Government

The Spectator’s Notes | 21 January 2016

Many have rightly attacked the police for their handling of the demented accusations against Field Marshal Lord Bramall, now at last dropped. They ostentatiously descended on his village in huge numbers, chatted about the case in the pub and pointlessly searched his house for ten hours. But one needs to understand that their pursuit of Lord Bramall — though not their exact methods — is the result of the system. Because the doctrine has now been established that all ‘victims’ must be ‘believed’, the police must take seriously every sex abuse accusation made and record the accusation as a reported crime (hence the huge increase in sex abuse figures). Even if you

The Clare Valley

It is a century and a half since The Spectator noted the exceptional qualities of South Australia, a colony of free settlers untainted — unlike the rest of the continent — by the convict stain. ‘Everywhere … the enclosures over miles of plain, the hedged gardens, the well-grown orchards and well-appointed homesteads, proclaim the possession of the land by an industrious and thrifty yeomanry,’ wrote a Mr Wilson in these pages in 1866. ‘It is England in miniature, England without its poverty … with a finer climate, a virgin soil … more liberal institutions and a happier people.’ These days, alas, the ‘thrifty yeomanry’ has to support a ballooning public

Keynes’s big mistake

Some things are universally accepted as true. Water finds its own level; crumpets are best eaten in winter; and the England football team will not win the World Cup again, ever. On a par with these things, the most accepted part of economics is Keynesianism. Of course, John Maynard Keynes said lots of things about economics in between his many and varied sexual encounters. But, as is the way of the world, one of the things he said turned out to be particularly influential. It is so influential that it has gone around the world. It is repeated and relied upon by Japanese finance ministers, New York Times columnists, Nobel

The best things in the world spring up by accident

Since no one has bothered to ask what my must-read book of last year was I’m going to tell you here: it’s Matt Ridley’s Evolution of Everything. I don’t think it has appeared on nearly so many recommended lists as his previous bestsellers Genome and The Rational Optimist, nor has it been so widely reviewed. And I have a strong inkling as to why: its message is so revolutionary as to alienate pretty much everyone across the spectrum, from Christians and Muslims to corporate bosses, historians, feminists, educationalists and conspiracy theorists, from Greens and socialists all the way across (if there’s a difference) to Conservatives like George Osborne and David

Where’s the joy gone?

Have you seen Spectre, the latest Bond film? If not, the opening sequence is terrific. Lots of action and excitement. The whole film is full of stunts and thrills. But after watching it, I realised there was something missing: joy, or joie de vivre. Daniel Craig plays Bond like an android who has spent too much time muscle-building instead of having a good time. Contrast Spectre with From Russia With Love, one of the early Bond films. The first scene in which we see Sean Connery as Bond, he is humorous and amorous as he snogs a beautiful woman in a punt moored at the side of a river. He

What I got right

All wings of the Labour party which support the notion of Labour as a party aspiring to govern — rather than as a fringe protest movement — agree on the tragedy of the Labour party’s current position. But even within that governing tendency, there is disagreement about the last Labour government; what it stood for and what it should be proud of. The moral dimension of Labour tradition has always been very strong, encapsulated in the phrase that the Labour party owed more to Methodism than to Marx. When I became the opposition spokesman on law and order in 1992, following our fourth election defeat, I consciously moved us away

Camila Batmanghelidjh comes to the government’s aid

Since Mr S’s colleague Miles Goslett blew the whistle on Kids Company – and its founder Camila Batmanghelidjh — in The Spectator earlier this year, the charity has been closed down and Batmanghelidjh has been summoned to a select committee hearing. With Batmanghelidjh’s former cheerleader David Cameron now doing his best to distance himself from the disgraced charity chief — after his ministers were accused of brushing aside civil servants’ concerns about Kids Company’s finances, could she still have one cabinet minister on side? Mr S only asks after an email popped into his inbox this morning from 6 Hillgrove PR saying that Batmanghelidjh was helping to inspire children as part of an

Pry another day

Were David Cameron in any way adept at spin, it would be tempting to think that the publication of the Investigatory Powers Bill had been deliberately timed so as to coincide with the opening of Spectre, the new James Bond film. The debate over the bill has turned into a question of whether we trust our spies, which by and large we do. But the real question to be asked is whether we trust the taxman, the police and our town halls with the powers of espionage — and that is another matter entirely. The Investigatory Powers Bill does not actually contain new powers for the security services, who can already

Matthew Parris

Here’s what’s wrong with the ‘public sector ethos’

An infuriating benefit of readers’ online comments beneath the efforts of a columnist like me is that as you read the responses an understanding dawns of the column you ought to have written. Some readers are stupid, unpleasant or obsessive; but most are not. As you learn their reactions you see where your argument was not clear, where you were short of information, and where you were simply wrong. But more than that, you sometimes tumble for the first time to where the nub of a problem that perhaps you danced around may lie. Last Saturday I wrote for the Times about the self-righteousness of spokesmen for public services threatened

Lords of misrule

A few days after the general election, I bumped into one of David Cameron’s longest-standing political allies, one of those who had helped him get selected for Witney back in 2000. I remarked that he must be delighted that Cameron had now won a majority. To my surprise, he glumly replied that it would only be significant if Cameron were to create a hundred new peers. Without them, he warned, the govern-ment’s most important measures would end up bogged down in the Lords, where Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined comfortably outnumber the Tories. Now, normally when people urge the Prime Minister to create new peers it is because they

Britain should not mistake its allies for friends

It would be hard to dream up a more absurd piece of political satire than an agency of the British government called Just Solutions International winning a contract to train prison officers in a country that has executed 175 people in the past year, many of them in public beheadings for offences such as sorcery, witchcraft, adultery and political activism. That it sought this contract in the first place is a sign of the great void at the heart of our foreign policy. This week, the Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, pulled out of the deal with Saudi Arabia — thereby attracting the ire of the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, who called

The Met have found no evidence for an abuse network linked to No10. It’s time they admitted it

Almost exactly three years ago, Tom Watson stood up in parliament and demanded the Metropolitan police investigate ‘clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No. 10’. It was an incendiary claim which, because it was made during Prime Minister’s Questions and broadcast on live television, set hares running on social media and beyond. We know, now, that the police found no evidence to support an allegation of rape made against Leon Brittan by a woman known as ‘Jane’. But the question remains: what about that link to No. 10? I have spent much of the past three years looking into this. Working for BBC Panorama means following the

Spectator’s Notes | 3 September 2015

Was there ever a more unilluminating political idea — for voters rather than practitioners — than triangulation? For those readers so pure and high-minded that they have not followed politics for 20 years, I should explain that triangulation came from Bill Clinton, was imported by Tony Blair, and is now practised by David Cameron. Clinton’s adviser, Dick Morris, put it thus: ‘The President needed to take a position that not only blended the best of each party’s views but also transcended them to constitute a third force in the debate.’ The Tories’ adoption of the Living Wage is the latest example. This concept, almost as mystically bogus as the medieval concept

Fracking Lancashire

That democracy is a superior form of government to any other goes without saying. But in order to function, it has to be conducted in such a way and on such a scale as to ensure that the people or their elected representatives are making decisions based on genuine alternatives. With this week’s decision by Lancashire County Council to reject a second application for fracking on a site near Blackpool, something has gone seriously wrong. An important national issue has been allowed to be settled according to purely local concerns. Warned by their lawyers that there were no environmental or safety grounds for rejecting the application, councillors instead voted to

Spy if you must, but don’t give the game away

The Snoopers’ Charter. I ought to care about this. I’m a sort of libertarian. I believe in personal freedom. I’m a trustee of Index on Censorship. The state as Big Brother is everything I’ve always fought in politics. So why can’t I quite summon the requisite indignation? Why do I find all this Edward Snowden stuff vaguely irritating? Why does the crusading column for the Times, railing against state surveillance, somehow keep failing me, though time and again I’ve opened my laptop and tried to make a start? Partly, I think, because as a longstanding and vehement opponent of British military adventuring in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ve believed (and always

Elysian fields

There is a phrase that has been fashionable for years in wonkland — places like the upper echelons of the civil service and high-end think tanks. The phrase is ‘evidence-based policy-making’. There, I bet that’s got you going. When I was a citizen of wonkland and heard those words from the Sir Humphreys and Lady Susans I would typically roll my eyes or head for the door, because you can generally gather whatever evidence you want to justify whatever policy you want. In the end, you have to believe in something. Have the courage of your convictions and be judged by the results. But the reason I bring this up

Tony Blair takes a dig at chillaxing Cameron

Tony Blair popped into King’s College London this morning to discuss ‘how to run a government’ with his former adviser Michael Barber. Amongst other things, the former Prime Minister discussed David Cameron’s efforts to remodel No.10 to make it more Blair like, as James reveals in his column this week. But he made no attempt to disguise the fact that he thinks structures are no substitute for the ‘guy’ at the top being on the case 24/7 when looking to deliver change: ‘It works when you have the clearest possible sense of priorities and what you want to achieve … you’ve got to have the Prime Minister’s authority behind this all the time. ‘My

Osborne’s welcome conversion to the advantages of a budget surplus

There should always be celebration when a sinner repents, and so it’s great to see George Osborne’s belated conversion to the cause of budget surpluses. As the above graph shows, he has not seemed in a rush to hit surplus himself – giving him many more years of increasing the national debt. James Forsyth summed it up brilliantly: Osborne is the St Augustine Chancellor: give me fiscal responsibility, but not yet! And today, he will add something: when I get there, let’s make it illegal for anyone not to balance the budget again! In economics, as in much else, converts are always the most zealous. Osborne’s new plan—to have surpluses

Does anyone really expect the EU referendum to resolve anything?

I suppose, if you could look deep into the mind of somebody who was passionately keen that Britain should leave the European Union then, in among things like old episodes of Dad’s Army and unassailable convictions that Cornwall produces some perfectly good vintages, and so on, you might also spot a vision of the future. In this vision, our referendum will have been and gone and Britain will have seen the light and left the EU. Everybody will have been convinced. Even Nick Clegg. The question will have been settled for a generation at least, and there will be no need to talk about it anymore and we’ll be able

Katmandu Notebook

After the first earthquake we were told that the chance of another one was 200 to 1. A fortnight later, when we were just beginning to recover, the second one hit. Perhaps I’m getting better at this, because this time I was able to control my body enough to run outside and join the crowd in the street. Standing with my family, looking back towards our home, I could see dust billowing from the foundations of the houses. They seemed to be dancing back and forth. The chances of a third strike, we’re told, are minuscule. Should we believe this? No one feels ready to relax. Nearly all of us