Spectator Live

It's the wimmin innit?

Susan Hill — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:46:05 GMT

No, it isn’t.

I was about to write about Mesdames Brown and Cameron when I read David Blackburn’s blog today on the same subject and thought I must turn to something else. Then I changed my mind. There is no reason why there should not be two of us writing about the political wives and anyway, I`m a woman and so have a different take on these matters. I hope.

I am pretty sure that I go back further than anyone else around here so I can clearly remember seeing the

Annals of Chutzpah: Obama Edition

Alex Massie — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:56:10 GMT

Thanks to Matt Welch for spotting this splendid piece of "What me?" nonsense from the President:

As we were driving in, I was saying, boy, it's just good to be back in the Midwest, this is about as close as I've been to home in a while. And part of the reason it's just good to be back is because Washington is a place where tax dollars are often treated like Monopoly money -- they're bartered and traded, and they're divvied up among lobbyists and special interests, and where waste -- even billions of dollars of waste --

Buy Mahsaney, join Mossad!

David Blackburn — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:34:09 GMT

This is scarcely credible. An Israeli supermarket chain, Mahsaney Kimat Hinam, has launched a singularly original new campaign. Inspired by the CCTV footage of the alleged Mossad Dubai assassins filling trolleys with props for their disguises, the aim is to emphasise the chain’s bargain basement prices. Funnily enough, with all the sunglasses and Kibbutz muscle, I don’t get that sense. It looks more like Mossad does Supermarket Sweep. You can watch it here. Apologies for the insipid Carphone Warehouse ad at the beginning, say what you like about the unintelligible Israeli ad

Hague’s modern Realism

Daniel Korski — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:02:11 GMT

In a splurge of activity, William Hague gave both an interview to the FT and another foreign policy speech at RUSI outlining the views of a Conservative government. It was time for an update on Tory thinking, not least because David Cameron’s description of his policy as “liberal conservatism” and his unwillingness to march into a “massive euro bust-up” has had little effect.

That is because a struggle over how to engage with the world continues to run beneath the party leader’s message of party unity. Four main schools of diplomatic

Frederic Raphael on the importance of conversation

David Blackburn — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:22:53 GMT

I'm looking forward to reading Final Demands, the last in Frederic Raphael’s trilogy. The Glittering Prizes remains a brilliantly funny and poignant novel about getting started in life. The dialogue is crisp throughout. As a result, the reader deciphers how to fill the gaps in the narrative and characterisation, so that the book ‘speaks’ beyond the lines of description. So there are few writers more suited than Raphael to discuss the importance of dialogue in novels and how the book and its characters are built through conversation. He does so in the

Uptown girl

David Blackburn — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:39:42 GMT

David Cameron warns the nation to “get ready” for Samantha, who will be interviewed by Sir Trevor Macdonald on Sunday.

If Sarah Brown is the damsel in distress, saved by her heroic husband, Sam Cam is the trouser-wearing uber-bitch. Allegedly, she is terrifying: cowering Smythsons’ interns refer to her as Anna Wintour. She never does hyperbole. She will extol her husband’s virtues succinctly, saying he’s never let her down in 14 years of marriage. Presumably she will then talk about her career, the tragic loss of her son and her Bohemian youth.

Endless saga

David Blackburn — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:22:20 GMT

The four members are before a magistrate, attempting to clear their names. I’m not sure if it’s more preposterous than it is shaming to claim that conventions protecting free speech apply to false accounting. If only Enron’s lawyers had been as ingenious.

In addition to Morley et al’s abuse of parliamentary privilege, Alan and Ann Keen have been fined £1,500 today, which, as Paul Waugh notes, is lenient compared to the Parliamentary Privileges and Standards Committee’s damning verdict. Expect to hear more on that decision as public anger over expenses remains unabated.

Some

Gordon's McCavity Days Are Ending

Alex Massie — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:56:18 GMT

Watching the news last night, I was struck by how little one had seen of Gordon Brown on TV recently. No wonder the polls have tightened. But the Prime Minister, alas, cannot play McCavity forever. The "bullying" allegations weren't as damaging as they might have been in other circumstances because, for many, they merely confirmed that Brown is an impossible individual and, frequently, an unpleasant one too. But people already knew or suspected that.

Instead, the papers and the teevee have been dominated by Ashcroft and the Tory wobble. In a sense this was a verdict on the government

The slow creep of the suburban south-east

Rod Liddle — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:43:57 GMT

There’s a lot to commend in the Lord Adonis proposal for a high speed rail link between London and Birmingham. Trains, it is said, will cover the distance in 49 minutes, at speeds of up to 225mph. The opposition cavils that Labour would be better off spending money improving existing, dilapidated, commuter line seem to me wide of the point; the railways have needed a co-ordinated, high profile government directed initiative to capture the imagination of the public and revitalize the network. You might argue we have needed a co-ordinated high profile government initiative

City middlemen don’t like Osborne precisely because he is competent

David Blackburn — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:33:42 GMT

The City’s elopement with New Labour has ended violently. A poll of leading financiers, conducted by City AM, reveals that 73 percent think that a Tory majority would be best for the economy; a mere 10 percent support Labour. But the City has little enthusiasm for George Osborne: 23 percent believe he has the mettle to be Chancellor, 13 percent behind Ken Clarke.

So where is it going wrong for Osborne? James Kirkup observes that the Tories recent collapse in the polls coincided with Osborne and Cameron obscuring their economic message. But

Highlights from the latest Spectator

Fraser Nelson — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:45:45 GMT

The latest issue of the Spectator is out today, and here are my top five features:

Nick Clegg takes to the stage. With a hung Parliament looking increasingly likely, I thought we should pay a bit of attention to the Lib Dem leader in this week's issue. Interviewed by me, he does his best to reach out to Tory voters - pointing to his party's tax-cutting agenda and its spending cut-heavy plan to lower the deficit. He even cites Margaret Thatcher as an inspiration - we put up an excerpt on Coffee House

Teach a Man to Fish

Frank Armstrong — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:35:17 GMT

The late Robin Cook said of chicken tikka masala that it is ‘now Britain’s true national dish, not only because it is popular, but it is the perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences.’

Britain’s love affair with Asian food is indeed quite remarkable and is probably the most heartening example of ‘multiculturalism’ in action.

Yet, unlike domestic cooking, the dominant method of consumption involves no preparation at home; we ‘go out for a curry’ and ‘order in a Chinese.’ Moreover, modern British variants tend to

Clegg's conditions

David Blackburn — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:00:00 GMT

Nick Clegg is the rage of the papers this morning. His interview with the Spectator is trailed across the media and the Independent has an interview where Clegg once again lists the four demands that would be his initial negotiating tests for backing a minority government. They are:
- Raising the income tax threshold to £10,000 through taxes on the rich.
- An education spending boost for the poorest in society through the 'pupil premiums'.
- A switch to a Green economy, less dependent on financial services.

Newsnight education debate shows the potency of parent power

James Forsyth — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:13:59 GMT

The winner of the education debate on Newsnight was a woman called Lesley from Yorkshire. Her local school is being closed and so she, along with other parents, want to set one up themselves. Her case for why she should be allowed to do this left Ed Balls floundering, wittering on about he sympathised but she needed to get agreement from various bureaucracies. If parents like Lesley get more time on TV, people will begin to understand how transformative the Tory policy of letting parents and teachers set up their own state funded schools

Brown risks being over-prepared for the debates

James Forsyth — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:30:44 GMT

PMQ’s today bolstered my view that David Cameron will outperform Gordon Brown in the three TV debates. Cameron is simply more confident about thinking on his feet than Brown. When Ronnie Campbell and chums started suggesting that the generals who had criticised Brown’s record on defence were doing so because they were Tories, Cameron changed tack and demanded that the Prime Minister disassociate himself from the heckles of his colleagues. He was happy to move away from his planned six questions and go with something else. By contrast, Brown is much more determined to

Brown in the City

Alex Massie — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:23:03 GMT

A telling anecdote from Andrew Rawnsley's book:

Subjects that interested him [Gordon Brown] - such as welfare reform, employment and poverty- received enormous attention. Ministers in areas which did not engage him, such as financial regulation, barely saw him. Ruth Kelly, a young and abl junior miniter put in charge of the City, was labelled a Brownite by the media simply because she worked at the Treasury. In fact the City minister had one ten-minute conversation with Brown a fortnight after her appointment and then did not have another one-to-one conversation with him for two years.

That's on page 69

The Limits of American Power: Israel and Iran Editions

Alex Massie — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:04:32 GMT

I agree with Melanie Phillips that the principle reason there's no middle-east preace prcess worth the name is the Palestinian's reluctance to recognise and guarantee Israel's security. I believe there are other reasons too, mind you, that help to obstruct any path towards a proper and just settlement. Still, since Melanie doesn't believe there should be a Palestinian state, what does she think should be done? However much some people might wish it, the Palestinians cannot be wished away. They're not going anywhere. Right? And if this is so, then at some point some kind of a deal will have

Karl Rove's Idea of the Special Relationship

Alex Massie — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:53:15 GMT

Dave Weigel has an entertaining takedown of Karl Rove's new memoir Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight (a title that, oddly, is simultaneously vainglorious and reeking of self-pity). Meanwhile, here's a snippet of the Rovian style, as relayed by Andrew Rawnsley in his new book*. It's December 2000 and George W Bush has just become President:

[Sir Christopher] Meyer [then British ambassador to Washington] had done his best to cultivate relationships with the Bush team. Karl Rove, Bush's senior political strategist sent both encouragement and a warning, via Meyer: "You're going to start

Hague and Cameron are vindicated for leaving the EPP

David Blackburn — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:35:20 GMT

Daniel Hannan breaks the, sadly, not very surprising news that MEPs have voted overwhelmingly in favour of an EU Tobin tax. The margin: 536 to 80. Only the European Conservatives and Reformist group and a handful of radicals opposed the motion. The EPP, which describes itself as ‘centrist’, voted uniformly in favour. Cameron was right to withdraw from a grouping whose interests are at odds not only with British Conservatives but with Britain itself: a tax on all financial transactions would castrate the City.

What does this division mean for Britain? On the

No wonder he's smiling...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:14:00 GMT

Israel is in the doghouse with America because it revealed during the visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden that it was building more houses for Israelis in east Jerusalem. According to Biden and outraged western received opinion, this ‘undermines peace efforts’.

Why? To be more precise, why does this initiative – or indeed any of the ‘settlements’ -- undermine peace efforts while the actual reason for the absence of peace, the fact that the Abbas administration has said it will never accept a Jewish state of Israel and refuses to

All dolled up

David Blackburn — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:09:20 GMT

Sterling Cooper would resound with the sound of ice cracking on contact with scotch, and the double bass thump of Zippos opening and closing. The Mad Men have landed a huge, game-breaking contract. Step aside Barbie and Ken, Don Draper, Joan Holloway, Betty Draper and Roger Sterling are to be made into Barbie dolls.

The figurines will be free of whisky tumblers and cigarettes, so they may as well be naked. But the announcement is a testament to the show’s emerging status as a piece of visual art. Watching A Single Man,

Clegg: Heir to Thatcher?

Fraser Nelson — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:20:25 GMT

Nick Clegg has a blue rose in his mouth in tomorrow's Spectator, serenading readers - and showing his hidden Tory side. I have to say, he puts his heart into it.

Not only does the Lib Dem leader say he'll end the structural deficit with 100 percent spending cuts (not the 20 percent tax rises, 80 percent cuts combo that the Tories advocate), but he even heaps praise in Lady Thatcher. More, he describes her as something of an inspiration: just as she took on vested interests in the 1980s, so he will

Tornado in the chamber

Lloyd Evans — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:04:18 GMT

It was like a volcano going off. At PMQs today Cameron was calmly dissecting the prime minister’s underfunding of the Afghan war when he quoted two former defence chiefs who’d called Brown ‘disingenuous’ and ‘a dissembler’. Then someone shouted, ‘they’re Tories!’ Cameron lost control. Instantly, completely. His temper just went. White in the face, he leaned his flexed torso across the dispatch box, hammering at it so hard that it nearly disintegrated. ‘Is that it?’ he yelled. ‘Is that what this tribalist and divisive government thinks of those who serve this country!?’

Rippling

The Tories will have waves of dirt thrown at them

James Forsyth — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:01:05 GMT

If you want a flavour of what is going to be thrown at the Tories between now and May 6th, read Jonathan Freedland’s column today. Freedland has a fair point about how Michael Ashcroft should pay tax in this country, in my view no one should be eligible for an honour let alone a seat in the legislature if they are not fully domiciled in this country for tax purpose, but it is all dressed up in the language of the class war.

I’ve never met Richard Drax, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax to give

PMQs live blog

David Blackburn — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:48:56 GMT

Stay tuned for live coverage from 12:00

Memory for Michael Foot and the four servicemen who have been killed in the last week.

12:03: And we're off. Tory backbencher Richard Benyon wants assurances that soldiers serving overseas receive a postal vote. Brown gives him such.

12:05: Here's Cameron. He starts with the examination into the deaths of soldiers in Afghanistan which suggests that inadquately strong motorised equipment was responsible for their deaths. Prepare for Brown's Chilcot evidence, contradicted by Lord Guthrie among others, to come under sustained attack. Brown is at his most vulnerable on defence. That said, Brown apologises

Tortionata or Torta di Lodi

Chris Foulkes — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:09:03 GMT

My Italian grandmother – known to us all as 'Nonna' – used to make a delicious almond shortcake called Torta di Lodi. She would always have one ready for visitors and grandchildren. It's a speciality of the eponymous town, on the banks of the river Adda in Lombardy, south of Milan. The cake itself is both crunchy and buttery, served broken into chunks – it's too crumbly to slice. It is sold in all the good pasticcerie in Lodi. The beauty of it is that it is really easy to make, especially if you have a

R.I.P Mark Linkous

Rod Liddle — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:53:04 GMT

It’s a pretty thin and overrated medium, rock music, and too much energy is expended lauding its practitioners. But Mark Linkous, who is dead having shot himself, was one of a small handful with genuine talent which sometimes, just sometimes, teetered into real brilliance. Few people have used the medium better, or understood better how to defy its obvious limitations.

Under the name Sparklehorse, Linkous made one of the two great albums of the 1990s, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot (the other, I reckon, is Beck’s Mellow Gold). This was a peculiar mélange of southern country, Neil Young,

The Tories’ problems have more to do with branding

David Blackburn — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:43:00 GMT

Two weeks ago, David Cameron delivered a brilliant speech. It keyed into exactly what Michael Wolff means by the phrase, 'Cameron is a politician who quells, smooths, conflates, reassures.' It offered hope and optimism, a future free of the current morass. In that case, why are the Tories still faltering?

Cameron rode on the wake of Brown’s incompetence for eighteen months. It was never an exclusively positive endorsement, something of which Cameron was aware. Mandelson, Campbell et al have brought Labour back into the race with a series of well aimed jibes that the

The Budget will be on 24 March

Peter Hoskin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:04:07 GMT

So now we know. Gordon Brown has just announced that the Budget will be on 24 March – which strongly implies an election date of 6 May. Brown could dissolve Parliament on 6 April, the manifestos would be published on 12 April, and then we'd be into the campaign proper. Which means even more speeches, polls and dread speculation than we're getting now.

As for the Budget's general flavour, we'll probably get an idea of that today, too. Brown's currently giving a speech in which he's brushing over recent tremors in the

Let us now praise Simon Hoggart

Alex Massie — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:23:33 GMT

Simon Hoggart remains a treasure. His sketch in today's Guardian begins thus:

It's going to be an awful campaign, awful. Yesterday we were at Labour HQ (they still have a smart new building in Westminster, but after the election they may move to a scout hut in Streatham) to see a video.

It was introduced by the home secretary and by Harriet Harman, glossier than ever. Her eyes were like French-polished lentils. I spoke to colleagues afterwards, and we agreed that she seemed to be staring balefully at each of us. Like a very cross Mona Lisa,