Spectator

Reigning for dummies

  What is the Queen’s secret? She seems to defy political gravity. Right now, an English monarch is in Australia being feted by her subjects, who seem delighted by this very un-modern constitutional arrangement. Paul Keating, the former Prime Minister of Australia, recounts in The Times today the time he advised the monarch to let go. “I told the Queen as politely and gently as I could that I believed that majority of Australians felt the monarchy was now an anachronism; that it had gently drifted into obsolescence.” This was 18 years ago. There is no such sign of this now, with just 34 per cent of Australians being in favour of

Competition: Help Osborne to explain his growth strategy

Yesterday, Lord Wolfson — the new Tory peer and CEO of Next — made an extraordinary offer: £250,000 of his own money to whoever comes up with the best plan to break up the Euro. It’s the second biggest prize in economics, after the Nobel, and a great and patriotic idea from Wolfson, an original and forceful thinker with plenty real world experience from whom I hope we’ll hear more. Inspired by this, we at Coffee House would like to make our own offer: a bottle of Pol Roger, our house champagne, to whoever can explain George Osborne’s growth strategy. The chancellor needs some help on this front, with some unkind

Right to reply: The truth behind the poverty figures

This morning, Fraser published a piece criticising the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ definition of poverty. Here is a counterpunch from Julia Unwin, Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which is the organisation that funds the IFS. This article is the latest post in our Right to Reply series.  Do we really need another debate about the usefulness of a poverty measure? Of course, no definition is perfect. One of the hardy perennials of the poverty debate is the question of measurement. I wonder what it says about us as a country: why do we spend so much effort thinking about definitions of poverty, and so little responding to the

Why conservatives should welcome gay marriage

David Cameron just told the Tory conference that he supported gay marriage “because I am a Conservative”. In last week’s issue of the Spectator, Douglas Murray said that the best arguments in favour of gay marriage are conservative ones. For the benefit of CoffeeHousers, here is Douglas’s piece. In America a new generation of Republicans is challenging the traditional consensus of their party on gay marriage. They — as well as some of the GOP old guard like Dick Cheney — are coming out in favour. In Britain the subject is also back on the agenda with the coalition government, at the insistence of the Prime Minister apparently, planning a ‘public consultation’

Any questions for IDS?

At 6pm this evening, I’m interviewing Iain Duncan Smith at a Conservative Party conference fringe meeting. He is fighting a war on at least three fronts: the welfare-to-work programme, the creation of his Universal Credit (ie, rewriting the benefits system), and producing a government response to the riots and the conditions behind them. I may put questions to him from CoffeeHousers, so if you have any please leave them below. IDS is surprisingly candid for a Cabinet member, perhaps because he wants this to be his last job in government. He isn’t watching his words, worried that he’ll say something to damage his promotion chances. I’d say that his job

Gearing up for the Tories

Westminster is preparing for the Tory conference and Ben Brogan reports that a confident mood pervades the blue camp. The positive briefings have begun. The Guardian reveals that the speed limit on motorways is to be raised from 70 MPH to 80 MPH. This is a victory for Transport Secretary Philip Hammond over recalcitrant forces in Whitehall and the Health and Climate Change Secretaries. The Guardian adds that several welfare announcements will be made. It’s also likely that there’ll be further initiatives relating to the riots, perhaps inspired by Labour’s concerted assault on law and order. Meanwhile, the Eurozone crisis continues. Angela Merkel passed the controversial expansion of the EFSF

The guilty men’s misplaced loyalties

Here’s Peter Oborne in mid-season form on Newsnight last night, drawing on the book he previewed in his essential cover piece in last week’s issue of the Spectator, The Guilty Men. The spokesman from the European Commission makes a statement that exposes Brussels’ current helplessness, but his comment about the post-war era reveals what many pro-Europeans on the continent feel: the EU’s greatest achievement is to have secured peace and prosperity across a continent that had been at war for most of the previous 1,000 years; wars that obviously assumed terrible dimensions in the 20th Century. The spokesman also refers to the EU’s perceived second greatest achievement: the most complete welfare settlement in

Hague: The euro is a burning building with no exit

James Forsyth has interviewed the foreign secretary, William Hague, in tomorrow’s issue of the Spectator. Here is an extended version of the piece that will appear in the magazine. Politicians normally have to wait for the history books for vindication. But for William Hague it has come early. All his warnings about the dangers of the euro, so glibly mocked at the time, have come to pass. But, as he makes clear when I meet him in his study in the Foreign Office days before the start of Tory conference, he is not enjoying this moment. Rather, he is absorbed with trying to sort out the mess that others have

From the archives: Ridley was right

                                      In July 1990, Nicholas Ridley told Dominic Lawson that monetary union was “all a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe”. He was immediately forced to resign from the Cabinet. In this week’s magazine, which hits newsstands today, Lawson says that Nicholas Ridley was right (subscribers click here). Here, in full, is the article that ended his career: Saying the unsayable about the Germans, Dominic Lawson, 14 July 1990 It is said, or it ought to have been said, that every Conservative Cabinet minister dreams of dictating a leader to

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Spectator Europe Debate

It’s time for Britain to leave the European Union. That was the motion at last night’s Spectator debate. Rod Liddle officiated between the two sides, with Christopher Booker and Daniel Hannan supporting the motion and Denis MacShane and Phillip Sousta against. You can read Lloyd Evans’ exclusive report of the evening’s proceedings here. 

Clegg kicks off the conference

If you can judge a party’s mood by the number of bad jokes it tells, then the Liberal Democrats are in better form than last year. Their rally to open conference was characterised by a string of appalling gags. George Osborne was a particular target with both Don Foster and Sarah Teather trying to raise a laugh at his expense. However, several of Teather’s jokes, which moved into real bad taste territory, fell totally flat. The main speech of the rally, though, was Nick Clegg’s. Clegg, who was welcomed with a standing ovation, made his pitch that the party was governing from the centre, for the whole country. He ran

Making the NHS a battle ground

Lord Rennard, the Lib Dems’ former chief executive and campaign supremo, is a frequent attendee at Westminster events. He usually makes just one point: the party’s polling may be poor, but the situation can be saved. Rennard points out that the party was delivered from disaster in 1997, thanks to targeted campaigning and a successful scheme to differentiate the party from Labour and the Tories. That campaign should be the model for the next one, which Rennard believes has already begun. He has elaborated on these ideas in the Guardian. He writes: ‘I always told candidates to think as much about the psychology of Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” as any

From the archives: The doomed euro

It was doomed from the start; that’s the prognosis of those who think that the single currency’s crisis is near terminal, such are its structural and political weaknesses. People warned that it could be thus when the Euro was first launched. Bruce Anderson was among them:  Had Mr Blair been braver, he could have been in on this week’s euro euphoria, Bruce Anderson, The Spectator, 9 January 1999 The combined political will of 11 nations – or at least of their political elites – assured an easy birth for the euro. But the euphoria should not deceive us. Most thoughtful politicians and commentators throughout Euroland will acknowledge that the present

Fraser Nelson

An afternoon to remember

  The strength of Coffee House lies in the quality of the arguments which follow our posts. Journalism today is about starting a conversation with readers, something we at The Spectator firmly believe in. So on Wednesday, we invited 250 subscribers around for a cup of tea. We have a wonderful garden here at 22 Old Queen St, overlooking St James’ Park. We served up sandwiches and tea (courtesy of the East India Company) and listened to our readers’ likes, loves and dislikes. A few questions kept recurring. Is Dear Mary a real person? Yes, Mary Killen is very real – as is her mailbag. She even organises writers’ trips

The last of England

Martin Vander Weyer’s column in the latest issue of the magazine is essential reading. It features five current stories from the business world. The Vickers report, Martin says, will merely offer the same poor service for consumers at a greater cost. Martin also notes, as he did two weeks ago, that American banks are winding down their lending to European counterparts in anticipation of a crash, and adds that American politicians are keen to paint Europe as the bogeyman for their financial ills, conveniently ignoring the failure of Obama’s hugely expensive stimulus. Martin also touches on unemployment and the Eurozone crisis. His final vignette is a parable for our troubled

Wooing women the Tory way

Back in June, Melanie McDonagh wrote that “the Tories are desperate to regain the female vote”. Today’s Guardian scoop, a government memo on the need to better appeal to women, proves she’s right. In places, the document reads as if it were written by a group of men to whom women are very much from Venus. They are careful to spell out the revelation that “of course women’s views differ as much as men’s”, and their response to discovering their weakness was apparently to find whoever they could in Number 10 without testicles and ask what they were doing wrong. However, it does at least show that the government recognises

Who cares about abortion?

Thanks to Nadine Dorries’ amendment to the Health and Social Care bill, abortion rights have been discussed a great deal this week – both inside and outside of Parliament. In her cover article for this week’s Spectator (out today), Mary Wakefield says that this debate has revealed a “strange and unpleasant consensus… that abortion is not just a necessary evil, but a jolly good thing.” In the piece, Mary asks “Why are we so keen on abortion?”: “The fact is that unless you’re a fan of infanticide you’ve got to agree that somewhere along the slippery ascent from that little Alka-Seltzer of pluripotent cells to the birth of an actual

From the archives: “The bugger’s bugle”

Today marks 50 years since the release of Victim, a ground-breaking film about homosexuality that was granted an X-certificate. Writing in the latest issue of the Spectator (subscribers click here), John Coldstream explains the significance of this frank and truthful film and its contribution to the national debate about decriminalising homosexuality. It was made four years after the publication of Sir John Wolfenden’s report into ‘Homosexual Offences and Prostitution’, which recommended that homosexual acts between consenting adults in private should be decriminalised. This contentious reform was not secured until 1967. When Wolfenden’s views were first unveiled, the Spectator defied the prevailing consensus in Fleet Street by arguing that homosexuality should

Mind the gap | 30 August 2011

As a break from Westminster, readers might enjoy this article, from the latest issue of the magazine, on the efforts to undertand ME or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In 1987, I went to work as a trainee psychiatrist at the National Hospital for Neurology in Queen’s Square in London. One of my jobs was to see a group of patients who were not popular with the neurologists who ran the place. The patients had symptoms that might have had a neurological explanation — muscle pain, inability to walk, being unable to think clearly, feeling exhausted after the most minimal physical or mental exertion — yet the neurologists thought that they were at

Fraser Nelson

The dangers of home ownership

The slump in home ownership is reported today as a bad thing. Many Conservatives, who believe that home ownership releases what the late Shirley Letwin called “vigorous virtues“, may agree. So might Labour, which came to regret its opposition to the Thatcher policy of allowing council tenants to buy their home. Like inflation targeting, home ownership was a solution that worked so well in the 1990s that it was vigorously pursued in the next decade. But here’s the rub: it had disastrous effects. In this case, the disaster was governments pursuing greater home ownership as a policy goal. This meant cheap loans, which meant subprime mortgages, which meant a credit