Columns

Thursday

Matthew Parris

When party leaders depart from the script, all hell breaks loose

It is within the experience of even the humblest of MPs that those who oppose what you do will berate you with a great deal more passion than you will ever attract from those who support your plans. Any help you can give may be treated by its beneficiaries as no more than your duty; but the people on the other side will treat your unhelpfulness as a massive personal injury. And if this is true of minor political players, how much more is it true of serious policymakers. As the second Lord Falkland remarked on losing a bill in the upper chamber because not all his supporters had bothered to turn up at an evening sitting, ‘Those who hated it hated it worse than the Devil; while those who loved it loved it not more than their -dinner.

Rod Liddle

I don’t care about the royal baby. What’s wrong with me?

Driving along in the car on a pleasant evening earlier this week, I was happily humming along to the toe-tapping sounds of the sadly defunct deathcore  stalwarts Anal Prolapse, when my wife leaned over and turned the CD player off and the radio on. Those smug and portentous pips sounded. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I asked, outraged. ‘I want to know if she’s had it or not,’ my wife replied. ‘If who’s had what?’ ‘Kate. The baby.’ ‘Why?’ There was no answer to the why, from my wife or, it seems, the rest of the country.

Steerpike

Steerpike | 25 July 2013

Is there treachery at the top of Ukip? Westminster has been buzzing with the rumour that party treasurer Stuart Wheeler has laid money on the Conservatives to win an overall majority in 2015. Can it possibly be true? Mr Steerpike called Mr Wheeler who was happy to spill the beans. Yes, he said, he has placed a bet — ‘bigger than a fiver but not huge’ — but not because he thinks or hopes the Tories will win. ‘I expect to lose the money,’ he says cheerfully, ‘but the odds of 4/1 looked a bit long.’ He’s also laid cash on Nigel Farage to become an MP and on Ukip to grab at least two seats at the election.   It’s another boost for Britain’s hi-tech industry.

Thursday

Hugo Rifkind

It’s the summer of the topless man – and there’s nothing we can do to stop it

Topless men. What does that mean, then? I was opposite one on the tube the other day, heading north from Finsbury Park, and I just couldn’t stop -staring. In terms of sheer comfort, I was quite jealous. There was me, sweating in my shirt and suit trousers, and there was him, open to the air in shorts and nothing else. He was sweating too, of course. As I watched, a rivulet of the stuff ran from his neck and through the thicket of his chest to hang as a globule from a thatch of hair above his right nipple. Frankly, that globule made me anxious. Any moment, I knew, our train would burst into the overland sunshine of Arnos Grove and I feared it might function as a lens, perhaps even setting him alight. Men are stripping off.

James Delingpole

Books are a load of crap – the sporty kids have got it made

What a glorious sporting summer it has been so far. For some the highlight will have been Andy Murray at Wimbledon, for others that nailbiting first Test against the Aussies. But for me, none of this comes even close to matching the joy, the exultation, the triumph of the moment on an Atlantic beach a few days ago when our hot young female Portuguese surf instructor took Girl and me aside to comment on our morning’s performance. ‘You, Poppy, and you, James, are both good,’ she said. That’s ‘good’ as in the exact opposite of ‘bad’.

Rod Liddle

The Zimmerman jury should have done its duty and ignored the evidence

I wonder what possessed the jury in the Trayvon Martin case to return two not guilty verdicts when they knew the trouble it would cause. One never ceases to wonder at the self-importance, the narcissism, of those people who always believe they know better than the rest. An important section of the American population — perpetually outraged black civil rights leaders and their faux-left-wing whitey hangers-on — had been absolutely clear about the case: George Zimmerman, the ghastly white neighbourhood watch person, was guilty of the murder of Trayvon Martin — and not just murder, but racially aggravated murder at that. The jury knew this and yet knowingly and wilfully acquitted Zimmerman.

Norman Lamont

Does the EU really need 32 diplomats in Mozambique? And 44 in Barbados?

The Prime Minister recently professed himself shocked at waste in the European Union. In particular, he was incensed by an EU-funded colouring book portraying the daily lives of ‘Mr and Mrs MEP’. It is appalling, certainly, but far from unusual. The propaganda that comes out of Brussels has long been full of such idiocies. Some may remember Captain Euro, a cartoon superhero who won sporting events for the honour of the single currency. But if the Prime Minister was looking for truly conspicuous examples of waste, he might turn his attention to the EU’s diplomatic service.

Thursday

Matthew Parris

Why partisan columnists (like me) are doomed

An email exchange with a Conservative-leaning friend this week left me feeling sheepish. But if shameful my behaviour be, I’m not alone in the shame. I thought it worth sharing the conversation. We were corresponding about Ed Miliband’s stand-off with the Unite trade union. In a message to my friend, I remarked: ‘It’s reaching the point where (paradoxically) EM’s tendency to take the line of least resistance may actually push him into confronting Unite.’ And that’s true: worms turn and it’s not always good politics to corner people. But it is the next part of the message that I’m hard-put to defend.

James Forsyth

Ed Miliband now has his Clause 4 moment – whether he wants it or not

Ed Miliband doesn’t take a risk unless he has to. In his first two and a half years in charge of the Labour party, he eschewed a dramatic confrontation with the trade unions. Some in his circle wanted him to take them on, as part of a broader campaign against vested interests, but they were ignored, to the relief of Tory strategists. That has all changed now. Miliband has been pitched into an argument with the unions that will determine whether he has a chance of reaching No. 10. The Labour leader was slow to react to the controversy about the union Unite allegedly trying to fix the selection of a candidate in the safe Labour seat of Falkirk.

Rod Liddle

Only Tony Blair can unite the Middle East. There, everyone hates him

As if the poor Egyptians didn’t have enough on their plate, into the arena marches the man to sort it all out, the world’s ‘Middle East Envoy’, Tony Blair. Lucky world. Give the man his due, the Middle East is a monumentally fractious, fissiparous, disputatious neck of the woods and they all seem to hate each other. But mention the name ‘Blair’ and suddenly Maronite and Shia, Ashkenazi and Hamas, Druze and Sunni, men with long sideburns and men with long beards are united in an hysterical cackling. It is not often this column seeks an elucidatory comment from the Hamas spokesman Mohammed Shtayyeh, but his succinct verdict on Blair — ‘useless, useless, useless’ — would, I suspect, find accord at all points from Essaouira to Kabul.

Steerpike

Steerpike | 11 July 2013

The wine waiters at Claridges are taking a keen interest in the investigation into malpractice in Falkirk. And they’re hoping that Unite will be fully exonerated. Len McCluskey likes to celebrate political victories at the hotel bar with a glass of pink champagne. His most recent visit was in July 2011 after Rupert Murdoch’s ‘humblest day of my life’ admission before a Commons select committee. McCluskey toasted the press mogul’s self-lacerating words by downing a bottle of pink fizz with his old mucker Tom Watson. As they say, nothing’s too good for the workers to subsidise.   National treasure June Whitfield has a ruthless streak. She wants her rivals to drop like flies.

Thursday

Hugo Rifkind

I’ll tell you what really devalues marriage: patronising, preachy little tax breaks

The Conservative party is trying to redefine marriage. I can’t believe they think they’re going to get away with this. Throughout human history it has been one thing, which is a loving commitment between two people who want to share a life. Now they’re trying to turn it into something completely different. A tax break. It wouldn’t benefit me, even though I am married. Although I swear that isn’t the root of my objection. Honest. My wife and I are in the same tax bracket, you see, so sharing our allowance wouldn’t make much difference. What it amounts to, really, is an incentive for one of us to stop working and stay at home. Granted, it would never be much of an incentive.

James Delingpole

It’s the secret of a successful marriage: my wife treats me like a dog

‘Here, Wolf,’ says the Fawn to me, showing me a saucer. ‘Look at this! This is the new place where you put your mouth things. See! See the saucer? Look at the saucer! See the saucer! This saucer will now live by your bed. This is the place where from now on you put your mouth things. Not on the floor. In the saucer. See Wolf? See?’ (My ‘mouth things’, I should explain, are the manky strips of surgical tape I use to seal up my mouth every night. This sounds weird, I know, but it does have a purpose. I practise this breathing method called buteyko). And that dialogue I gave you in the first par — that’s my wife (aka the Fawn) in the process of training me.

Rod Liddle

So, can we expect Channel 4 to broadcast a C of E call to prayer?

It is very lucky for the BBC that Channel 4 exists. Whatever imbecilic, supposedly attention-grabbing trash the BBC commissions, there will always be its commercial rival around to commission something still more imbecilic, still more trashy. Such as — if you remember — ‘Wank Week’, a series exploring the manifest delights of masturbation. Having gained sufficient exposure with this proposal, the series was eventually — er — pulled. But you can imagine the witless commissioning editors sitting around telling each other what an edgy and brilliant idea it all was. And then there’s politics.

James Forsyth

Nick and Dave are ready to rumble. Ed, on the other hand …

The coalition parties have governed together for more than three years now, but they remain culturally very different beasts. When the Liberal Democrats held an away day last week, it was at a conference centre in Milton Keynes — picked, in the words of one Lib Dem, ‘because there are no distractions there’. The Tories are also conducting a bonding exercise: in the Downing Street garden and the chamber of the House of Commons. No. 10’s decision to light the barbecue and put out the bunting for Tory MPs is typical of its new-found interest in party management. It had realised that it was in danger of a vote of no confidence through neglect of its MPs, and it is now trying to correct its past errors.

Thursday

James Forsyth

An outbreak of peace among the Tories puts the pressure on Miliband

On Monday night, a Tory donor spent £90,000 on a bust of David Cameron at the party’s summer ball. It was an encouraging sign that there are still Conservatives prepared to lavish money and praise on the Prime Minister, and a reminder that the Tories will be able to run an extremely well- funded campaign at the next election. Another source of comfort for the Prime Minister is the stability of his great political love, the coalition. Those close to him are giddily confident that the government will make it all the way to May 2015. One minister boasts, ‘I’m absolutely certain of it.’ This uptick in confidence is a result of the successful, and relatively stress-free, conclusion of the spending round.

Matthew Parris

Why no guidance from the Good Book on how to prioritise?

Why is Christianity so unhelpful on the very ethical dilemma that most concerns ordinary people in our everyday lives? Why does Jesus have nothing helpful to say about the ranking of obligations? Last weekend, digging a huge hole in the ground to receive a gargantuan granite trough I’ve just bought, I was about four feet below ground level and wielding a pickaxe when, with a panic-stricken tweet, a fledgling coal tit fluttered down into a puddle in the depression. There were high winds on Saturday and I suppose the bird had been blown from its nest somewhere. This one managed to half-fly, half-hop to the water’s edge where it stood tweeting desperately and trying to fluff out its wings to dry them. It could nearly fly, but not well enough for the required vertical take-off.

Steerpike

Steerpike | 27 June 2013

The PM was keeping his enemies close at a Tory fundraiser last week at Old Billingsgate Market. Dave exchanged uneasy smiles with his deadliest rival, Boris, who was seated on the same table as him. And something else seemed slightly fishy at the former herring exchange. Guests noticed that there were rather fewer tables than there have been in years past. Even a speech from the Prime Minister couldn’t lift the atmosphere. One attendee remarked afterwards, ‘It was a typical Cameron speech, thoroughly unmemorable.’   Dear old Darwin is to be culled from the new version of the ten-pound note. The outgoing Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, has hinted that Jane Austen is hot favourite to replace the naturalist.

Rod Liddle

Who’s talking the most nonsense about Edward Snowden? It’s a tough contest

From which of the actors engaged in the thoroughly entertaining case of Edward Snowden has come the biggest spewing-out of cant, do you reckon? Edward himself? The Guardian? Or the Yanks or -Chinese? Edward was a fairly low-level CIA technical contractor in Hawaii when he released to the world details of his government’s clandestine electronic surveillance programme (Prism) and also some stuff about our own much-loved GCHQ in Cheltenham. Apparently shocked to the core to discover that the security services were secretly spying on people, Edward was gripped by a spasm of narcissistic outrage and said: ‘I don’t want to live in a society which does these sorts of things.

Thursday

James Forsyth

George Osborne’s own personal recovery

The other day, George Osborne was walking with his wife across the courtyard of the Royal Academy. In the evening sunshine, the Chancellor spotted another Tory MP in the opposite corner. The MP was on his mobile: a wave would have seen courtesies observed. But Osborne, who was dressed for dinner, strode over and waited from a polite distance as the call was concluded. His eagerness to talk was particularly striking since the MP had been a frequent critic of Osborne’s handling of the economy. When the conservation started it was clear that the MP’s criticisms were the reason Osborne had come over. The Chancellor, in buoyant mood, wanted to get the MP’s views on how the economy was going. He asked the question because he knew the answer.