If he was a plumber, though, what manner of plumber would David Cameron be? The Tory leader, summoned via the Yellow Pages to fix a problem with your boiler. You would let him in, I think. Nice face, easy manner. ‘There’s a problem with your boiler,’ he would say. Indeed, you would agree. So fix
Mark Malloch-Brown, the minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, was the most prestigious recruit to Gordon Brown’s ministry of all the talents. But this appointment might be about to come back and embarrass the Prime Minister with controversy brewing over the former UN deputy secretary-general’s taxpayer funded accommodation. In February 2006 Mark Malloch Brown, then the
Ted Heath was not always easy to love, but his grumpiness could be endearing. I remember him once inveighing against badges. Badges, he said, lapel-stickers, medals, tags, ribbons, bumper-stickers, rosettes, even T-shirts with writing on them — they all added up to the same thing: using yourself as a human billboard to advertise your convictions
Cameron enters the immigration debate The government’s failure to count up the number of foreign workers in this country rightly reinforces the public’s fear that control of the borders has been lost, that an unstoppable tide of migrants is flowing into the country. It is in these circumstances that unsavoury politics flourish. To Gordon Brown’s
St Petersburg The first two things that grab you about Russia are the women’s clothes and the health and safety laws. Or, at least, that is what grabbed me. Wander the streets of St Petersburg, and you don’t see much of either. Wander the museums, even, and you don’t see much of either, either. In
Last Sunday a group from Winster, a lovely nearby village in Derbyshire, had invited me to open their roadshow at 11 a.m. The group, Sustainable Winster, had organised a Climate Change Awareness Day. The area climate-change bus had arrived for the occasion, there were displays, posters, free linen bags containing packs of expandable chips to
This is a column about the reform of the House of Lords. I have a hunch it might not look like one, probably until pretty much the end, but that is what it is. Try to remember this if, at times, it appears to be about something else. ‘They should just clone ministers,’ says the
Epiphenomenalism is, as 16-letter words go, not an obvious hook with which, dear reader, to draw you to this column; but let me explain; because I think I may be an epiphenomenalist. My dictionary defines this as the doctrine that consciousness is merely a by-product of physiological processes and has no power to affect them:
Gordon Brown has ruled out an election this year following a poll of marginal seats that showed Labour significantly behind the Tories. No election is now expected until 2009. Coffee House has reaction and analysis to this news. Click here to read the latest from our political team.
Hugo Rifkind on the party conference season Are we sure that party conferences are good things? Are we convinced that they do the job? Certainly, they are great fun. That, I would never dispute. The booze. The talk. And the rooms. Any connoisseur of weird, shabby, out-of-town hotels with ominously crumbly ceilings and carpets that suck
Spectator.co.uk has full coverage of the Tory Conference. Matthew d’Ancona and Fraser Nelson are reporting the latest development from Blackpool here. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor and Tory election coordinator, is blogging for Coffee House, to read his thoughts click here. Up and coming Tory MP Nadine Dorries is also lending her unique perspective to
Last Sunday morning found me at the Highcliff Hotel in Bournemouth, the conference hotel for Labour’s 2007 gathering and — the reason I was there — the temporary home of the BBC television’s Andrew Marr Show. Along with my fellow journalist Anne McElvoy, I was Andrew’s guest reviewer of the morning newspapers. I was in
Why does Gordon Brown have a ‘big tent’? Why does Gordon Brown have a ‘big tent’? Why, to be pertinent, does he have a ‘tent’ at all? There must have been leaders, throughout world history, who have ruled calmly and inclusively and by consensus. Yet if we were to group these people together on a Venn diagram,
Monday Hooray! Labour no longer the Party of Economic Competence!! It’s all over! Or rather, it’s all back on!! Dave looks like a weight has been lifted. Fifteen different pictures of desperate people queuing at banks spread out on the conference table. We want to frame a few of them, as commemoration of The Day
My former sketchwriting colleague, Simon Hoggart, has a maxim he would cite when any of us parliamentary sketchwriters were tempted to showcase a genuinely and intentionally funny MP. Humorous journalists, Simon would warn, had no business giving a platform to would-be jokers in the world of politics. Humour was our trade not theirs. We should
How on earth did they get them through customs? ‘Oi! You there! Chinese-looking fellow! What we got here, then? Ah. Toy soldiers, is it? Chewable? No? Oh dear. How on earth did they get them through customs? ‘Oi! You there! Chinese-looking fellow! What we got here, then? Ah. Toy soldiers, is it? Chewable? No? Oh
My concern was born of direct personal experience. There was something rotten in the business of television programme-making, and it was endemic in the ethos of the small screen rather than (as TV bosses often prefer to insist) the influence of ‘a few bad apples’. I have written about this now more times than I
You will have smirked. Shame on you, but you will. Yet reluctantly, and out of respect for the recently deceased, I intend to tread lightly over the story of the Australian pet collector killed earlier this week by her own overamorous camel. I shall note, with a restrained interest, the use of the word ‘humped’
This did not come entirely as a surprise. As a graduate student at Yale I experimented with LSD. Why anyone ever thought this drug would sweep the world and reduce the youth of the West to a state of gibbering addiction I cannot imagine because it was no fun at all, just weird. Among a
Boris Johnson could make a great Conservative candidate for the London mayoralty, and a great mayor of London. But he’ll need to get the pitch right. I’m afraid the first thing he’ll have to do is steer well clear of The Spectator. Boris Johnson could make a great Conservative candidate for the London mayoralty, and
