Columns

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Who’d have thought that about Ted? Well…

In another blow for freedom and the protection of the vulnerable, Conservative MP Mark Spencer has suggested that anti-terror legislation should be used to punish teachers who hold ‘old-fashioned’ views about homosexuality and perhaps divest themselves of these views to their pupils. I assume this could mean simply reading out bits of the Bible — that pungent little verse in Leviticus, perhaps, with its reference to ‘detestable acts’. Or maybe he would be OK reading out bits from Leviticus if he then made it clear that the Levite priests, and God Himself, were totally wrong on this issue and that homosexuality is absolutely lovely. But never mind the Levites.

Matthew Parris

If Corbyn wins, he could split the Tories too

‘Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?’ asked C.P. Cavafy in his poem ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’: Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come. And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer. And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution. All through your and my life the Labour party have been at the gates of Downing Street, and often enough stormed them, only to be beaten back at a subsequent election. What might happen to the Conservative party if those barbarians disappear? We must not assume that Jeremy Corbyn will take the Labour leadership.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

If Corbyn becomes PM, I’m blaming you lot

Imagine, for a moment, the following scenario. In 2016 Britain votes narrowly to remain within the European Union, despite the Prime Minister having achieved little in attempting to renegotiate the terms of our membership. The ‘out’ campaign — which was no longer led by a marginal party, Ukip, but by the majority of the parliamentary Labour party, under its new leader Jeremy Corbyn — came mightily close to securing our withdrawal, and thus, as it is put by proponents, our independence.

Isabel Hardman

The agony of Labour’s old-fashioned modernisers

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/theosbornesupremacy/media.mp3" title="John McTernan and Isabel Hardman discuss the plight of Labour's modernisers" startat=837] Listen [/audioplayer]The exhausted Labour leadership contest takes a bucket-and-spade holiday next week, with all four candidates agreeing to an uneasy truce on hustings — but probably not hostilities. It’s clear everyone could do with a bit of a rest, not least because they need time to sit down, scratch their heads and ask how on earth things got to where they are. Jeremy Corbyn, the veteran socialist, is still ahead — and not just in published polls, but in the returns all the campaigns are seeing.

Mary Wakefield

Machetes and the middle classes

Another stabbing in my new neighbourhood, not with an axe or with a samurai sword this time, but a machete. The samurai sword incident was back in the spring. The magnolia was in bloom and the citizens of London N1 were about their innocent business, reading for book club and baking (wheat-free). At 3 p.m., a terrible screaming was heard coming from Englefield Road and when police arrived they found a teenage boy lying bleeding, sword on one side, meat cleaver on the other. The machete killing which followed was worse. Daylight, but this time the crime scene was a playground. Children were goofing about after school, including the soon-to-be victim’s sister. Witnesses said two teenagers appeared on a scooter.

James Delingpole

A twinge of fear, and a glimpse of a harsher world

I celebrated Eid in a sandy bay in Sri Lanka, watching from the warm, shallow sea as gaggles of local Muslims in holiday mood sauntered past to congregate at the public end of the beach about half a mile away. Since they looked so much more colourful, picturesque and exotic than the tourists in the security-guarded enclave where I was, I thought I’d wander down to take a few snaps. Having just finished Ramadan, they were all very excited — the young men especially. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a group of dark-skinned boys with wispy beards, bare-chested but in long trousers, had surrounded me. ‘Selfie!’ one of them said — the new universal word. So we put our arms round one another’s shoulders and smiled for the phone cameras.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Why MPs can’t switch off this summer

There are few quicker ways to annoy an MP than to suggest that they are on holiday when the House of Commons isn’t sitting. Such a suggestion will be met with a tetchy and immediate list of the constituency work they are doing in recess. This week, however, marks the start of the first summer break since the election, so the honourable members should perhaps feel entitled to a rest. Indeed, most MPs who aren’t engaged in a leadership contest will be taking one. As they sink into their deckchairs, they will have plenty to think about. The election might only have been two and a half months ago, but the dynamics of this parliament have changed, utterly. Elections will return soon enough. There will be a Scottish Parliament vote and a London mayoral contest next spring.

Rod Liddle

The left pillories Tim Farron for his popular view

I wonder who will win the battle for Tim Farron’s soul — the Guardianistas or God? This is assuming that God gives a monkey’s either way. I know that He is supposed to care very deeply about all of our souls, but this is the leader of the Liberal Democrats we’re talking about. ‘Eight seats? Eight seats? You want I should care about someone with just eight seats? Farron, schmarron.’ (Yes, I know, this is God as a slightly camp New York Jew. Apologies to all of those possibly offended.) Either way, my money’s on the liberal lefties. God just does not have the heft these days: he’s too tolerant, that’s the problem. He has mellowed since running amok in the Old Testament and rarely gets around to any judicious smiting.

Matthew Parris

Building this lay-by is all I can think about now

Many years ago I was encouraged to read Roger Hutchinson’s Calum’s Road. The small and quirky book made a deep impression on me: deeper, perhaps, than I realised at the time. Since then the story has always been there in the back of my mind. It began a story of my own. As there is unlikely to be a book, Matthew’s Lay-By, I shall tell the tale myself. The late Calum MacLeod’s story deserved its book. One of the last inhabitants of Arnish in the north of the island of Raasay in the Western Isles, the crofter campaigned with others to persuade the local authorities to connect Arnish to the rest of the island with something better than their footpath. They got nowhere. So he decided to build the road himself.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Jeremy Corbyn’s extraordinary success is a coup for the Tories

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/workingwithal-qa-eda/media.mp3" title="James Forsyth and George Eaton discuss the rise of Jeremy Corbyn" startat=754] Listen [/audioplayer]It wasn’t meant to work out this way. A month ago, Westminster watched to see if Jeremy Corbyn could get the support of the 35 MPs he needed to enter the Labour leadership race. At the time, it seemed a sort of joke. After all, the people who were lending him their backing weren’t doing so for any great love of Corbyn. As a rule, they either wanted a ‘broad debate’ or thought that the ritual slaughter of the left-wing candidate would make it easier for the new leader to move the party to the centre. A month on, things look very different.

James Delingpole

Ten resolutions that should make my next 50 years pass more smoothly

Very soon now I shall reach my half-century. I would have preferred to keep the horror a secret but there’s no point. My stock-in-trade as a me-journalist is: everything — good and bad. Also, I have a Wikipedia entry and, perhaps worse, a Facebook page which announces to the world how old you are — and you wake up to find hundreds of people you scarcely know wishing you Happy Birthday, and you’re expected to be gracious about it: like, thanks for reminding me, you’re too kind. Anyway, I thought that now I’m old and wise I’d make some resolutions. Perhaps they’ll help the next 50 years to pass more smoothly than the first. 1. Be nice. I was watching Rupert Soames at Glastonbury. What an operator.

Rod Liddle

I’m emigrating to Islamic State – see ya, kafirs!

I am getting heartily sick of being subjected to low-level racist and Islamophobic abuse whenever I go out wearing my black Islamic State flag. It is a very beautiful flag, symbolic of freedom and love and bears the legend: ‘There is no God but Allah and Muhammed is His Messenger’, which I hand-painted in Arabic script. (On the other side it says: ‘Nothing to do with Islam’, just so as I can hedge my bets a bit.) Anyway, walking around London with it I can report that several people looked at me funny. That’s Islamophobia for you. Also, one fairly obese man shouted, ‘Fuck off to Syria, you wanker.’ That’s racist abuse, end of.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Osborne’s mission: erase every trace of Brown

To understand George Osborne, it is important to realise that he cut his political teeth at the height of the New Labour ascendancy. He remembers the humiliations that were visited on his party as Tony Blair carried all before him. But there is one moment from that period that Tories can look back on with satisfaction: their opposition to Britain joining the European single currency. In 1998, William Hague warned, in a speech drafted by Osborne, that the euro would become a ‘burning building with no exits’. When this speech was written, Osborne couldn’t have imagined that those flames would be the backdrop to the first Budget of his second term as Chancellor 17 years later. But events in Greece have overshadowed this, the first Tory Budget for 18 years.

Matthew Parris

Greeks just want to keep what they’ve got

We were breakfasting outside on the morning of the Greek referendum. The result could only be guessed at and all the polls were saying it was neck-and-neck. I thought ‘yes’ would win because surely Greek people believe in membership of the EU. Our friend Marie, however, who is French, announced that it would be a decisive ‘no’. Marie is neither a left-winger nor a Europhobe. ‘Why?’ her husband asked, ‘how do you know?’ ‘Avantage acquis,’ she said. Few of us were fluent French speakers, but I made a guess: ‘You mean people’s sense of continuing entitlement to something they have already got?’ Yes, she said, such things are very hard to take away.

Rod Liddle

Forget the EU – we need the Hanseatic League

I think it is time to put into effect my plan for the re-shaping of the European Union. A somewhat scaled-down European Union: Greece wouldn’t be in it, for a start. Nor Portugal or Spain or France or indeed Italy south of a line which I have just drawn on my Times Atlas of the World in felt-tip pen, stretching east north east from Genoa to Trieste. And even that northern bit of Italy (Venice in, Bologna definitely out) is there on a sort of probation — and on the understanding that they take their orders from the German-speakers in the new capital Bolzano (or Bozen, as it will become once more). The European Parliament will be abolished and Brussels (or Brussel, henceforth) stripped of its EU capital status.

Hugo Rifkind

Remember when Britain could build stuff?

Heathrow. The whole British story is there. Reading up around that debacle last week, I came across the eye-watering — and I think true — claim that, over the course of the second world war, Britain built 444 airfields. Four hundred and forty four. Although not all in the United Kingdom, probably. Some will have been in far-off lands, where Johnny Foreigner could be bought off in exchange for a pretty goat, or just shouted at, at gunpoint, until he went away. Hundreds, though, will have been here, on British soil — where it has now taken us over half an actual century to not quite build a new runway at Heathrow. 444. This is what we use to be able to do. So also trains.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Cameron must not let this crisis go to waste

Few European leaders have been luckier than David Cameron. First he was sent Ed Miliband. Now events in Greece may be about to present him with a solution to the thorniest problem of his second term: how to negotiate a new form of EU membership for Britain that the Tory party can rally behind come the referendum. The Prime Minister’s critics delight in claiming that his European problem is of his own making. Two years ago, he promised a referendum on EU membership before the end of 2017. But he couldn’t have survived without making such a pledge. It was his way of stopping his party arguing about Europe; without it, he could not have gone into the election claiming that he led a united party.

Rod Liddle

You can’t take the Islam out of Islamic State

At last, British politicians have been galvanised into action by the appalling events last weekend in the Tunisian resort of Sousse, in which 38 people were murdered by an Islamist terrorist. Yes, yes, about time, you might be muttering to yourself — but credit where it’s due, please. They may be a little late to the party but at least they have arrived. A convocation of 120 of our MPs, including Boris Johnson, have demanded strong and forthright action.

James Delingpole

Must all Children’s Laureates be tedious lefties?

Unless you’re an avid reader of the Guardian, you’re probably blissfully unaware that Britain has a new Children’s Laureate. His name is Chris Riddell, he’s an illustrator and a cartoonist for the Observer, and according to one who has interviewed him he is a delightful man: ‘Giggly, childlike, doodled book illustrations on his napkin throughout.’ I’m glad about this. One of the roles of the Waterstones Children’s Laureate — in return for his £15,000 bursary and his ‘specially designed and inscribed silver medal’ — is to tour Britain’s schools and festivals acting as an ambassador for children’s literature.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Europe’s great game

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/angelamerkel-sburden/media.mp3" title="Fredrik Erixon and James Forsyth discuss the challenges facing Angela Merkel" startat=36] Listen [/audioplayer]For generations, ambitious politicians have dreamed about having the power to run Europe — but as Angela Merkel can attest, it’s a horrible job. She didn’t want to end up with the continent’s problems on her shoulders, but things have ended up that way. The Greek economic implosion, the seemingly unstoppable wave of immigrants from north Africa, the menace of Russian aggression, the euro crisis — all the multiple, interconnected, crises battering Europe have ended up as Merkel’s problem.