Columns

Saturday

Hugo Rifkind

Ed Miliband was always destined to be rubbish – and he is

You know those jokes you hear which immediately send you into a furious rage at the fact that you didn’t think them up yourself? At least, I assume you do; I don’t think it’s just a quirk of having a profession whereby your livelihood depends on stuff that other people just do for a hobby. You know those jokes you hear which immediately send you into a furious rage at the fact that you didn’t think them up yourself? At least, I assume you do; I don’t think it’s just a quirk of having a profession whereby your livelihood depends on stuff that other people just do for a hobby. I was doing the News Quiz on Radio 4 about a month ago, and Fred Macaulay came out with one.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: Don’t let Europe’s crisis go to waste

Europe has reached a crucial crossroads, from which there is no return. Europe has reached a crucial crossroads, from which there is no return. Soon, either the eurozone countries will become even more tightly bound together or they will begin to fall apart as the most ambitious elements of the European project are abandoned. The eurozone cannot continue as it is constituted for much longer. And if David Cameron is to be credible as a Conservative leader, he must take advantage of Europe’s weakness to secure Britain’s strength. The eurozone’s difficulty may quickly become Britain’s opportunity.

James Delingpole

I’m on a cruise with lots of rich, conservative Americans. And it’s brilliant

No, this isn’t one of those articles written after the event, where you only pretend you’re writing from an exotic dateline but you’ve actually since got home. Tallinn, Estonia No, this isn’t one of those articles written after the event, where you only pretend you’re writing from an exotic dateline but you’ve actually since got home. This time I really can see the Ruritanian towers of Tallinn’s old city reflected in the mirror in front of my writing desk. The evening sun — which will go on for hours and hours at this latitude at this time of year — is shimmering on the Baltic.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics – The best strategy for Lords reform: give up

One of the lessons of the new Labour years is that constitutional reform is best avoided. One of the lessons of the new Labour years is that constitutional reform is best avoided. New Labour swept into office with total confidence that the British constitution could be easily ‘modernised’. Its 1997 manifesto mocked the Conservatives as follows: ‘The party which once opposed universal suffrage and votes for women now says our constitution is so perfect that it cannot be improved.’ Thirteen years later, it was clear that Labour had fallen horribly foul of the law of unintended consequences.

Hugo Rifkind

I don’t want to believe that we’re cocking up Libya. But we are, aren’t we?

I’m not sure it’s fair to call Colonel Gaddafi ‘paranoid’. I’m not sure it’s fair to call Colonel Gaddafi ‘paranoid’. Not really. ‘Paranoid’ is what the King of Bahrain would be if he decided that western governments actually did care that he was rounding up protestors — and the doctors who treat them, and reporters, and students, and pretty much anybody else with the wrong sort of beard — and that these western governments were actually secretly planning to do something about it, despite giving every outward appearance of not giving a monkey’s arse. Say. Whereas Gaddafi just seems to think everybody is out to get him, and they are. It’s a slow-motion disaster, Libya, isn’t it?

Saturday

Allister Heath

Politics: If Greece falls, Britain will suffer

When George Osborne delivered his first budget, Greece made the perfect backdrop. The television news channels had split screens: on the left side, the new Chancellor making the case for austerity. On the right side: riots in Athens as a government confronted the consequences of its profligacy. Now, as then, British eyes are on Greece — but for different reasons. The prospect of a Eurozone banking crisis has now overtaken rampant inflation as the greatest single threat to the British economy. The risk is not Greece itself, which, for all its great difficulties, remains a small and marginal economy. British holidaymakers may quietly pray for the return of the drachma and, with it, the cheap European holiday. But this is where the opportunity ends.

Matthew Parris

Revenge is not a sin, it’s a public service

It was never likely that Chris Huhne’s agonies over what will sooner or later be called Penaltypointsgate would arrive unaccompanied by a rash of commentary about revenge. It was never likely that Chris Huhne’s agonies over what will sooner or later be called Penaltypointsgate would arrive unaccompanied by a rash of commentary about revenge. All of three hours elapsed before ‘Hell hath no fury…’ — now so over-used that we have to tail off into a sheepish ellipsis after the first few words — appeared in a Fleet Street headline.

James Delingpole

There will never be justice if we leave it to lawyers

The big question this week is: ‘Should Giles Coren be bound, gagged, shackled and sentenced to life imprisonment in the torture block of the sexual offenders’ wing of Black Beach maximum security prison in Equatorial Guinea, there to become the plaything of Mad “Mamba” Mbigawanga, the Man-Rapist Giant of Malabo?’ Well, obviously, when you put it like that, the answer’s obvious. The big question this week is: ‘Should Giles Coren be bound, gagged, shackled and sentenced to life imprisonment in the torture block of the sexual offenders’ wing of Black Beach maximum security prison in Equatorial Guinea, there to become the plaything of Mad “Mamba” Mbigawanga, the Man-Rapist Giant of Malabo?

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: Cameron in chains

When Conservative leaders come to address the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, they are required to stand outside Committee Room 14 of the House of Commons until the rest of the agenda is completed. When Conservative leaders come to address the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, they are required to stand outside Committee Room 14 of the House of Commons until the rest of the agenda is completed. Only then are they summoned in. David Cameron likens the experience to ‘waiting outside the headmaster’s study’. But it is worse than that — as he waits, half a dozen journalists watch his every move. If he perspires, it’s on Twitter. Cameron has done his utmost to get out of this ordeal.

Matthew Parris

The pathology of the politician

Politicians are not normal people. They are weird. It isn’t politics that has made them weird: it’s their weirdness that has impelled them into politics. Whenever another high-profile minister teeters or falls, the mistake everyone makes is to ask what it is about the nature of their job, the environment they work in and the hours they work, that has made them take such stupid risks. This is the wrong question. We should ask a different one: what is it about these men and women that has attracted them to politics? Politicians are not normal people. They are weird. It isn’t politics that has made them weird: it’s their weirdness that has impelled them into politics.

Hugo Rifkind

Why are men now so despised? I blame Hugh Grant

I’ve always wondered about the strike-rate of men who, in that fine media phrase, ‘aren’t safe in taxis’. I’ve always wondered about the strike-rate of men who, in that fine media phrase, ‘aren’t safe in taxis’. It must be pretty high, you’d have thought, otherwise we’d tend to hear about them before they, for example, got accused of rugby-tackling chambermaids in New York hotels. Only, if it is, that would suggest that large numbers of women are actually quite aroused at the thought of a mauling from a lusty old codger in the back of a black cab, and I’m just not sure this can be true. You know that little switch that sets the fan off? You’d keep hitting it, wouldn’t you? Probably with your knee.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: Lib Doom

When politicians start complaining about the media, you know that they’re in trouble. When politicians start complaining about the media, you know that they’re in trouble. This weekend, a Liberal Democrat minister bounded up to me to complain about a double standard in the way that his party was reported. ‘Yes, we’ve lost councillors but we’ve gained five Cabinet ministers. Did anyone ever say that Tony Blair should resign because he was eroding Labour’s base in local government?’ The minister’s bullishness couldn’t disguise the fact that the Liberal Democrats are staring disaster in the face. Not only did they lose 695 councillors last Thursday, but they are also in danger of a wipeout at the next general election.

Matthew Parris

Is there any hope in politics for pointy-headed intellectuals?

When the Alabama governor George Wallace described intellectuals as ‘pointy-heads who couldn’t ride a bicycle straight’, he coupled two insults. When the Alabama governor George Wallace described intellectuals as ‘pointy-heads who couldn’t ride a bicycle straight’, he coupled two insults. The first — ‘pointy-heads’ — went straight into the legend and remains there, though I’d always thought intellectuals had domed heads. Less remembered is the second barrel of Wallace’s revolver. But in five words it contains a potent argument.

James Delingpole

Magnificent young men are ready to die for us, but that doesn’t mean we should let them

I’m in Dallas, Texas, for a Heritage Foundation conference when who should march into my hotel but a battalion of US marines, ahead of their deployment to Afghanistan. I’m in Dallas, Texas, for a Heritage Foundation conference when who should march into my hotel but a battalion of US marines, ahead of their deployment to Afghanistan. I watch, agog. The marines all look desperately young, even the ones who’ve done several tours of duty. Interestingly, though they all must have bonded intensely in the field, off duty they still socialise by ethnic group — blacks with blacks, Hispanics with Hispanics, and so on. Later, I ambush a senior NCO and a rookie smoking in the garden. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ ‘Yes, sir!’ says the NCO.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: The rose garden romance is well and truly over

A little under a year ago, David Cameron held a party at Downing Street to thank all of those who had helped the Tory general election campaign. A little under a year ago, David Cameron held a party at Downing Street to thank all of those who had helped the Tory general election campaign. It was a bittersweet occasion: although Cameron was Prime Minister, the Tories had failed to win a majority. In his speech, Cameron told them that coalition was actually better than a small Tory majority. For the people who had worked tirelessly for the election of a Tory government, these words left a sour taste. But in those heady, early months of the coalition, with the scent of the rose garden hanging in the Downing Street air, most observers could see what Cameron meant.

Hugo Rifkind

Why can’t we just kill people quietly?

Am I allowed to say this? Hell, I’m going to anyway. Am I allowed to say this? Hell, I’m going to anyway. I’ll deny it if it ever gets me into trouble. I’ll claim The Spectator mistakenly put my byline on top of a column by somebody else. ‘Wasn’t me,’ I’ll say, when the extraordinary rendition SWAT team kicks down my door. ‘Must have been Liddle. He sounds the sort. I wrote the other one that week, maybe about the royal wedding. Nice balaclava, by the way.’ So here goes. I watched the American crowds, cheering into the night about the death of Osama bin Laden, and my first, overwhelming, involuntary reaction was to sneer. There. I’ve said it. It wasn’t a new sort of sneer.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: This referendum will destroy a party leader. But which one?

The next general election may seem a long way away. The next general election may seem a long way away. But for all three parties, the run-up to the local elections this month offers a chance to test their campaign strategies for 2015. The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are using this period to remind voters of their achievements in office and reassure supporters that they remain distinct parties. But it is Labour that has by far the simplest and most effective message for 5 May: if you don’t like what the coalition is doing, vote for us. After 13 years in government, Labour is relishing opposition. MPs who once dreaded having to knock on doors and defend Gordon Brown’s record are now eager to go out and canvass.

Matthew Parris

Rage, rage against the dying of the lightbulb

When I was young, all the traffic lights in central London had black iron flambeaux, about the size of your forearm, at the top of each pole. I doubt many people even noticed the decoration consciously, but it lent a faintly monumental touch to otherwise utilitarian ironwork – like those magnificent bronze fish wrapped around the streetlights along the Thames Embankment. In however small a way the flambeaux gave our metropolis the air of an imperial city. Ornamentation in the stone of buildings or the steel of street furniture does this: because, and precisely because, it serves no purpose but to beautify or dignify. Because it is (strictly speaking) useless and extravagant, it elevates the scene.

James Delingpole

If only I’d known when I was younger that my background was my greatest strength

One of the things I’ve belatedly realised now I’ve acquired the wisdom of age is that I’ve always been anti-establishment. One of the things I’ve belatedly realised now I’ve acquired the wisdom of age is that I’ve always been anti-establishment. If only I’d known this at school I would have had far more fun than I did because I wouldn’t have wasted any of my time trying to smarm and behave my way into pointless jobs like ‘library prefect’, ‘group leader’ and ‘head of house’. I could have got drunk and smoked fags and got to at least third base with the naughty girls, like all the cool kids did, instead. My problem was — and still is to some extent — that I am way, way too trusting and naive.