Columns

Saturday

Matthew Parris

What is this longing for the apocalypse?

Sometimes it is by catching ourselves unawares that we see ourselves best. That unprepossessing fellow with a dull, crumpled, peasant face and a faintly disobliged expression that you caught a glimpse of in the shop window while Christmas shopping on Oxford Street — oh crikey, that was you. Our looks, however, are not our fault. Our attitudes are surely under our control. Or are they? the other day I caught myself, as if in a shop window, in an attitude I’d never acknowledged, do not like, and do not seem to be able to do anything about. And now I’ve spotted it, and the more I think about it and look out for it in others, the more prevalent it seems to be. It may even be at the root of those global economic problems with which 2011 ends and 2012 begins.

James Delingpole

Ten things you don’t want to happen in 2012, but which probably will

My predictions for 2012 1. After the Arab Spring and the Islamist Winter will come Armageddon Summer. It might happen as early as spring but that season has been bagged already. At Islington dinner parties, on the BBC and in the Guardian — after cursory acknowledgement has been made of all the dead innocents — the conclusion will be reached that Israel is to blame. As if its very existence wasn’t provocation enough, Israel has consistently — and deliberately — mocked its poor, struggling neighbours with its outrageous displays of democracy, accountability and economic growth. 2. Boris will make some spectacular gaffe.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Thank God I don’t have that ghastly sense of entitlement that Eton instils

I honestly didn’t realise I’d been to a ‘minor’ public school until my first term at Christ Church. Before that, I thought — as all of us did at my alma mater — that though of course there were lots of other public schools out there, Malvern could hold its head high with the very best of them. So coming up to Oxford was a bit of a shock. As far as the Etonians and Wyckhamists and Wets were concerned, my school was so obscure and worthless I might have attended a shabby comprehensive. Among those who very much gave off this vibe was David Cameron. Dave was never aggressively snobbish but then Etonians are much subtler than that.

Hugo Rifkind

I have absolutely no opinions whatsoever on the euro – aren’t I a lucky boy?

It’s a remarkable stroke of luck for a columnist, but I have no views whatsoever on the euro. It’s not deliberate, this, just a function of my age. Most columnists seem to have started forming their euro views some time prior to 1992, and I simply wasn’t that sort of 14-year-old. ‘Do you worry about the effect that high German interest rates might have on Britain’s continuing participation in the ERM?’ is exactly the sort of thing we didn’t say to each other, while shaving odd bits out of our grunge-era hair and debating the merits of inhaling deodorant through a towel.

Matthew Parris

How a friend bought a flat in Berlin and became custodian to a dead Russian

My friend Stephen (let us call him Stephen) is an unsentimental sort of man. In his thirties, he has a sharper mind than his job as a middle-ranking civil servant really demands, but he has more or less settled down. Stylish (and one for the girls) in his twenties, he keeps his neat good looks and slight, alluring stammer, but seems content now in a steady relationship with a good woman in comfortable lodgings he’s able to afford, a long way from the centre of London. His intellect, though, still roves. He has an edge, a critical, sceptical outlook; and has avoided that benign, mellow fuzziness that can settle on people as they grow older. Though Stephen has maybe had to lower his sights a bit, he stays interested in things. He keeps his bite. That’s why I like him.

James Forsyth

Politics: Cameron is at his best when he is boldest

David Cameron must sometimes wonder if the gods are against his modernising project. Events have forced him back on to the traditional Tory territory of Europe and the economy. This is not how the Cameroons expected it to be in the early days of his leadership. Then he defined himself not by his position on spending cuts or the repatriation of powers but by his urging the country to ‘Vote Blue, Go Green’ while wearing a pair of recycled trainers. He was a different kind of Tory talking about a whole new set of issues. In May 2007, Oliver Letwin, the modernisers’ intellectual godfather, gave a speech setting out the theory behind Cameron Conservatism. He declared that they wanted to bring about two important shifts in politics.

Saturday

Gerald Warner

Politics: Whitehall’s own Scottish nationalist

The notion of Scotland being reoriented as a ‘Scandinavian’ country, at the expense of links with England, the Commonwealth and Europe, is odd enough; but stranger still is the revelation this week that the plan — part of a massive ‘Prospectus for Independence’ — is being put together by a branch of the UK civil service. These servants of the Crown have been tasked by Alex Salmond with selling separatism to the electorate, in advance of an independence referendum. For Scots it was a shock, but not a surprise. This is only the latest demonstration of how what ought to be part of the British government machine has been made an instrument of separatist propaganda. This subversive scenario was never supposed to happen.

Rod Liddle

This year’s shortlist for the Ronnie Hutton Memorial Prize

Usually at this time of the year I’m busy at home compiling entrants for the Ronnie Hutton Memorial Prize, a prestigious award which goes to whatever police force has made the most fatuous arrest under the new and superfluous ‘race hate’ legislation. You may not remember, but Ronnie Hutton was the Scottish motorist who, several years ago, spent two days in prison and was fined £150 for the crime of ‘revving his car in a racist manner’. Mr Hutton revved his car in a busy street and two Muslim people took offence and that was it. I have to admit that I am not a fan of gratuitous car-revving and usually shout some sort of abuse, although obviously not racist abuse, when people do it near me.

Matthew Parris

At the end of the day, we can’t do without verbal padding

I had last week the pleasure of lunch with Mark Mason. Between or perhaps while walking (overground) the route of the London Underground for his latest book, Walking the Lines, he has been writing occasionally for The Spectator. I had wanted to discuss with Mark his piece (‘It’s so annoying,’ 5 November) about the viral spread of the word ‘so’ as a pointless means of starting a sentence or conversation. Dot Wordsworth, too, has been confounded by the fashion, and I reported the phenomenon many months ago in the Times; though on this magazine’s letters page a weary reader has reviewed the great debate and concluded ‘So what?’ So – well, what? Our lunch led me to a whole new speculation about language.

James Delingpole

Will Britain ever recover its imperial mojo?

Jessica Douglas-Home’s A Glimpse of Empire (Michael Russell) has one of those provocatively old-fashioned titles guaranteed to alienate the kind of people who enjoy Woman’s Hour, You And Yours and Jon Snow on Channel 4 News. But that’s not the only reason you should give it to someone you love this Christmas. No, the main one is that — apart from being charming, exquisitely but unshowily written, beautifully observed and handsomely illustrated with period photographs and etchings — it magically transports you to a much better world. That world is the last days of the Raj and, specifically, the 1911 Royal Durbar in which the new King, George V, travelled to Delhi to be proclaimed Emperor of India.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: Osborne’s Autumn Statement was about creating more Tories

It was political jujitsu. The coalition turned the public sector unions’ strike back against them. When the unions first decided to stage a walk-out the day after the government’s Autumn Statement, they wanted to show that reforms wouldn’t go through without a fight. But the coalition has chosen to embrace this conflict. Senior Cabinet ministers have taken to saying, ‘You can’t understand Tuesday [the Autumn Statement] without Wednesday [the strike].’ The government wants to be seen as on the side of necessary but fair reform; facing down opponents who believe in ‘something for nothing economics’.

Rod Liddle

It’s hard to build a Big Society if you don’t know who lives next door

Is it important to know your next-door neighbour’s name if you’re about to send him death threats, hate mail or just post unpleasant allegations about him on a social networking site? My guess is that your campaign of vilification will carry more weight if you can actually give the victim’s full name, rather than just saying ‘the ginger-headed nonce with the Lexus at No. 32’. And yet increasingly, it seems, we do not know the names of our next-door neighbours. The latest poll, commissioned by some Japanese car manufacturer for reasons of which I am not entirely clear, suggested that 70 per cent of us do not know our neighbours’ names. This is a huge problem, I would have thought, if you’re going to sue the bastard.

Hugo Rifkind

I can’t blame Pippa for her latest career move

I suppose we might all be quite wrong about what it’s like to be Pippa Middleton. I suppose that’s perfectly possible. When Hugh Laurie wrote his novel The Gun Seller, I remember being told he submitted it under a pseudonym, so terrified was he that a grasping publisher might be willing to publish any old crap provided it had the name of Stephen Fry’s mate on it. With Pippa, for all we know, the situation might be similar. ‘Great news!’ one soulless publishing automaton may have said to another.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: When it comes to the crunch, Cameron will choose his party over Europe

Downing Street’s negotiating team returned from Berlin last Friday afternoon in good spirits. Angela Merkel had accepted that Britain deserved concessions as part of Germany’s plan for a new European treaty. The Prime Minister was delighted, believing this to be a significant moment. This was a first step in David Cameron’s  long-term plan: to refashion Britain’s membership of the European Union, but to do so gradually rather than in one big-bang moment. This strategy, however, is based on two huge gambles. If Cameron has miscalculated, his political career will end in failure. The first is that he has started steadily carving powers away from Brussels, and will have further opportunities to do so. Both the Foreign Office and No.

Rod Liddle

Sorry, Ken, but even I know you can’t say that

This week I thought I would offer advice on the sort of things one can and cannot say in public without fear of censure. I realise that I may not be the most obvious person, at this moment in time, to offer such a service. Maybe even the last person. But one has to plough away, give help where it might be needed. And in this particular case, to our Justice Secretary, Kenneth Harry Clarke. So Ken — here’s the last thing you should ever say in public. You should never, ever, as a suffix to a statement, make the claim: ‘And most women agree with me.

Matthew Parris

Thanks to the financial crisis, we’re all economists now

I was standing with a cheerful huddle at a farm near Monyash in the Peak District, seeing off the Four Shires Bloodhounds on a foggy November Sunday. The hounds bayed and the horses stamped, and I wished I could still run well enough to be the quarry. In the same huddle was a friend who farms not far from where we live; he and I used to train together when we were younger and he was a fine middle-distance (and I a hopeful long-distance) runner. ‘What’s going to happen with this Europe job?’ he said to me. ‘It doesn’t look good,’ I said, wondering if it was the Common Agricultural Policy, or perhaps milk prices, he was talking about.

James Delingpole

A refreshing weekend of real conservatism

Conservatism is dead in Britain — as it is in Europe, as it is in most of the world — and if you want to know what the problem is, a good place to start is the one where I’ve just been: the David Horowitz Restoration Weekend in Palm Beach, Florida. Horowitz is a prominent US activist, author and intellectual whose Freedom Center, if you didn’t know better, you might assume was a conservative think tank. But it’s not. As Horowitz reminded us on the first night of our three-day palm-fringed extravaganza of cocktails, fine cuisine, and sound conservatism courtesy of Mark Steyn, Ann Coulter, Herman Cain, Allen West, Baroness Cox, Bernie Goldberg, Douglas Murray and, ahem, James Delingpole, ‘We’re not a think tank. We’re a battle tank.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: Recovery begins at home

There’s a pattern emerging to George Osborne’s autumn. He gives a big domestic set piece speech on growth and then immediately leaves the country for a meeting of European finance ministers. It is what he did straight after his conference speech last month and what he will do after the growth review on 29 November. It is a reminder that the fate of the British economy is uncomfortably linked to the fortunes of the floundering eurozone. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have never been more worried about the economic outlook than they are now. One Downing Street aide remarks: ‘it is not quite sleepless nights territory. But it is bloody serious.’ Fears of a chaotic break-up of the euro have been heightened by the events of the past few days.

Hugo Rifkind

The media is out of control. But we can still worry about the behaviour of tabloids

For months now, the whole idea of the Leveson inquiry into press standards has been dimly reminding me of something. Only recently did I figure out what it was. You know when anthropologists descend upon some almost-doomed Patagonian tribe, desperate to document their language, costumes and strategies for spear-throwing, nose-boning and rat spit-roasting before the last one succumbs to alcoholism and keels over and dies? It’s a bit like that. It’s the Domesday Book for the British press. This isn’t to say that there won’t be a British press 30 years from now. There had better be, or else some of us are going to be in trouble. But surely, by then, it isn’t going to look much like it does now. And I don’t just mean in delivery.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: Miliband pitches his tent with the protestors  

During the Depression, tent cities sprung up across America. Today, in the second great contraction, they are appearing in the financial centres of the western world. But there is a crucial difference: the contemporary campers are there out of choice not necessity. Pitching your tent has become the fashionable form of protest. It is easy to dismiss the attention heaped on ‘Occupy London’ and its criticisms of greed in the City as a classic example of left-wing media bias. The rally for an EU referendum attracted nearly ten times as many people, but didn’t receive even a tenth of the news coverage. But the reason Occupy is causing such a stir is because of the sense that some new form of politics should be emerging.