The song might have been one of the favourites to win, but the triumph of what Fraser Nelson described as a collaboration between ‘one of Scotland’s world class folk musicians’ and ‘the voice of a rising star of the Danish folk scene’. In this week’s arts lead Emma Hartley interviewed Eurovision winner Emmelie de Forest’s mentor, Fraser Neill, about the making of a very Scottish performer. Here’s a video of the two of them performing

Anne Boleyn was, allegedly, one of Henry VIII’s favourite wives; so why did he behead her? We’d have to rewind time to find out, but for now, the Tower of London have decided to convert their Banqueting Hall into a theatre, and to stage a play following the rise – and fall – of Anne Boleyn. Novelty it may be, but this doesn’t stop it from being an impressive play, as Lloyd Evans says in his review of it this week.

If Anne Boleyn were alive now, her life might have been recorded on one of Alan Dein’s Radio 4 programmes. His most recent series, Don’t Log Off, revolves around the world of internet chatrooms. As Kate Chisholm discovers in her radio review this weeks, the methodology leads him to a variety of bizarre characters, but what is most intriguing about them is ‘how frank Alan’s conversational partners are prepared to be, disclosing the most intimate and sometimes shocking details of their lives’. Here’s a clip from one of his most recent programmes, in which a Cairo interview is interrupted by gunshots.

‘Who doesn’t drift through life?’ asks Deborah Ross. ‘Did you ever have a plan?’ This week’s film, Something in the Air, is certainly ‘drifty’, but is this a good or a bad thing? At times, says Deborah, ‘I wanted to throttle the film for its vagueness’, but it is, at least, charmingly French. The trailer, too, is ‘charmingly vague’, but if that alone puts you off, the film’s probably not for you.

The post Spectator Play: what’s worth watching, listening to or going to this weekend appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Here is a video from earlier today of the wife and step-father of Drummer Lee Rigby speaking about him and their love for him.

The post Drummer Lee Rigby appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

1. Do not take to Twitter to say: ‘There aren’t words … Just pray4victims’. If you don’t have words to say, then shut up. If you want to pray, just pray. Don’t bloody well tell everyone else to. It’s obnoxious.

2. Equally, do not Tweet ‘It’s too soon to voice opinion on this tragedy’ – that’s fatuous, especially if you then try to voice an opinion on this tragedy.

3. Never EVER tweet exactly what you are seeing on a TV news channel with the words ‘BREAKING’. It’s moronic. Also, don’t spell it BREKAING just to convey the great urgency of your revelation.

4. Do not use Twitter to try to connect yourself to tragic events that have nothing to do with you, in the hope that someone will share your pain . Having an aunt who lives near Woolwich does not mean you are a victim. Having once drunk in a bar in Boston does not mean you are part of the city.

5. Do not tweet the words ‘WE ARE ALL [INSERT NAME OF SUFFERING GROUP] NOW’ – or make any other declaration of weird solidarity with the victims. It’s their tragedy not yours.

6. Do not search for a long and meaningful piece that is vaguely linked to the disaster and post a link to it saying ‘SEMINAL PIECE’ or ‘MUST READ’.

7. Do not make any grandiose statements along the lines of ‘Together we are STRONGER’ or ‘WE STAND UNITED’. It might make you feel better, but you just sound like a tit.

8. Do not ‘retweet’ any of the above offences. It makes you look even more preposterous.

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More than a year ago the Government consulted on plans to create a statutory register of lobbyists. Their vision was deeply flawed – only including agency lobbyists and omitting the vast majority of lobbyists working in-house or in law firms, trade unions and so on. So the three trade bodies who represent the lobbying firms and individual lobbyists got together in an attempt to develop a workable and acceptable register. The APPC has operated an effective register for many years and along with PRCA and CIPR could see that there was a merit in developing a statutory register of lobbyists so long as it was universal – creating an accessible online resource regularly updated with the details of all those who seek to influence public policy and law and covering lobbying activity across all levels of Government, not just Whitehall.

This so-called universal register would allow armchair auditors at a glance to see who’s working in the UK as a registered lobbyist. And in so doing it would prevent those conflicts of interest that have emerged in recent years. Only recently a minister was compromised when it became clear he was employing someone who also worked as a lobbyist – a completely unacceptable conflict.

More importantly a register would – combined with departmental data on which ministers are meeting which lobbyists – provide a more complete picture of the interactions between the lobbied and the lobbyists. It’s really not rocket science and I dare say it enjoys support from most parts of the Commons. David Cameron himself spoke passionately about the need for reform before the start of his Premiership, the Lib Dems and Labour back the principle of a register as does the Public Administration Select Committee and even we – the trade bodies who represent lobbyists – are backing reform.

Intriguingly the politics of dropping the bill seem odd. Unlike the policy red meat for the backbenches included in the new legislative agenda like a tough immigration bill – or similarly the measures that were shelved to shore up backbench support – omitting lobbying reform doesn’t seem to give Cameron a great deal of kudos amongst his own MPs. I’m speculating here – but dropping lobbying reform could be used by Nigel Farage as another way to reinforce his own party’s anti-establishment credentials (‘the Coalition refused to regulate the lobbyists’ and so on).

Chloe Smith admitted recently that Cabinet Office Ministers have had no meetings with lobbyists on this issue since September last year. I’m afraid that won’t do. Three years since the Coalition made its pledge and still with no legislation and none planned for the next 12 months the holding line that the Cabinet office keeps wheeling out that “the Government is committed to introducing a statutory register of lobbyists” (echoing Clegg’s words this week) is no longer credible.  It is difficult not to conclude that the Government is – quietly – washing its hands altogether of lobbying reform.

Iain Anderson is the Deputy Chairman of the Association of Professional Political Consultants, and co-founder of the Cicero Group. 

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‘According to the pessimistic narrative of national decline, Britain is now drowning in the effluence of moral collapse. We inhabit a country supposedly awash with vice and decadence. If we aren’t playing poker or bingo on our computer screens, then we are watching pornography. Our streets are said to be dominated by betting shops and lap-dancing clubs, by drug addicts and binge-drinkers.

Yet for all its hold on the popular imagination, the idea of worsening degeneracy in modern Britain is not backed up by the evidence. Our society is becoming less disordered and depraved. What is falling out of fashion is not personal responsibility but the kind of destructive behaviour that used to worry the puritans.’

Subscribers can read the rest of the piece here. Non-subscribers, you can join us today from just £1 an issue. Full subscription details can be found here.

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Burke is, I suspect, one of the great unread authors; but he’s worth studying because he’s influenced so many of our past and present concerns. The place of tradition is one example; Burke sometimes defended traditions for their own sake, and one wonders what he might have made of gay marriage, the ‘snooper’s charter’ or the European Union. And his conception of the individual’s relationship with society (which one might broadly define as the institutions and ‘little platoons’ that make the nation state) is another example. As Jesse Norman puts it in an interview with the Spectator published today:

‘Burke has a completely different concept [to Hobbes and Rousseau] of the social contract. He doesn’t think individuals should be considered in that theoretic way. On the contrary, he thinks individuals should be embodied as culturally engaged individuals: molecularly rather than atomically. He thinks institutions themselves cannot just be thought of as groups of individuals. Therefore he has got a much knottier conception of society. Burke would say we cannot understand the notion of an independent human society. He would argue that it is the state of nature to be in society.’

Philip Collins, the Times columnist, has adopted this theme, arguing that Burke’s faith in society and his critique of individualism and personal corruption (see his almost mad pursuit of Warren Hastings) make him an influence on the left in 2013.

Burke might have been suspicious of Ed Miliband’s ill-defined politics; scenting, perhaps, the fetid whiff of ideology, of which Burke most definitely disapproved. But Collins is on to something, at least where conservatism is concerned. Jesse Norman says that Burke saw society as ‘an enabler of wellbeing’. It’s a striking phrase, contrasting with the rhetoric favoured by many libertarians and neo-liberals. It is, for example, the very opposite of the incantation to ‘get the state out of the way’ and leave us all be. Edmund Burke may have been the father of modern conservatism; but his blood seems to run thinner through those particular post-modern varieties.

Of course, the two examples quoted at the outset are related: an argument in favour of institutions can transform into an argument in favour of the continuity of tradition, so that those institutions can still shape individuals. No institution is static; but it is a weakness of Burke that the distinction he drew between ‘reform’ and ‘change’ left enough room for some to conclude, on occasion, that there is no difference so both must be resisted.

This may not have been a grave problem in an essentially autocratic system; but it can be a very serious problem in a system of universal suffrage where the definition of an institution is not fixed, particularly for a party that defines itself, to an extent, on defending tradition.

Many unaligned voters are perplexed by modern conservatism, which is largely an alliance of neo-liberals and social conservatives. Indeed, these apparent multitudes sometimes exist within the heart of one person. Some traditions and institutions (such as marriage, which many on the right have defended) are more obvious to conservatives than others (such as the collective and individual rights embedded in employment law, which many on the right challenge). How can, the unaligned voter might ask, these people contain such contradictions?

A question for the heirs of Burke (particularly the socially conservative ones) is whether modern society has outgrown the straight interpretation of his conception of tradition and reform. Given that Burke – and other Whigs – understood history to unfold gradually, it is not unreasonable to assume that it has.  This would not require a huge leap; the neo-liberal dimension of their being has already made it.

The post Edmund Burke and post-modern conservatism appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

This is undeniably good news. The public have consistently shown their desire to see net migration reduced and we now have a government which is committed to lowering net migration and has so far had considerable success.

Many on the left, who cannot bring themselves to admit that net migration of 200,000 per year is too much for a small island such as ours, continue to perpetuate the idea that, in the process of reducing net migration the government is harming the economy. Fortunately for the rest of us, there is very little evidence to back this up. It is high time that was made clear.

For three consecutive quarters, Sarah Mulley of the IPPR has tried to suggest that falling net migration is the result of a reduction in international students which is not only harming the UK economy but will also prove to be ultimately futile since fewer students arriving means fewer students leaving in the future. See here, here and here.

Once again, we find ourselves explaining why the IPPR is wrong.

As a rule a reduction in inflows will lead to a reduction in outflows further down the line as there will be fewer people to leave. However, this argument makes a significant and incorrect assumption when applied to the reduction in students witnessed over the last year or so – that all of those students who have been prevented from arriving in the UK would have left at the end of their course, which is of course incorrect.

Contrary to what Sarah Mulley claims, there is plenty of evidence of significant abuse of the student route which we have pointed out here. When the Labour government’s points based system (PBS) was first introduced in 2008, student applications had to be temporarily suspended in some parts of South Asia amid fears that the dramatic rise in applications was fuelled in part by fraudulent applications. In the first year of Labour’s Points Based System (PBS) alone the National Audit Office estimated that between 40,000 and 50,000 ‘students’ entered the UK to work and not study.

And just last year the Home Office found that 48 per cent of Pakistani students and 59 per cent of Indian students who were interviewed as part of a pilot scheme would have potentially been refused a visa on credibility grounds.

The vast majority of these potential refusals were applying for further/higher education and not university.

That is no doubt why the fall in student visas over the last year has come not from the university sector but in the Further Education/College sector, where the majority of abuse has been identified. Moreover, the fall in students was largely from Pakistan and India which saw a 62 per cent and 38 per cent decrease year on year respectively. This is unsurprising given the evidence of abuse as noted above.

The graph below shows this very clearly:

The reality is that bogus students are being prevented from studying in the UK – something we should all celebrate. Meanwhile, university applications are up 5 per cent and work visas (Tier 2) are also up 7 per cent. The government’s progress is something to be celebrated – net migration is coming down without any significant damage to business or higher education.  There remains much more to be done but let us offer at least two cheers for the government’s considerable achievements so far.

Sir Andrew Green is Chairman of Migration Watch.

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Sally is covered in ordure at present, while weathering some dismal ‘innocent face’ banter from all and sundry. But, once the schadenfreude has abated and the damages paid, Fleet Street’s libel reformers may adopt her case for their cause. Stranger things have happened. Indeed, there is already rumbling on the wires.

In the meantime, vindicated Lord McAlpine’s solicitor sounds a clear and concise note: ‘Mr Tugendhat’s judgment is one of great public interest and provides a warning to, and guidance for, people who use social media.’

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Spinks was arrested by Czech police in August. Two months later, once he had been extradited to the UK, news of his arrest made headlines. ‘Following extradition from the Czech Republic he will serve the 18 remaining months of his sentence’, the BBC reported.

So imagine my surprise on Monday when I received a message from a friend in Prague telling me that he had spotted Willem hanging around outside Temple, a notorious gay hustler bar. Then another friend told me that Willem had been in Prague since March. ‘Toucan Apartments’, the rental service he ran prior to his arrest, registered a Facebook page on April 12th of this year.

Upon hearing this news, I spent most of Wednesday ringing various British government agencies attempting to get an answer as to how a convicted, violent paedophile, who had previously violated the terms of his probation and was on the lam for 15 years, could have been released after having served less than half of his remaining sentence. Needless to say, I was not able to get a straight answer from any UK government official, and was repeatedly told that even the most basic information about Spinks’ case – like the date of his release or even which prison he had been held in – was unavailable to the public. The most that the UK Ministry of Justice would provide me with is the following statement, which I produce below in its entirety:

‘All sexual offences are abhorrent. Very tough sentences are available to the courts for those who commit the most serious offences including a new mandatory life sentence which we have introduced for anyone convicted of a second very serious sexual or violent crime.

‘We do not comment on individuals. Any convicted sex offender who breaches their licence conditions faces spending the duration of their sentence in prison.’

Before he was arrested, Willem was known for throwing a lavish birthday party for himself every July on a boat in Prague’s scenic Vltava River. A Prague friend predicts that, this summer, thanks to the inexplicable laxity of the British Justice system, Willem will entertain his ‘annual congregation of paedos’ there once again.

The post The British paedophile who’s still on the run appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Unity is not surprising: there is not much one can reasonably say about such events without jerking a knee and making oneself hostage to fortune. The beheading of an off-duty soldier is no more representative of Islam than the reaction of the English Defence League is representative of patriotism. The good that has emerged from Wednesday’s evil is that the moderate majority has been brought together.

The prime minister, who has been at his best in the last 24 hours, expressed that positive fact with the full dignity of his office. (Indeed, it makes me wonder if David Cameron would be more effective if he cast himself as the nation’s uncle rather than a ‘radical’ reformer. Given that Cameron has neither the full support of his party nor the country, the steady virtues of national unity and renewal might suit him better than the divisive flash and thunder that he often shows, especially on the floor of the House of Commons and in set-piece speeches.)

The second pattern concerns policy. There is, apparently, some support for Lord Carlisle’s suggestion that parliament revisit the ‘Snooper’s Charter’, the bill extending the security services’ power to monitor communications.  The Times carried a report on the subject yesterday, noting John Lord Reid’s view that the policy was ‘essential’ (£). The argument has been strengthened by knowledge that the attackers were known to Mi5; the suggestion is that further surveillance powers might stop future murders.

Whether wire-tapping would have stopped what appears to have been an opportunistic crime is unclear. And, given that Mi5 appears to have dropped the ball on this occasion, it is worth remembering that demanding further powers is in its interests to reduce embarrassment. However, Carlisle et al may have a point: closer surveillance would favour the security services in their battle against unsophisticated criminals who communicate using insecure telephones, email and so forth. But they are less convincing when the enemy (be it terrorist or otherwise) has evolved some way beyond hacking innocent people to death.

The ‘Snooper’s Charter’ is a threat to civil liberties, which is (as Nick Cohen argued in a recent magazine piece) bad enough. But it’s also obsolete, which is worse. Secure digital encryption is a fact of life; governments, large businesses and a growing number of the super-rich are already using it on top-end mobile phones, email networks and other devices. (See the new Vertu phone for a working example.) The technological expertise will proliferate; and the benefits will soon be available in a shop near you. You will be able to buy communications products with inbuilt software that ensures what you send, say or write is untappable, unhackable and inaudible to the outside world, providing that the other party has the same settings.

There will be fluctuations when particular codes are broken; but the direction of travel is not in doubt and the security implications are clear: “human intelligence” is going to have to make a comeback in a more private and atomised world. Security policy should reflect that likely future, not John Reid’s yesterday.

The post Revive the Snooper’s Charter? It’s already obsolete appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

In his new book, Edmund Burke, Jesse Norman dissects Burke’s outstanding intellect, and his career. He then asks how these ideas might be applied to modern politics.

Jesse Norman is Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire. In 2012 he was named as the Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year. He is a member of the Treasury Select Committee and is a senior fellow at the think tank, Policy Exchange. He has also taught philosophy at University College London and Birbeck College.

Many of Burke’s critics have called him an apologist for aristocracy and privilege. You disagree, why?

They do see him as that. They also refer to him as a paid hack who was a mouthpiece for his political masters. What my book aims to do is show that is wrong. The idea of Burke being a paid hack relies on the suggestion that Burke comes to his views about political parties —  and their anchoring role in government — out of a desire to please the Whig oligarchs. [But] we now know that Burke developed his ideas about political parties at least 8 years before he even entered politics. So that theory actually falls by the way.

What Burke is fired up about is this hatred of injustice, and a hatred of the abuse of power. Some examples of this include: Burke’s dislike of the how the English treated the Irish; what he sees as Britain suppressing the American colonists; or how he perceived the British monarch buying and corrupting power within Parliament; or in his critique of the French revolution, which he regards as the abuse of popular power to overturn the social order. That is actually the greater coherence of what Burke is about.

Can you talk about the idea of the sublime, and how it influenced Burke’s own philosophical and political outlook?

One of the things that it is intrinsic to Burke is this notion that somehow identity is tied up with the little platoons — as he calls them — in The Reflections on the Revolution in France. That idea or conception of human emotion you find in his book A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. [In this book] he argues that it is those human affections that attract us to the beautiful; and that feeling of awe in our emotions, which gives us respect for the sublime.

The social order is also part of Burke’s idea of the sublime. It’s here you get his distinctive thought that the complexity of society outstrips our capacity to understand it. In Burke’s view, we are meddling with something of which we know little or nothing, when we attempt to pass great ideologically driven policies to upend the social order, and destroy the fabric and relationships that underlies it. There is also this idea of the sublime that shows Burke’s conception of political leadership as rooted in modesty and humility; it’s an awareness that the individual is a very small component of a much larger social order. Therefore we must treat it with respect

You write in the book about Burke’s powers of prophecy, particularly in The Reflections on the Revolution in France: where he predicted the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the reign of terror after the French Revolution. Was this one of his greatest achievements?

What is extraordinary about Burke is his capacity for prophecy. That comes out of three things: first is his idea of history and the potential threat to the social order. The second is the deep understanding he has of human change, of human personality and of human nature. The third is a very nuanced and detailed grasp of the specific circumstances behind particular changes.

When the French revolution takes place in 1789, and the whole of the world is marveling at how good it is going to be, Burke is instantly able to see that the parallel is not going to be the peaceful Glorious Revolution of 1688 [in Britain], but the utterly disastrous and bloody [English] Civil War of 1641.

Conor Cruise O’ Brien—another Burke biographer—once referred to Burke as someone who believed in ‘ordered freedom’? What do you think he meant by that?

I think Cruise O’ Brien was absolutely right in that phrase. For Burke there was a deep distinction between liberty and license. This is an old distinction, but Burke makes a lot of use in it. Licence is an imagined freedom, where an individual imagines that they can do anything they like, regardless of circumstance. This is the individual you find in economics: it’s all about incentives and there are no constraints except those imposed by preferences. That is a terrible blunder because it licenses all kinds of behaviour that are highly unattractive. The recent banking crisis is a classic example of this.

Burke opposed that idea. Instead he believed that liberty comes from the constraints and structure of a society and the greater social order. These are the things that actually allow you to do well in society and prosper. These constraints don’t restrict you, they actually enable you. That, in my view, is a much more profound notion, because it points to a much better perception of government.

For example, the liberal conception of government often merely seeks just to get government out of the way because the only thing that matters is having as much licence as possible. But in the Burkean conception, government has a positive role, shaping society, without overly burdening it. Instead you get a much more nuanced notion of government, as well as a better theory of how people are.

One of Burke’s intellectual arch nemeses was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Could you briefly talk about where their paths differed: what was Burke’s main critique of Rousseau?

Burke’s critique of Rousseau evolves, and that is complicated by the fact that there are a number of things that he and Rousseau would actually agree on. They both reject what you might call a scientific approach to humankind. But where Burke disagrees with Rousseau is that he is much less utopian about how institutions should operate. Rousseau wants the general will to be revealed through institutions, and a general levelling, which allowed individual wills to be exercised without the kind of power relations you find in society. Burke has the exact opposite view. He regards society as the enabler of wellbeing. He is not a utopian.

In fact, he is very grounded in society as it actually is. So the counterpart of Rousseau’s utopian idea, for Burke, is a hatred of ideology that is irrationally driven. He saw this as misguided and often driven by personal vanity.

You can see Rousseau as a kind of enabler of many of the ambitious social projects of the 20th century: such as fascism and totalitarianism. You can see Burke piloting a kind of conservative reaction to [these ideas], which would never allow individuals the kind of power that puts their ideas into action. And which would never allow the social order to be overturned on the whim of an ideology.

Can you talk about how Burke’s ideas differ from Hobbes, with respect to the social contract?   

In the Hobbesian perception of the social contract, individuals are treated in a game-theoretic way, where the question is: what is the minimum motivation you can give to an individual in order to generate the theory of legitimate government. And the minimum motivation that Hobbes gives, is the fear of violence and death. That gives an individual a reason to want to suspend some of their sovereignty, and repose it in a higher force, or state, that is a legitimate government.

Now Burke has a completely different concept of the social contract. He doesn’t think individuals should be considered in that game-theoretic way. On the contrary, he thinks individuals should be embodied as culturally engaged individuals: molecularly, so to speak, rather than atomically. He thinks institutions themselves cannot just be thought of as groups of individuals.

Therefore he has got a much knottier conception of society. Burke would say we cannot understand the notion of what it is to be human an independent human of society. He would argue that man’s nature is to be in society.

The incoherence in Hobbes’ project can be pointed out by asking Hume’s question: how it might be possible for any individuals to strike a social contract if they didn’t already have the institution of promising? But if that’s true, then the social contract cannot be the true basis of legitimate government. In other words: there is something self-defeating about the Hobbesian project. Burke had a hint of how that might be.

Edmund Burke by Jesse Norman MP is published by Harper Press.

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Rigby, 25 and father of a two-year-old son, was originally from Greater Manchester and served his country in Cyprus and Afghanistan. Here is the MoD’s official statement on the tragedy:

‘It is with great sadness that the Ministry of Defence must announce that the soldier killed in yesterday’s incident in Woolwich, South East London, is believed to be Drummer Lee Rigby, of 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (attached to the Regimental Recruiting Team in London). The soldier’s details are being released at this stage pending formal identification from the Metropolitan Police Service.

‘Drummer Lee Rigby, or ‘Riggers’ to his friends, was born in July 1987 in Crumpsall, Manchester. He joined the Army in 2006 and on successful completion of his infantry training course at Infantry Training Centre Catterick he was selected to be a member of the Corps of Drums and posted to 2nd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (also known as “Second Fusiliers” or “2 RRF”).

‘His first posting was as a machine gunner in Cyprus where the Battalion was serving as the resident Infantry Battalion in Dhekelia. Having performed a plethora of tasks while in Cyprus, he returned to the UK in the early part of 2008 to Hounslow, West London. Here, Drummer Rigby stood proudly outside the Royal Palaces as part of the Battalion’s public duties commitment. He was an integral member of the Corps of Drums throughout the Battalion’s time on public duties, the highlight of which was being a part of the Household Division’s Beating the Retreat – a real honour for a line infantry Corps of Drums.

‘In April 2009 Drummer Rigby deployed on Operations for the first time to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, where he served as a member of the Fire Support Group in Patrol Base Woqab. On returning to the UK he completed a second tour of public duties and then moved with the Battalion to Celle, Germany, to be held at a state of high readiness for contingency operations as part of the Small Scale Contingency Battle Group. In 2011 Drummer Rigby took up a Recruiting post in London where he also assisted with duties at Regimental Headquarters in the Tower of London.

‘An extremely popular and witty soldier, Drummer Rigby was a larger than life personality within the Corps of Drums and was well known, liked and respected across the Second Fusiliers. He was a passionate and life-long Manchester United fan.

‘A loving father to his son Jack, aged 2 years, he will be sorely missed by all who knew him. The regiment’s thoughts and prayers are with his family during this extremely difficult time. “Once a Fusilier, always a Fusilier.’

The post Lee Rigby named as victim of Woolwich attack appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Merryn Somerset Webb warns that the scheme, which underwrites mortgages, will lead to rising house prices. She argues that ‘if anyone other than the government manipulated a market to this extent, it would be illegal’:

The latest is the one that worries even the king of stimulus himself, Sir Mervyn King. It’s called Help To Buy, Osborne’s latest market-distorting scheme that effectively forces the already overcommitted taxpayer to underwrite £12 billion of mortgage lending to people who haven’t got an adequate deposit of their own, or who lack the income to have a go at producing one and who therefore shouldn’t really qualify for a mortgage at all.

Still, however Sir Mervyn feels about it, most people think the scheme will work as long as borrowers are persuaded that it is possible for house prices to keep rising — as they usually do. The Centre for Economics and Business Research predicts that prices will surpass their pre-crisis peak next year, while Knight Frank has just put out a survey noting that Londoners’ expectations of the value of their houses have hit a record high. Even this is unlikely to be the end of it: as one enthusiastic building society chief keen on ‘even more initiatives’ wrote last week, ‘There’s no shortage of ways government could step in.’

It all sounds so stupid, doesn’t it? Why would you want to obstruct so completely the free operation of a vital market? It comes down to what Sir Mervyn calls the paradox of policy, whereby ‘policy measures that are desirable in the short term appear diametrically opposite to those needed in the long term.’ We need to move away from attempting to create an economic recovery out of consumption, and work on increasing investment in productive areas. Ideally, by cutting our debt and pushing up exports. But until that happens we must work to avoid total misery by supporting the bits of the economy we used to rely on — hence the low interest rates designed to save our banks (which couldn’t cope with a property crash and need to rebuild their balance sheets) and stop consumption collapsing (would you be able to afford to go out to dinner if your mortgage rate was 8 per cent?).

You can read the full piece here. But the Spectator wasn’t alone in criticising the scheme this week. One of the few statements not veiled in obfuscatory language in the International Monetary Fund’s verdict on the UK economy yesterday was on Help to Buy. The IMF’s concluding statement said:

The 2013 Budget announced a new scheme, Help To Buy, aimed at boosting activity in the housing market. This measure may temporarily help boost confidence in the housing market, but there is a risk that, in the absence of an adequate supply response, the result would ultimately be mostly house price increases that would work against the aim of boosting access to housing. To mitigate this risk and engineer a supply response, the government should consider fiscal disincentives for holding land without development.

Housing starts still aren’t looking particularly encouraging, and as I reported earlier this month, those at the top of the Coalition have largely given up on any further attempts at reforming the planning system. So it isn’t looking very hopeful that there will be the ‘adequate supply response’ that the IMF is looking for. Coffee House also revealed in the autumn that Jake Berry had made very similar proposals to Number 10 about penalising landbanking, but ministers have been reluctant to take this on board so far. Perhaps now Berry is a member of the Prime Minister’s policy board, things will change.

Still, at least the real problems with the current mix of policies might only become apparent when the architects are long out of government. Which isn’t a very reassuring thought.

The post The friendless Help-to-Buy scheme appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Now, after Woolwich, the Prime Minister has said, ‘There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act.’

Even after all these years our leaders continue to make this terrible mistake. Politicians or police chiefs must not make theological pronouncements. Though undoubtedly guided by good intentions, their line does not help but in fact exacerbates a problem – on all sides.

There is a civil war underway in Islam which has gone on in some fashion since the religion’s founding. That battle is – among many others – a battle between those who read their religion literally and those who read it metaphorically. The vast majority of Muslims in Britain read it in the latter way which is why – contrary to the opinions of Nick Griffin et al – most Muslims noticeably do not go around chopping peoples’ heads off. To argue as Griffin does is ludicrous – an insult to our collective intelligence as well as our decency. It remains a fact that cannot be said enough that most British Muslims will respond to events such as those in Woolwich yesterday with as much abhorrence as those of us who are not Muslim.

But politicians should be aware that to enter the theological debate on this is to enter a debate that they – and the reformers in Islam – may well lose. The Islamic faith is undoubtedly and visibly dogged today by a resurgent, violent, fundamentalist strain which cannot be ignored. It is in control of a number of Muslim-majority countries (including Saudi Arabia and Iran) and it has voluble front-groups, representatives and apologists in the UK.

And here is the problem.  Islamic extremists like those who committed these horrific acts yesterday did not get where they did from nowhere. It is not just a serious misinterpretation but a mistake to think that what they did was – as so many commentators have said so hopefully – ‘delusional’ or ‘senseless’. This is to wholly misread the situation, replacing reality with hope.

The Islamist, extremist, interpretation of Islam might very well not be the correct interpretation of Islam. It is evidently not a good or nice interpretation of Islam. And it is obviously not the version of Islam which all of us who desire to live in a civilised world would want anyone to follow. But, to reiterate, we must realise that the extremists do not get where they have got from nowhere.

And here is the problem with politicians making any statement at all about this. Denying that there is anything ‘in Islam’ that might justify violent actions, although a nice idea, sacrifices truth for the sake of convenience. No good – in the long term – can come from this.

For the Prime Minister’s claim not only feeds the fundamentalists in Islam and a propensity for denial in other Islamic quarters – it also fuels those who will use times like this to blame all Muslims or indeed ‘all Islam’. Members of the EDL or any other organisation that wants to take to the streets or anyone who carries out bigoted acts of violence thrive exactly on such talk. They will think that they can see something nobody else can see – which everybody else is blind to and requires them to wake people up to. This is not a healthy attitude in an individual, and is a disastrous impulse in a street-movement.

Anybody can pick up a Quran and read a verse such as ‘the verse of the sword’ (‘slay the infidels wherever you find them’). Many members of the far-right as well as the terrorists have done a little or a lot of reading and noticed exactly such things. Both sides will read that Mohammed beheaded people himself and they will read that he fought in many bloody battles. They will also notice that he had some very unpleasant things to say about those who are ‘enemies’ of Islam. He did not, to draw one obvious comparison, always advocate turning the other cheek.

But anybody picking up a Quran or a life of Mohammed can also see another glaring fact – which is that although Islam certainly has many invocations to violence within its core texts and the life of its founder, it is also threaded through with calls for peace. It is a contradictory religion just as we are contradictory people. It is neither wholly one thing nor wholly the other. And it is the good fortune of mankind that most Muslims follow the peaceable side of their religion rather than the side of the sword.

Dealing with the underlying theological issues of Islam is going to take a long time. It will outlast most of us.  But the work is underway. One of the greatest honours and pleasures of my life in recent years has been getting to know some of the exceptionally brave and principled individuals who are leading this vital fight within their faith.

But those who pretend that the problems are not there do not help these reformers. They hinder them.  And along the way they enrage those who would lump even the greatest reformer in with the worst jihadist.

So what is a Prime Minister to do?  It has long been my belief that politicians should not talk about this at all. They should not talk about theology.  Instead of saying what the Quran is or isn’t, or what Islam is or isn’t, they should simply say what British citizens should and should not do, explain what rights we all share and punish our collective enemies. As I have said a thousand times for more than a decade – our societies cannot and must not get caught into the civil war within Islam. To make any theological pronouncement is to get caught in that war.

We must simply state and restate what our own principles are and what British people of all faiths can expect when they live here. And as for the Islamic reformers?  We must not downplay the challenges they face. We must simply be good to them, be kind to them, and wish them well.

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Before this vile attack in Woolwich, all the talk in Westminster was of Cameron’s difficult relationship with his own party. Despite a fortnight of good economic news, the headlines were all about Tory tensions over Europe and splits over gay marriage.

To many Tories, including some Cabinet ministers, it feels horribly like the 1990s all over again. But there are two crucial differences with then. First, there’s been no Black Wednesday. However far off his deficit reduction plan he may be, George Osborne has never been forced to admit his economic policy is wrong. This means that the coalition has a good chance of claiming credit for the recovery that appears to be, finally under way. Second, there’s no Tony Blair on the scene. Not only was Blair an immensely talented politician but he was also prepared to close down Tory advantages. Labour’s 1997 manifesto committed to matching Tory spending plans for the first two years, not putting up either the basic or higher rate of income tax, and to holding a referendum before trying to enter the single currency. By contrast, Ed Miliband wants to win a mandate to govern in a distinctly Labour manner. He won’t match Tory pledges on spending, welfare and a Europe referendum.

In the magazine this week, I argue that this means that a Tory defeat at the next election is far from inevitable. But it will become so if the Tories continue to publicly parade their divisions.

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This murder in Woolwich was an uncommon act of barbarity; the product too of a kind of mental illness. That does not excuse the act, far from it, and there’s no need to be sparing in our condemnation. But, appalled as we may be, it seems important to recognise and remember just how unusual these acts remain.

There will, quite properly, be consideration of whether the security service could have done more. Nevertheless it is foolish to suppose that MI5 and the police can predict, counter or foil every would-be assassin. Occasionally the bomber – or in this instance the machete-wielder, gets through. Nevertheless, this was the first successful jihadist murder in London since 2005. The 1970s and 1980s were much more dangerous times.

That is not meant as a way of minimising or downplaying yesterday’s horrors, merely as a reminder that they should be put in some kind of context and considered in some kind of perspective.

The Prime Minister’s remarks this morning were well-judged. So too Paul Goodman’s article at ConservativeHome. By contrast there is an unpleasant undercurrent of I told you so nonsense coming from sections of both right and left. Ken Livingston and George Galloway, surely to no-one’s surprise, have lived down to already low expectations. As a general rule, anyone whose reaction to this kind of event is to use it as a supporting pillar for their own longstanding prejudices should probably not be trusted.

Far from being in denial, most sensible people – that is, most people who have ever considered the issue – have known that something like this could happen and, indeed, probably would occur at some point. But it seems sensible, surely, to contemplate these risks in a sober and restrained manner. Hysteria is counter-productive, not least since it grants lunatics what they want. There is no need to meet their declaration of “war” with one of our own.

That doesn’t mean ignoring them or the threat they pose. Of course not. But there is nothing to be gained from judging all muslims (or all muslim converts) by the actions of a deranged and unrepresentative minority. There is no such thing as collective guilt in circumstances such as these. It is utterly depressing, therefore, that, quite sensibly, comments have to be closed on posts such as this.

But, in general, the response to yesterday’s savagery has, I think, been impressively restrained. Ingrid Loyau-Kennett spoke for the country as a whole when she warned the killers: You’re going to lose. It is only you against many. As long as we remember that, we will prevail.

The post You’re going to lose. It is only you against many. appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

He should be commended for taking special care to insist that yesterday’s attack ‘was also a betrayal of Islam an of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country’ and that the fault for the killing ‘lies solely and purely with the sickening individuals who carried out this appalling attack’. His statement contained a long section on why there was nothing in Islam that justified this atrocity. The Cobra meeting earlier this morning discussed not only community cohesion but also the ‘strength and unity of response from Muslim community leaders’.

The murder suspects yesterday told the brave Ingrid Loyau-Kennett who confronted them that ‘we want to start a war in London tonight’. They failed. And the Prime Minister’s statement was designed to show the futility of communities dividing in the wake of this attack.

The post PM avoids knee-jerk response to Woolwich attack appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

This morning I have chaired a meeting of Cobra and I want to thank the police and the security services for the incredible work they do to keep our country safe. There are police investigations and security service operations underway, so obviously there is a limit on what I can say. But already a number of things are clear: first, this country will be absolutely resolute in its stand against violent extremism and terror. We will never give in to terror or terrorism in any of its forms. Second, this view is shared by every community in our country.

This was not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life, it was also a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country. There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act. We will defeat violent extremism by standing together, by backing our police and security services, and above all, by challenging the poisonous narrative of extremism on which this violence feeds.

Britain works with our international partners to make the world safe from terrorism. Terrorism that has taken more Muslim lives than any other religion. It is an utter perversion of the truth to pretend anything different. That is why there is absolutely no justification for these acts. And the fault for them lies solely and purely with the sickening individuals who carried out this appalling attack.

Confronting extremism is a job for us all. And the fact that our communities will unite in doing this was vividly demonstrated by the brave cub pack leader Ingrid Loyau-Kennett who confronted one of the attackers on the streets of Woolwich yesterday afternoon. When told by the attacker he wanted to start a war in London, she replied ‘you’re going to lose. It is only you versus many.’ She spoke for us all.
The police and security services will follow every lead, will turn over every piece of evidence, will make every connection and will not rest until we know every single detail of what happened, and we’ve brought all of those responsible to justice. I know from three years of being Prime Minister that the police and intelligence services work around the clock to keep us safe from violent extremists. I watch their work every week. They do an outstanding job. They show incredible heroism, much of which cannot be reported. They have my staunch support and the support of the whole country.

The point that the two suspects in this horrific attack were known to the security services has been widely reported. You would not expect me to comment on this when a criminal investigation is ongoing. But what I can say is this: as is the normal practice in these sorts of cases, the independent police complaints commission will be able to review the actions of the police, and the intelligence and security committee will be able to do the same for the wider agencies. But nothing should be done to get in the way of their absolutely vital work.

After an event like this, it is natural that questions will be asked about what additional steps can be taken to keep us safe. I will make sure those questions are asked and answered. But I’m not in favour of knee-jerk responses. The police have responded with heightened security and activity, and that is right. But one of the best ways of defeating terrorism is to go about our normal lives. And that is what we shall all do. Thank you.

The post David Cameron’s statement on the Woolwich attack appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

All credit to the woman police officer who shot the scumbags, although I suspect we will soon have an inquest into why it took the ‘boyden’ (that’s ghetto slang for police, apparently, dear readers) took 20 minutes to arrive.

The post The words ‘terrorist attack’ only dignify the barbarism appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Janan Ganesh from the Financial Times also joins to discuss Tory wars and why the party membership is to blame for the disconnect. James Forsyth disagrees, and argues the Tory leadership has to take their share of responsibility for the disagreements, and make appropriate amends. Plus, Fraser Nelson discusses Google’s tax avoidance, the Prime Minister’s unwillingness to tackle the issue and Cameroon’s close connection to the Californian giant.

You can subscribe through iTunes to have it delivered to your computer every week, or listen with the embedded player below:

The View from 22 — 23 May 2013. Length: 28:23

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The post The View from 22 — Osborne’s property bubble, the ongoing Tory wars and Google’s taxing issue appeared first on Spectator Blogs.