Columns

Thursday

Rod Liddle

How refreshing! A clean, old-fashioned expenses scandal

It was good to see parliamentary expenses back at the top of the news agenda over last weekend. I think we were all getting a little nonced out, so to speak. To judge from the number of lawsuits now filed against the BBC, and also the supposed list of people due to be picked up by the police, it would seem that almost everybody who works in television was guilty, at some time or another, of sexually abusing some innocent civilian. It is surely only a matter of time before we see the headline: ‘Police to interview Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and, of course, Grubb.

Thursday

James Forsyth

The end of the recession, but just the beginning of the PM’s problems

Since the end of the recession was confirmed a few days ago, confidence has returned to at least one part of -Britain. Ministers are beginning to strut again as they wander round Whitehall and their conversations include the occasional reference to a second term. Political recovery will, they think, follow economic recovery. As evidence for this, they point to polling which shows that the coalition’s reputation for economic management has already returned to pre-Budget levels. David Cameron, though, is more cautious. Over the past difficult few months, he did his best to keep his own and others’ spirits up. Colleagues were regularly told, ‘Well, it was never going to be easy.’ But now he is airing some of his suppressed irritation.

Rod Liddle

We journalists can only chase one ambulance at a time

What I really wanted to do for you this week was uncover a totally new story about a racist paedophile banker — a perfect storm of a story which through the sheer magnitude of the mass national hysteria it engendered actually brought about a lethal fracturing of the earth’s crust, volcanic eruptions, rivers of sulphurous lava etc. ‘I was only 14 when he walked into my bedroom with his huge bonus and called me a darkie,’ my ideal interviewee — the whistleblower — would have begun, at least in my foetid and grasping imagination. It’s how our minds work, we hacks, I suppose.

James Delingpole

Why on earth do we think badgers are charismatic?

Did you know that the badger is one of the most charismatic creatures in our countryside? It says so on an advisory leaflet produced by Scottish Natural Heritage called ‘Badgers And The Law’. The document doesn’t make clear which aspect of badgers is particularly charismatic. Perhaps it’s that they are prone to collapsing during evangelical church services and babbling in strange tongues. Or perhaps it’s that with their rakish stripes and their dusk-till-dawn social hours they’re widely known to be the life and soul of every party. But the more likely explanation, I fear, is that the author of those words is doing what psychologists call ‘projecting’.

Matthew Parris

Why a visit to a school persuaded me that young people aged 16 to 18 should have the vote

Let me guess most readers’ reaction to news that Alex Salmond has arm-twisted Westminster into allowing 16- to 18-year-olds in Scotland to vote in the 2014 Scottish referendum on independence. I bet the reaction resembled mine. Annoyance. The very thought! As to the assurance that this concession will be temporary, and pressure will not build to make the change permanent, I’d reply (with many of you): ‘Nonsense!’ So, being on my way to speak at a well-regarded state secondary school in Wells, the Blue School, and hearing the news about Scotland, I decided to test the water. I was there to speak to 16- to 18-year-olds: some 200 of them. I could explore not just their opinions, but their reasoning.

Thursday

James Forsyth

The Conservatives’ Major anxiety

There’s a spectre haunting the Conservative party, the spectre of a voteless recovery. Under the gothic arches of the House of Commons, small groups of Tory MPs stand around nervously debating whether ‘it’s John Major all over again’. Their fear is that a Conservative government will preside over an economic recovery but receive scant thanks for it from the voters. This concern has been sparked by a dire set of weekend newspaper headlines for the party. What worried MPs, and even some ministers, most was that these awful front pages followed a week in which the government actually had quite a lot of good news to talk about. Unemployment, crime and NHS waiting times were all down.

Hugo Rifkind

Gay marriage is going to happen, and that’s a fact

I know this will surprise you, given the shy and retiring violets who largely write in these pages, but one of the main problems with being a columnist is the rampaging ego. In my own case, this manifests not in drunken debauchery or unabashed priapism (which is a shame as both sound fun) but in a naive and quite self-obsessed assumption that people might have been keeping track of what I’ve written about things, regardless of where I’ve done so. Hence my mistake. Two weeks ago, here, I made an offhand reference to supporting gay marriage. Since then, I’ve had a handful of letters, a few emails, and an actual face-to-face bollocking from a very nice lady at a ‘meet the readers’ Spectator tea party.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Cameron will announce an EU referendum by Christmas

William Hague is now one of the most pro-European Conservative member of the Cabinet. The man once reviled by the bien-pensant for his views on this subject is now regarded by the Liberal Democrats as a brake on his more sceptical colleagues and praised in Brussels for his pragmatism. He told his party’s conference that he wants Britain’s membership of the European Union to be about more than just the single market and to extend to ‘co-operation on climate change and other great issues facing us’. In today’s Conservative party, this is unusual. When I asked various ministers in Birmingham if they agreed with it, nearly all said emphatically not.

Rod Liddle

Everyone agrees it’s time to get rid of the word ‘insulting’ from the Public Order Act

  ‘(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he: (a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting.’ —Section 5, Public Order Act 1986 Do you ever growl at dogs? It’s something I’ve been known to do while out and about. I like dogs in general, but some breeds are given to facial expressions which annoy me. Labradors, for example, always seem to me complacent and self-righteous, especially the yellow ones. I sometimes growl at them in order to disturb their evident self-satisfaction, or yap quietly to see how they react. Alsatians, too, always seem a bit too bloody sure of themselves for my liking.

Steerpike

Catholic plates, Sir Stuart’s boob job and tight-lipped Lynton

Many are the mysteries of the Catholic Church. The latest concerns the takings at Westminster Cathedral, which have suddenly soared by thousands of pounds a week. The priests, who for years bemoaned the stinginess of their flock, are said to be delighted by this outbreak of largesse among the faithful. They’re also rather puzzled. A long-running rumour suggested that someone close to the Cathedral was skimming the plate. The police were called in but could find no evidence of wrongdoing. As the coffers swell, the mystery deepens.   The obituaries of Sir Stuart Bell have revealed a host of fascinating details about the twice-married Middlesbrough MP. The 74-year-old spoke fluent French, practised law in France in the 1970s, and penned a novel suggestively entitled Paris 69.

James Delingpole

Treating Islam with special reverence is cultural suicide and just plain wrong

My brilliant niece Freya was talking to my brother the other day about the religious education curriculum at her predominately white, middle-class state school in a pretty English cathedral city. She happened to mention ‘Mohammed, Peace Be Upon Him.’ ‘Eh?’ said my brother. ‘It’s what we’re taught at school. After we mention “Mohammed” we have to say “Peace be upon him”.’ Now I know what you’re thinking: that Freya must surely have got the wrong end of the stick. ‘If this were a madrassa in Bradford, well maybe,’ you’ll be thinking. ‘But at a white, middle-class state school in a pretty English cathedral city? No way. Things aren’t that bad. At least not yet, anyway...

Thursday

James Forsyth

Will there be cracks over cuts? It all depends on Cable

In Birmingham this week all the talk is of two dates. There’s 2015 of course, but also 5 December this year, because that is when George Osborne will have to spell out (in the autumn statement) how the coalition is planning to respond to our continuing lack of growth. Since Osborne delivered the Budget in March, Britain has slipped back into recession and the Conservatives have undergone their most difficult period in government, and this has only added to the importance of the autumn statement. Both sides are acutely aware that within weeks, the Office for Budget Responsibility will present the coalition with its economic forecasts. These will reveal how far off the coalition is from having national debt falling as a percentage of GDP by 2015-16, its key fiscal target.

Rod Liddle

Make a distasteful remark on Twitter, and expect to be hauled before the courts

I’m writing this waiting for Bob. I’ve been waiting for Bob since 27 August, which was when he first promised he’d turn up. Bob lied. He’s lied lots since 27 August about when he’s going to turn up, but every time he gives me a date I sit here transfixed with puppy-dog hope, glancing out of the window every so often, expectant. Bob is, of course, a builder. Or perhaps he isn’t a builder but one of those weird people who just pretends to do something on account of the sexual thrill such pretence gives them. It’s usually doctors and nurses but I can see no reason why such an affliction shouldn’t stretch to pretending to be a builder.

Hugo Rifkind

How nice to hear Tories called stupid, not evil

The most significant bit of Ed Miliband’s speech last week (which I bet you watched in the office, from beginning to end, like I did, because that’s not weird in most jobs at all) was the bit where he called David Cameron an idiot. Did you catch it? Very stirring. ‘Have you ever seen a more incompetent, hopeless, out-of-touch, U-turning, pledge-breaking, make-it-up-as-you-go-along, back-of-the-envelope, miserable shower?’ he said. As he said it his spine straightened out of that frowning crouch he goes into sometimes, which can make him look as though he’s about to drop a poo on the stage, and he soared up onto his tiptoes. ‘Good on you, Ed Miliband,’ I thought, as the crowd went wild. ‘Bravo.’ It’s not that I agree.

Wednesday

Matthew Parris

A pity that’s afraid to speak its name

On the Sunday just passed I sat alongside Polly Toynbee in Manchester as one of Andrew Marr’s two newspaper reviewers on his morning programme on BBC television. Arriving at dawn, we skimmed the weekend papers for stories we might discuss. Polly chose, among others, the latest reports in the Megan Stammers saga; the schoolgirl and the teacher she had run away with, Jeremy Forrest, had been located in Bordeaux; he was in a French jail pending extradition, and Megan had just returned to her parents. I wondered whether to say what I honestly felt. I sensed it would upset or annoy some viewers.

Steerpike

Goodbye to Craig Dre and the legend of Dave’s rudeness

Word reaches me that Dave may be about to lose his third spin doctor in a row. First Andy Coulson left to spend more time with his Fingertip Guide to the Criminal Law. Then Steve Hilton legged it to California. Now Craig Oliver, Coulson’s replacement, is said to be heading for the chop. Mr Oliver, once a BBC news chief, enjoys the rare distinction of being completely unknown to the general public and his friends tell me he’s been doing a superb job as the PM’s communications tsar. But Andrew Mitchell changed all that. A few blurted expletives at the porter’s lodge turned into a two-week fiasco for the Tory party so a senior publicist had to take the heat. Mr Oliver, married to BBC news babe Joanna Gosling, dislikes being thought of as an establishment figure.

Rod Liddle

Why didn’t the full Savile story emerge sooner?

Every so often a story appears in the newspapers which, while it might seem on the surface sensational and arresting, actually leaves you feeling somewhat less than astonished, all things considered. There have been at least two of these stories recently. The first, in the Daily Telegraph, alleged that Scotland Yard was investigating suspiciously large sums of cash apparently paid into the bank account of the Labour MP for Leicester East, Keith Vaz. I bet that very few people who have ever heard the words ‘Keith’ and ‘Vaz’ used in a conjoined sense will have smacked their foreheads upon reading this story and muttered to themselves: ‘Gaw, Keith Vaz, hey — who’d have believed it?

James Delingpole

Public-interest piety is the real threat to a free press

For me the only useful fact to emerge from the otherwise immensely tedious Leveson inquiry was this: that messages on the phone of Milly Dowler were not erased by News of the World journalists. Of course, it would have been a much, much better story if they had been. Eavesdropping on the phone messages of a murdered schoolgirl may be creepy and unpleasant but it is essentially a victimless crime. Actively interfering with those messages, on the other hand, might have had serious consequences. Perhaps false hope might have been given to Milly’s distraught parents. Perhaps the police inquiry might have been jeopardised.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Miliband must define himself – before the Tories do it for him

After the tribulations of last year’s conference, few in Ed Miliband’s camp would have dared hope that he would turn up this year as the only major party leader totally secure in his position. For the first time, his main challenge will not be to cut through the chatter about whether he is up to the job or not. As one aide puts it, ‘It’ll feel like his first conference.’ It is certainly his best chance yet to give the country a sense of what he would do as prime minister. I understand that Miliband has two main aims for the next week. The first is to give people a sense of who he is. He needs to escape from the shadows of his brother and father to craft his own persona.

Hugo Rifkind

If trainers were sold like newspapers, Nike would be giving them away for free

Writing on the Guardian’s website, and perhaps in the paper too, although I’m not wholly sure they still print one (subs, please check), their investigations editor David Leigh has made a bold suggestion for the future of the press. He’s been around, Leigh, and is as dogged a hack as you could hope to find on a newspaper, or whatever, which only prints tits on the arts pages. He’s a bit wobbly on the online side of things, granted (he accidentally gave the entire world access to the full set of unredacted Wikileaks cables by blithely sticking the password in a book), but that’s probably just a function of age. And, like I said, he’s had an idea.