the disappearance of this sinister figure is a subject for congratulation for all true friends of Russia.