Columns

Saturday

Matthew Parris

Another voice | 1 March 2008

The truth about the Auschwitz ‘gimmick’ row is that Labour exploited Jewish sensitivities David Cameron, said the Times last Saturday, ‘was facing intense political criticism last night after including student “trips to Auschwitz” on a list of government gimmicks.’ The Daily Mail was more shrill: ‘Pressure was piling on David Cameron last night to apologise,’ said the paper. ‘Senior figures from the Jewish community expressed dismay after an attempt by the Conservative leader to attack the Prime Minister spectacularly backfired.

Saturday

Matthew Parris

Another Voice | 16 February 2008

‘How was it,’ asks George Eliot in Middlemarch, ‘that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observ-ed but felt with a stifling depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her husband’s mind were replaced by ante-rooms and winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither?’ I cannot reread that passage without thinking of a more modern marriage: the Church of England’s with her latest Archbishop. Given the tremendous row, we really should read Dr Rowan Williams’s recent speech on Islam and the Law properly, from start to finish.

Wednesday

Heidi Kingstone

WEB EXCLUSIVE: What fuels China’s Africa policy

Heidi Kingstone on the motivation behind China's relations with Africa Steven Spielberg’s conscience finally got the better of him. The Oscar-winning director resigned as ‘artistic adviser’ to the upcoming 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics last night.  His “energy”, he said, “must be spent on doing all I can to help bring an end to the unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur.” It is ‘energy’ that is at the root of all this commotion. China buys about two-thirds of Sudan’s oil exports.

Saturday

Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion

‘Sleaze’ is such a nasty word. How much nicer to call it ‘anti-parliamentary activity’ Sometimes, the answer is staring you right in the face. As the Speaker begins to wonder how he can tighten up rules on parliamentary finances without admitting that the day of the Honourable Member is past, the Guardian reports that the Home Office is producing a new phrasebook to advise civil servants how to discuss terrorism inoffensively with Muslims. Here, I suggest, we have a model. ‘Look at this!’ some bright young Commons researcher may be about to say to his MP. ‘I’ve written a phrasebook. It allows people to talk about cleaning up politics without sounding like they are accusing all politicians of being dirty crooks.’ ‘Great work!

Saturday

Matthew Parris

Another Voice

This January Prometheus paid our era a call. Scientists (it was reported at the end of the month) have ‘announced the creation of a synthetic chromosome, knocking down one of the final hurdles to building the world’s first artificial life form’. In Maryland, at the institute of an American biologist and entrepreneur, Craig Venter, a team are now working on the final step to ‘create’ life. They aim to transplant into a cell the synthetic DNA they create, in the hope it will ‘boot up’ the cell and take control of its growth and reproduction. At last. The breathing-into-clay of the Promethean fire; the insertion of the ghost into the machine.

Saturday

Ian Mulheirn

Budget 2008: A mortgage market for lemons?

In his seminal 1970 paper, Nobel laureate George Akerlof identified a whole class of economic problems as being driven by asymmetric information between two parties involved in an exchange. Applied to the market for second-hand cars, Akerlof noted that while quality varies, only the seller knows a car’s true quality. Confronted with superficially similar cars, the buyer has no way of knowing whether she’s getting a defective used car – a ‘lemon’ - or a good one for her money. Consequently she can expect only to get a car of average quality, and is therefore unwilling to pay more than an average price.

Ian Mulheirn

Budget 2008: Green gimmicks?

Reports abound that a central plank of Alistair Darling’s first Budget will involve increasing Vehicle Excise Duty on the most polluting cars by around £1,000. Squarely aimed at reducing unnecessary vehicle emissions, the gas-guzzler grab forms the latest part of a patchwork of green taxes designed to help the Government make progress on its target to reduce CO2 emissions by 20% on the 1990 level by 2010. Simultaneously we can expect the Chancellor to make an announcement on fuel duty. The 2p increase pencilled in for this year looks set to be postponed in the face of strong opposition from hauliers and motorists already labouring under record oil prices. But these mixed signals point to the problem with green taxes as a concept.

Oliver Hartwich

Budget Backgrounder: No room for manoeuvre? 

Thinking about Parliament, it is easy to miss the wood for the trees. While it is often associated with party political exchanges and topical debates on issues of the day, its core function could be reduced to just one thing: the determination of how government is funded and how the money it raises should be spent. All other policies, whether on policing, education or health, follow from the decisions made in the Budget. Without a budget there could be no army, no hospitals and no schools. In fact, there would not even be a Parliament, let alone a Prime Minister. It is thus really hard to overestimate the role that the Budget plays in the nation’s political life. It is the single most important subject that Parliament regularly has to consider.

Fraser Nelson

Web Extra: The Tories should fear the dynamic new team of professionals that Brown is assembling

It is a story that could have been scripted to boost morale in Conservative headquarters. At five o’clock one morning, security guards at 10 Downing Street were called in to intercept an intruder only to find the Prime Minister trying to enter his own office. Apart from the delicious image this conjures of Gordon Brown in his pyjamas, cursing as he bashes in the security code, it caricatures him as the ideal political opponent. An inept, flailing control freak, whose own shortcomings will lose Labour the next election. Alas for the Tories, this story is several months out of date. It took place in the earliest days of the Brown premiership, when he had no home access to the Prime Minister’s computer, forcing him to sneak downstairs to the office. Much has changed since then.

Fraser Nelson

WEB EXCLUSIVE:  Meet the minister for selling the unsellable – uncut

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first tip for stardom. Throughout his twenties, Jim Murphy suffered this affliction. Before Tony Blair led the Labour party he was starting a Blairite revolution in the National Union of Students. His slogan, ‘realism, not revolution,’ made a cover story in the Sunday Times magazine. No list of young talent in the mid-1990s was complete without him. Yet only now, 11 years after his election, is he beginning to blip on the national radar. The 40-year-old minister I meet in the vast Foreign Office room is a lot quieter and more bashful than the student firebrand I once saw shouting down far-left activists in Glasgow. As I walk in he jumps out of his seat and makes me a cup of tea, chatting non-stop.

Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinions

Last week, in my digital dealings with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, I experienced something truly fascinating. Yes, I know. Subjective. Dangerous sentence. Bear with me. It was an epi- phany. The right time of year for it, I am told. In a few weeks’ time I have to hire a car. A few weeks ago I lost my wallet, which contained my driver’s licence. With exactly the sort of organisational forward planning that normally escapes me, I had considered these two details in tandem, and acted to prevent the wife and me ending up on one. So, I trotted along to the DVLA website and I applied for a new one. It took me about 20 minutes. That was not the epiphany. Indeed, etymological pedants of a religious bent may feel that it was nothing like an epiphany.

Saturday

James Forsyth

British politicians should learn from the American primaries: authenticity wins votes

In the British version of the 2008 US election, Gordon Brown is Hillary Clinton: the less talented half of a tempestuous political marriage who attempts to make up for shortcomings with a Stakhanovite work ethic. David Cameron is Barack Obama: the supremely confident speaker who has risen to the top in record time and who is, to his critics, all froth and no latte. Indeed, if successful, Obama’s ascent will have been even more meteoric than Cameron’s (Cameron took just over four and a half years from entering national politics to become party leader). To some, this comparison with British politics is absurd, proof of our infatuation with all things American.

Hugo Rifkind

It occurs to me that, with all this stress, Gordon may be having the time of his life

The assumption, of course, is that Gordon Brown isn’t having much fun. That is what lurks behind the question, every time. On Monday’s Today programme, when Ed Stourton asked him if he was enjoying being Prime Minister, we all knew the presenter was not being entirely honest. He didn’t really mean ‘Are you enjoying it?’ He actually meant ‘Are you hating it?’ This is what we all want to know. This, indeed, is what we all suspect. We think he’s hating it. We think he’s going nuts. We think he wants to stay in bed each morning, with the covers pulled up around his head, making a pudding-faced duvet version of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’.

Fraser Nelson

Cameron is making the intellectual running now — with a little help from the Blairites

What do you give a Prime Minister who wants nothing? The Indian government has been asking itself this for some time, ahead of Gordon Brown’s official visit later this month. The famously frugal Prime Minister would have little interest in any trinket. Presenting him with some casual clothing could be misinterpreted as an impolite sartorial hint. So after much deliberation, Delhi University has been ordered to award Mr Brown an honorary doctorate. The chosen subject: ‘academia and public services’. It is not yet clear whether Mr Brown will accept. The degree might invite unhelpful questions about what, precisely, he has contributed to the theory of public services.

Saturday

Matthew Parris

Brown, like Major, is falling prey to the media’s habit of linking unrelated stories

Before Christmas, on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Sir John Major gave his thoughts on politics ancient and modern. Since leaving Downing Street Sir John has been sparing with his public appearances, and because he has always commanded personal respect and has a fair-minded way of talking, these occasional interventions get attention. The moderation of his language, however, should not distract us from the sharpness of his views. What attracted the headlines this time were Major’s pointed remarks about ‘sleaze’. He said that in the case of the present government, but not (despite media impressions) his own, sleaze had become ‘systemic’.

Saturday

Hugo Rifkind

Watching Lost and Heroes has compelled me to confront great philosophical issues

It’s best to be upfront about this. Pretty soon, I’m going to use words like ‘downloading’ and ‘uploading’. I’m going to use the word ‘peer’ and I’m not going to mean people like Lord Levy. I mention this, just so you know. Just so you don’t get halfway through and think, ‘the sneaky bastard. This is geek stuff. I thought it was going to be something interesting.’ It is something interesting, I think. And it isn’t really geek stuff. It’s about Lost and Heroes and The Wire, and all those sexy American dramas that have suddenly made owning a television worthwhile again. Have you seen The Wire?

Lloyd Evans

The Great Iraq Debate

Lloyd Evans, The Spectator’s theatre critic, reviews last night’s Spectator / Intelligence Squared debate on the future of Iraq which featured Tony Benn, William Shawcross, Sir Christopher Meyer, Ali Allawi, Rory Stewart and Lt Peter Hegseth. Full audio of the debate is available here. The Future of Iraq Speakers and motions Proposition 1 Go. ‘Allied forces should leave Iraq as soon as is practical’ Rt Hon Tony Benn Rory Stewart Proposition 2 Quid pro Quo. ‘A withdrawal of troops as part of a negotiated settlement on the future of Iraq’ Sir Christopher Meyer Dr Ali Allawi Proposition 3 Stay. ‘The Surge is working. Let’s win before we leave.’ William Shawcross Lt Peter Hegseth Led Zep, eat your heart out.

Saturday

Matthew Parris

I oppose a ‘gay-hate’ law because that is not what criminal legislation is for

Should ‘gay-hate’ be a crime? Stonewall, the gay lobbying group of which I remain a solid supporter, has just sent me a briefing paper urging members to support Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, in his proposals to make inciting hatred of homosexuals a criminal offence. The government is proposing new amendments to its Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, adding ‘Hatred on the Grounds of Sexual Orientation’ to the offences of incitement to hatred on the grounds of race or religion. I’m not convinced. I was equally unconvinced it was appropriate to prosecute incitement to religious hatred. My doubts about that (relatively recent) arrival on the statute book were various, but among them was the suspicion that this would prove the edge of a slippery slope.

Saturday

Hugo Rifkind

Freedom of speech is a foggy issue with no absolutes — and that’s sort of the point

It is a weird business when stories combine, even if they only do so in the mind of the commentator. On our screens, Tony Blair is about to fret about Jesus, making him look like a loony again. In Oxford, David Irving and Nick Griffin are cast, preposterously, as defenders of free speech. And in Sudan, that poor schoolteacher is banged up for allowing toddlers to call a teddy bear ‘Mohammed’. There is a link here, somewhere, although it’s foggy, and it bothers me. Does freedom of speech entail the right to call a teddy bear ‘Mohammed’? If not, do we have a problem? Oxford first. Ridiculous situation.

Saturday

Matthew Parris

A guide to ‘gaffes’, and why, in truth, they are always to be found in the eye of the beholder

Among the silly expressions that may one day be associated with our era — and I hope buried with it — is the little word ‘gaffe’. I ought to know, having been indicted often enough myself for the crime, and having just co-edited and published a whole book, Mission Accomplished, of so-called gaffes committed by politicians and world leaders. Yet the moment you start to examine in a thoughtful way the things we call gaffes, the concept disintegrates into a clutch of very different types of utterances, some of which are wholly commendable. All that such utterances have in common is that they are regretted. I do not even say ‘regrettable’ because in politics honesty, though often regretted, cannot be regrettable.