Columns

Saturday

Hugo Rifkind

Nothing makes me feel as Scottish as an English New Year’s Eve

I actually did read Tony Blair’s memoirs in 2010, despite having sworn on these pages, quite petulantly, that I would not. I actually did read Tony Blair’s memoirs in 2010, despite having sworn on these pages, quite petulantly, that I would not. The bit that sticks in the mind is his description of Millennium Eve. You’ll have heard about it, because it’s already the only bit of the book that anybody seems to remember or ever mentions, because it’s funny, because he hated it.

Rod Liddle

From here until the royal wedding, it’s sewage all the way

I hope you are looking forward to the tsunami of industrial effluent which is coming your way in the first quarter of the new year. You will not be able to avoid it, unless you are Helen Keller. One way or another, Wills and Kate are going to get you. Or, more properly, their agents of misrule are going to get you, the meeja, with their tele-photo lenses and their hacked mobile phone accounts, and their rubber gloves for rummaging through dustbins and their long sharp noses for filth and discord and their deep gullets and unquenchable thirst for vapid, pointless liquid excrement. If you were being charitable you might argue that the principle victims in this deluge of unmitigated bollocks are the happy couple — which is true, of course.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Would I be a better novelist if I found my inner Trollope?

Some of you are going to be appalled that it has taken me till now to read Trollope’s Autobiography. And quite right too. If I’d read it in my mid-twenties instead of my mid-forties, I would have had two dozen novels under my belt by now instead of a measly five-and-a-half. And you would never have had to read a single column of mine complaining about how poor and underrated I am, because I wouldn’t be. By the time he was my age, Trollope was a household name and bringing in £4,500 a year. This is the rough equivalent of £675,000 today. How did he do it? By treating the business of writing not as an ‘art’ to get precious about but just another journeyman craft to be laboured at nine-to-five. Or, in Trollope’s case, 5.30 a.m.

Matthew Parris

With a shrug of the shoulders, England is becoming a nation once again

The presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme was doing a quick round-up of the weather on a freezing December morning, just before signing off at 9 a.m. Very cold all over Britain, he said. Later there would be ‘snow in the north of the country’. ‘Which country?’ I thought. It was an immediate and unconsidered reaction; and of course on reflection context often does make clear. But not in this case. I still don’t know which country Today meant. If the country they were referring to was Great Britain then they must have meant snow in Scotland. If it was England they were talking about then we in the north Midlands were due for snow too. A small confusion, and slight enough. But faintly it troubled me.

James Forsyth

How the pursuit of happiness could lead Britain to the right

How the pursuit of happiness could lead Britain to the right The political mantra that the Young Turks in the Tory party live by is ‘in opposition you move to the centre, in government you move the centre’. Before the last election, they would use the line — often a bit defensively — to justify their passive acceptance of Labour policies. But now that the Tories are in power, albeit in coalition, it has become a cry of triumph. After seven months in government, the Conservatives can justifiably claim to have moved the political centre ground. The coalition with the Liberal Democrats has ended the prospect of a Labour-Liberal realignment for a generation. The Lib Dems who are serving in government have come to hate Labour with a passion.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: Nick Clegg must reform his party for the sake of democracy – and survival

Nick Clegg’s tuition fees nightmare was never going to be over after the Commons vote. Nick Clegg’s tuition fees nightmare was never going to be over after the Commons vote. Even if every Liberal Democrat MP followed him into the ‘aye’ lobby, it would still not change the party’s policy on the issue. That fight goes on. The Lib Dem Federal Policy Committee has already shown that it plans to make the Deputy Prime Minister go several more rounds. It declared recently that the abolition of fees remains party policy, whatever its leader might say. At the next Lib Dem spring conference, a motion will almost certainly be tabled (and passed) reaffirming that the party remains committed to the abolition of fees.

Rod Liddle

The ‘c’ word used to be the one thing you could never say. How times change

The kids are all asleep, the wife is in bed reading feminist propaganda, from outside in the darkness I hear the shocked keewick of a Little Owl. Otherwise, all is silent and at rest. This is the time of evening when I make my way very quietly to my study with a glass of wine ‘to do some work’. I don’t want anyone to catch me at it, so I put my hand over the computer’s little loudspeaker when that annoying Windows ident music comes on. She caught me at it, once, my wife. Came downstairs for a glass of water and saw me hunched and furtive over the laptop, tapping away and making gutteral noises. She just looked disappointed and went back to bed, but it was a bit embarrassing. Anyway, it’s the same procedure every night.

James Delingpole

Freedom starts with plain speaking

The Jeremy Vine show (BBC Radio 2) rang the other day to ask whether I’d come on and talk about the newly ennobled Tory peer Howard Flight’s remarks about ‘breeding’ and the underclass. The Jeremy Vine show (BBC Radio 2) rang the other day to ask whether I’d come on and talk about the newly ennobled Tory peer Howard Flight’s remarks about ‘breeding’ and the underclass. As usual, my immediate answer was, ‘No. You just want me to come on and be your token hate figure.’ ‘Oh pleeeeze,’ they said. ‘We’ll send a car. A really nice one.’ ‘Oh, all right then. But not because of the car. You’d have sent the car anyway. I’m doing it because I’m a whore, that’s all.

Hugo Rifkind

Next year, I’m almost certain, is going to be one for firm convictions

Whenever I do pundit telly, which isn’t very often, I always want to answer every question by saying, ‘How the hell should I know?’ Only once, though, have I done so. Whenever I do pundit telly, which isn’t very often, I always want to answer every question by saying, ‘How the hell should I know?’ Only once, though, have I done so. That was on Question Time Extra, about three years ago, which may have been my first ever live TV outing. From the start, it didn’t go well. I didn’t inadvertently call a Cabinet minister ‘Mr Shitsinabox’ or anything, like the real pros have started doing (who can wait, incidentally, until Liam Fox is next on the Today programme?) but still, I can’t pretend I excelled.

Saturday

Matthew Parris

Of course diplomats are frank in private – but not, I fear, for much longer

It can be a diplomat’s duty to be undiplomatic. It can be a diplomat’s duty to be undiplomatic. When asked for a candid assessment by senior colleagues or by his political masters, the murmured ambiguity and the Ferrero Rocher are for the birds. Diplomacy is for dealing publicly with the other side, not privately with your own. Within weeks of joining the Foreign Office as a young man, I learned that senior diplomats are routinely breathtakingly candid with each other in their confidential assessments of people, nations and situations. We should expect no less of them. Senior diplomats — American no less than British — express themselves undiplomatically when they don’t expect their reports to be published. This too we should expect.

James Forsyth

Will the Milibands’ drama turn into a revenge tragedy?

‘If this was a play, David would come back in two years’ time and take the crown from Ed,’ one David Miliband supporter whispered to me moments after the Labour leadership result was announced. ‘If this was a play, David would come back in two years’ time and take the crown from Ed,’ one David Miliband supporter whispered to me moments after the Labour leadership result was announced. As we shuffled out of the hall together he chuckled at the thought, at how absurd it was. In real-life, this Miliband family drama was surely a one-act play. Some David supporters, though, are refusing to accept that when the curtain falls, it is time to get off the stage. His supporters are on restless patrol throughout Westminster.

Saturday

Hugo Rifkind

I no longer understand what ‘Ireland’ means

The defining commentary of this on-going financial crisis, for me, came from Gerald Hill of the Midlands, in a letter to the Times in March 2009. ‘Sir,’ he wrote, ‘I can now understand the term “quantitative easing” but realise I no longer understand the meaning of the word “money”.’ I’m with Gerald. Take the IMF and EU bailout to Ireland, intended to calm market fears over that country’s debt crisis. I understand ‘IMF’ and I understand ‘EU’. I understand ‘bailout’ and I understand what a ‘debt crisis’ is, and why this particular one has happened.

Daniel Hannan

Politics: The right way to help Ireland

Why is Britain committing £7 billion to a bailout which will trap Ireland in its present discontents? Would you trust an economic forecaster who had recently said this? The euro has done more to enforce budgetary discipline in the rest of Europe than any number of exhortations from the IMF or the OECD. If we remain outside the euro, we will simply continue to subside into a position of relative poverty and inefficiency compared to our more prosperous European neighbours. Or this: The euro has already provided great internal stability to the eurozone. Or this: If we get rid of sterling and adopt the euro, we will also get rid of sterling crises and sterling overvaluations. This will give us a real control over our economic environment.

James Delingpole

It’s getting lonely over here on the right

In New York last week I was gobsmacked to discover I’d won the Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism. So gobsmacked that I hadn’t thought to prepare a magnanimous, funny victor’s speech, only a halting, rueful runner’s-up one. In New York last week I was gobsmacked to discover I’d won the Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism. So gobsmacked that I hadn’t thought to prepare a magnanimous, funny victor’s speech, only a halting, rueful runner’s-up one. No one ever gives me prizes. And it’s not purely because I’m utterly rubbish and can’t write for toffee.

Rod Liddle

I’d rather hear about condoms from the Pope than from the Spice Girls

My problem with condoms was always a very different confusion from that which apparently afflicts the Pope. It was simply that I felt sure they would be far too large, like putting a tea cosy on a soft-boiled egg. And so I never used them, to spare the embarrassment. Also, I was never entirely certain they quite fitted in with my romantic illusions about the sexual act, especially not the prophylactics you can buy from vending machines in pub toilets and are advertised as being ‘cheese ’n’ pineapple flavour’ — not really Keats, is it? I know plenty of men who feel likewise, too, and are apt to use any number of excuses when, so to speak, push comes to shove.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Politics: Miliband’s Labour is in danger of becoming invisible

It is hard not to feel sorry for the ex-Cabinet ministers who have stayed on the Labour front bench. It is hard not to feel sorry for the ex-Cabinet ministers who have stayed on the Labour front bench. A year ago newspapers hung on their every word. Now they are lucky to find themselves quoted in the penultimate paragraph of a news story. They are ranked somewhere behind Simon Hughes and right-wing Tory backbenchers on journalists’ call lists. Why have they fallen so far? The simple answer is ‘the coalition’. Whenever the government issues a statement, the press’s first port of call is the other side of the coalition. In these circumstances it is very hard for Labour to make its presence felt.

Matthew Parris

America’s satnav monopoly must be broken – even if it takes the EU to do it

Debates between columnists can be tiresome, but Douglas Murray writes so well that when he is wrong he is dangerous. I think he may be wrong about the European Union’s ‘Galileo’ project (‘Costs in space’, 13 November), and though bereft of his certainties, I should not let the other side to this argument go by default. Galileo is the EU’s answer to the Americans’ Global Positioning System (GPS). It aims to do the same thing: to enable any receiver to pinpoint its position in the world very precisely. It is fair to say (as Mr Murray does) that Galileo is behind schedule and over budget. It’s also fair to say (as Mr Murray does) that when it comes to delays and overruns, the EU has a poor record.

Rod Liddle

The Twitter martyrs are true subversives

‘Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high.’ — Paul Chambers, on Twitter. ‘Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death. I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing.’ — Gareth Compton, on Twitter. ‘Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high.’ — Paul Chambers, on Twitter. ‘Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death. I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing.’ — Gareth Compton, on Twitter. First, the context.

Saturday

James Delingpole

I’d take Lord Curzon over Gandhi – and so would many Indians

In India last week I found myself thinking about Mohandas Gandhi and his famous quote when asked what he thought about western civilisation. ‘I think it would be a good idea,’ he replied. When I first heard that story — probably about the time of the Richard Attenborough biopic majoring on British colonial oppressiveness like the Amritsar massacre — I don’t doubt I reacted in the way I had been culturally programmed to do. ‘Well, that certainly put us arrogant, colonial Westerners in our place,’ my carefully indoctrinated brain almost certainly went. And it’s not as though I went through a phase in my life where I imagined the British empire to have been a bad thing.