Columns

Saturday

Rod Liddle

Who should replace Mark Thompson? Sentamu, or Harry Redknapp?

Three jobs only a madman would covet, and all of them up for grabs this spring: manager of the England football team, Archbishop of Canterbury and director general of the BBC. Wouldn’t the world be a much happier place if, by May, something weird happened to all the applications and we ended up with John Sentamu running the BBC, Helen Boaden managing England at Euro 2012 and, best of all, Harry Redknapp as Archbishop of Canterbury? It would certainly increase the gaiety of the nation. ‘I think my lads have got it in them for a top four finish, behind the Muslims, the left-footers and the Hindus.

Matthew Parris

A moderate case for animal rights fanatics

My reaction last week, I suppose, will not be dissimilar from those of the majority of my readers. I growled. From my radio came a report about problems that British researchers were encountering with supplies of mice for medical experiments. Apparently anti-vivisectionists have been targeting the transport companies that bring supplies of mice from the Continent; and, having frightened the airlines off, were turning their attention to ferry companies, one of which had just decided to stop accepting lorries loaded with this living freight.

James Delingpole

In praise of patrons – particularly mine

God, I enjoyed my book launch party last week. (Though not as much as some people, eh, Toby?) So much so that I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself. I keep thinking not of the fun I had but of all those friends I wish could have been there but weren’t. My fault, totally, in most cases: I’m horrendously disorganised when it comes to party invitations — and it’s entirely possible that you’re one of the people I love most in the world but forgot to invite because, hey, I’m just a bit useless that way. Anyway, this party.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: Taking back the cities

When the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, Steve Hilton, quits Downing Street in May, he’ll leave behind what he believes to be a mechanism to solve the Conservatives’ biggest electoral problem, which is their failure to win urban seats. On 3 May, ten of England’s largest cities will vote on whether to join London in having a directly elected mayor. These mayoralties will, if the Conservatives play their cards right, provide a platform from which the party can rebuild its metropolitan appeal. Directly elected mayors could provide the accountability that local politics has so lacked in the postwar era. For the first time in generations, people might know who is running their city.

Rod Liddle

I’m not sure it’s safe for me to fly

I find myself at a bit of a loss this week, for which apologies. I had hoped to write something inappropriate and threatening about Iran. Or, if not that, then contrasted in a less than sensitive manner the amount of press coverage afforded to that appalling murder of Afghan civilians by a soldier with the amount devoted to the deaths of six British soldiers in that benighted hellhole. Unfortunately, I cannot do either. In my position I have to look after myself, guard my interests and so on. I have a family. They may not like me very much but they do rely upon me for food and shelter, which I will not be able to provide for them if I am in prison. Two Israeli citizens were arrested at Heathrow Airport earlier this week for having made remarks about Iran during a flight from Las Vegas.

Hugo Rifkind

Sorry, but religion ought to be marginalised in public life

Oh dear. It turns out I’m in favour of the marginalisation of religion in public life. People talk about this as though it’s a bad thing. But I’ve had a decent think about what I’m in favour of and — hmm, bit of a surprise —it’s definitely that. Take gay marriage. Support it, don’t support it, what do I give a damn? I think it’s wrong to be against it, as it happens, both logically and morally, but if you aren’t indulging in actual hate crimes, then that’s your business, not mine. Or rather, it should be. But for some reason, when you’re a church, it isn’t. And it’s annoying.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: A struggle for the Tory soul

Walking back to the Palace of Westminster the other day, I bumped into a new Tory MP. He was eager to tell me what the Chancellor should do in the Budget: abolish the 50p rate, scrap labour market protections for young workers and announce the building of another airport. But by the time we had reached the entrance to the Commons, this enthusiasm had given way to melancholy. It wasn’t the Liberal Democrats, though, who were spoiling his mood. It was the leadership of his own party. As we arrived at the entrance to the Commons, his voice dropped as he recalled a presentation from the Prime Minister and his political team to all Tory MPs last month. ‘It was all this modernising stuff,’ he said, disdainfully.

Rod Liddle

Will the fall of the BNP mean a rise in racial violence?

Is Britain about to be engulfed by a race war promulgated by white, dispossessed, millennialist fantasists? No, of course not, don’t be so stupid you fat oaf, is the right response to this suggestion. But a survey out this week concerning the supporters of the country’s far-right parties suggests that a certain appetite for interracial violence is present and possibly growing. Intriguingly, the electoral failure and consequent political disintegration of the British National Party may be one of the causes of this unwanted development.

Matthew Parris

The writing is on the wall for restrictions on free speech

Is The Spectator like the owner of ‘a wall which has been festooned, overnight, with defamatory graffiti’? At its most thrilling this magazine does sometimes feel like that; but, in truth, the editorial hand here (though it may seem marvellously light to us contributors) is a quiet background presence protecting us and our potential victims from the publication of defamatory remarks. Not only would our editor do his best to chase away spray-painting hooligans before they did their work on his wall, but, should offending graffiti appear, he would come out fast with a brush, a bucket of whitewash and if necessary scaffolding: the equivalent of a published correction and apology. Or the law would do it for him: we could be sued.

James Delingpole

The consensus on printing money reminds me of the case for global warming

We all have a pretty good idea of why the Soviet Union collapsed: it’s because its state-run planned economy wasn’t as efficient as its rivals in the free-market West. The lesson we’ve learned from this is that capitalism won the political argument. But it’s a false lesson, because capitalism didn’t. The problems that made the Soviet Union such a failure are now endemic in the West. To give one tiny example, in my Sunday paper last weekend was a story about how the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is launching ‘a drive to encourage Britons to holiday in their own country… with discounts worth a fifth on breaks booked during the Olympic year’. Who is paying for this scheme? You are, of course. The government has no money of its own.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: The Liberal Democrats hold the key to boundary reform – and therefore the next election

The Cameroons believe they have come up with a policy that will deliver at least 20 more Tory seats at the next election. No. 10 is, understandably, determined to get this measure through: nothing else promises them anything like the same electoral dividend. But this silver bullet isn’t a tax cut or a new approach to Europe. It is a set of changes to the constituency boundaries. This boundary review has been designed to limit the pro-Labour bias in the Westminster electoral system. It reduces the number of parliamentary seats from 650 to 600, which notionally reduces the number of Labour MPs by 28. If its recommendations are enacted, the effect on British politics would be dramatic.

Rod Liddle

Why aren’t we asking what proportion of Syrians back the uprising?

What proportion of the Syrian population is fully in support of the continued uprising against the country’s authoritarian leader, Bashar al-Assad? It is not a question I have heard addressed often — not by our journalists bravely reporting from beneath the Syrian army’s mortar attacks, nor indeed by those sitting at home writing for outraged liberal broadsheets, demanding we arm the rebels, or at least do something. Still less have I heard the issue addressed by the European Union and its odd new allies in this struggle — al-Qa’eda, Hamas and the notoriously democratic government of Saudi Arabia. It is a complex question.

Hugo Rifkind

The thing about Vladimir Putin is that he doesn’t give a damn

I do love hearing that old anecdote about Andrew Marr rushing through the Kremlin en route to some assignment, and noticing various guards, soldiers and literal apparatchiks leaping up and clicking their heels, under the impression he was Vladimir Putin. Always, though, I find myself wondering whether anybody has ever had the guts to tell it to Putin himself. Shouldn’t have thought so. ‘Gollum?’ he’d say, peering at you with those cold, colourless eyes of his. ‘You are saying, comrade, that I look like Gollum?’ Brrr. You’d never eat sashimi again. It’s a source of endless fascination to me, the vanity of Vladimir Putin. Because that resemblance is decreasing, isn’t it?

Saturday

David Owen

Politics: At last, we can have it both ways on Europe

In all the controversy about the eurozone and Greece, it is easy to ignore one simple fact: that the bailouts and succession of crisis summits are creating an unstoppable momentum towards a United States of Europe. Three weeks ago, Angela Merkel indicated very clearly her direction of travel. The eurozone crisis is, for her, the springboard for another pact to replace the ­Lisbon ­Treaty. ‘Step by step, European politics is merging with domestic politics,’ she said recently. Europe needed ‘comprehensive structural reform’.

Rod Liddle

A few kind words of advice for Rachel Cusk

How can we help the talented writer Rachel Cusk to overcome the extraordinary hurt she has suffered as a consequence of losing her family and, far more importantly, her feminist identity? Mrs Cusk has been explaining, at some length, and repeatedly, to like-minded souls at the Guardian the anguish occasioned by the apparent disappearance of this latter possession. She first detailed, over what seemed to be many, many thousands of words, how she felt now that her marriage had come to an end. She left her husband because she was tired of him, it seems, and her children now shuttle back and forth between the two domiciles — one familiar to them, where Mrs Cusk lives (natch), and the new one where her evicted husband resides.

Matthew Parris

Beware – I would say to believers – the patronage of unbelievers

This goes to print on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. So allow me to pitch in to February’s religion-versus-secularism debate from a new direction. As an unbeliever I wish to complain on behalf of serious religious belief. Faith is being defended by the wrong people, in the wrong way. ‘Faith’ means faith. Doubt is not faith. Faith is not seeking but finding. Real Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Jewish believers are being patronised by kindly agnostics who privately believe that the convictions of those they patronise are delusions. A lazy mish-mash of covert agnosticism is being advanced in defence of religion as a social institution. But ‘whatever floats your boat’ is not the wellspring of Judaic belief.

James Delingpole

Separating myth from reality in a history of the Battle of Britain

We all know that the time before we were born was a golden age when men were manlier, women lovelier, civilisation more civilised, culture more edifying, values more valued and so on. But what if it isn’t actually true? What if, say, it turned out that Winston Churchill was damn near as slippery and unprincipled a politician as David Cameron? What if the Battle of Britain wasn’t actually won by ‘the Few’ — and wasn’t even primarily a fighter battle anyway? What if, damn it, the famously long hot summer of 1940 was in fact mostly overcast with just a hot bit right at the end in September? What if our radar technology really wasn’t that early or special?

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: Britain’s new gang of four

We have a new system of rule in Britain: Quad government. The coalition has not, as is often claimed, restored Cabinet government after 30 years of personality-charged premierships. But the Quad, which consists of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, plays the Cabinet’s traditional role. It decides all major matters of policy, inviting other ministers along where necessary. The Quad will determine the contents of the Budget. It has already met twice to discuss its priorities for the statement on 21 March. As its members will proudly tell you, the Quad doesn’t have its meetings in the Prime Minister’s den. This is not, they stress, sofa government.

Rod Liddle

The Saudi journalist who could be killed for a tweet

Hamza Kashgari opted for the wrong stopover; hell, it happens. I don’t know what the flight options are for Riyadh to Wellington but if I’d been in ­Hamza’s shoes I’d have tried to ensure the plane didn’t touch down in Kuala Lumpur, of all places. A non-stop flight would have been much better — but then I suppose it would have been more expensive. I made the mistake, on a long-haul trip, of choosing an airline that stopped in Dubai, just to save a few quid on the fare. The Emiratis confiscated all my alcohol. The ramifications for Kashgari are more acute — he is likely to be ­murdered. He fled Saudi Arabia because of a number of ‘tweets’ he had made concerning the prophet Mohammed, PBUH etc etc.

Hugo Rifkind

Are we all becoming better informed – or is it just me?

The difference between the debt and the deficit, I quite often find myself telling people, is like the difference between your overdraft and the gulf between what you earn and what you need. Even if you could reset the former to zero, somehow, the latter still be there, forever dragging you down. ‘But aren’t you the guy who writes a whimsical made-up diary in which you pretend to be Cheryl Cole, or tell sex jokes about Silvio Berlusconi?’ they’ll frequently reply. And they’re right, because that’s exactly who I am. But I’m bloody clever, too. I know loads of stuff. Lots of us do. More, I increasingly think, and more. I never expected to know stuff. I never thought I was the sort.