Features

Thursday

Robert Hardman

The Queen can handle coups – she’s been on the receiving end of one

Supplies of Brexit invective are now almost exhausted. While the Prime Minister is denounced for denouncing Remainers as ‘collaborators’, his denouncers denounce him as a ‘tin pot dictator’ in need of a ‘rope’ and ‘lamp-post’. Of all the bellicose hyperbole, however, it is the battle cry of ‘Stop the coup’ which is the loudest this week. There are plenty of charges which can be levelled at this government. But to apply the term ‘coup d’état’ to a trio of genuflecting members of the Privy Council asking the Queen for the umpteenth prorogation of her reign is risible.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

The treatment of EU nationals will be a litmus test of Boris Johnson’s Brexit

What makes Boris Johnson an improvement on Theresa May? Those of us who cheered him on into 10 Downing Street have a long list. He backed Brexit, so would stand a far greater chance of getting it done. He’d hire better people, who could outwit and outmanoeuvre his parliamentary enemies (as we have seen this week). He is acting with a pace and with a daring that is extraordinary – and commensurate with the challenge he faces over Brexit. But the real point of Boris as leader is that he promised to give his party a better chance of healing the divisions of the referendum and uniting the country. This might sound fanciful, when his enemies are howling over the prorogation of parliament and referring to him as a dictator.

Lloyd Evans

What does Totnes think of Sarah Wollaston, its defecting MP?

‘Totnes? It’s hippie central.’ A friend warned me what to expect when I visited the affluent, left-leaning town in south-east Devon to assess public opinion about the local MP, Dr Sarah Wollaston. In March she left the Tories to join Change UK and she now sits as a Liberal Democrat. I equipped myself with a photo of her and wandered the streets last Monday. A chap in the Wild Fig Deli told me that her disloyalty would terminate her career. ‘You can change party, all right, but you hold a by-election. She’s lost her credibility.’ In 2011 Wollaston backed a private members’ bill requiring MPs who change parties to stand for re-election. She has yet to meet this obligation herself.

Ross Clark

Germany’s military has become a complete joke

It is not hard to think of times when German military weakness would have been lauded as good news across the rest of Europe, but perhaps not when the German minister accused of running her country’s armed forces into the ground has just been named as the next president of the European Commission. The most recent embarrassment for the Bundeswehr — the grounding of all 53 of its Tiger helicopters this month due to technical faults — is just the latest in a long series of humiliations to have sprung from Ursula von der Leyen’s spell as defence minister. A country once feared for its ruthless military efficiency has become a joke among European powers.

Matt Ridley

The most dangerous thing about the Amazon fires is the apocalyptic rhetoric

Cristiano Ronaldo is a Portuguese expert on forests who also plays football, so when he shared a picture online of a recent forest fire in the Amazon, it went viral. Perhaps he was in a rush that day to get out of the laboratory to football training, because it later transpired that the photograph was actually taken in 2013, not this year, and in southern Brazil, nowhere near the Amazon. But at least his picture was only six years old. Emmanuel Macron, another forest ecologist who moonlights as president of France, claimed that ‘the Amazon rainforest — the lungs which produce 20 per cent of our planet’s oxygen — is on fire!’ alongside a picture that was 20 years old.

Adam Holloway

What I’ve learned from five months sleeping on the streets

Over the years, I have spent around five months sleeping rough on the streets of London, Birmingham and New York, making undercover TV programmes. Matthew, who works in my Westminster office, spent last summer involuntarily homeless after he was cheated by his business partner. I suspect we are the only people within the Palace of Westminster who have been through the unpleasant experience of sleeping rough, and we both have come to the same conclusion. Street homelessness (as opposed to the homelessness of temporary accommodation) is, for the most part, a symptom or consequence of a different problem: addiction to drink or drugs, or mental illness. If politicians want to deal with it, they must accept this. Homelessness is a popular subject in SW1.

Emily Hill

‘Bob Dylan? He’s like Confucius’: Cerys Matthews interviewed

‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ was a Christmas classic for more than half a century until people suddenly began to worry that it was about yuletide date rape. ‘It was because of the video Tom Jones and I made,’ says Cerys Matthews, in her smoky Welsh lilt. She recorded a cover with Jones in 1999. The video showed the craggy old Welsh crooner slip something in her drink that turns Cerys into a high camp vamp. ‘The song is really innocent and beautiful and fun — it’s got a huge heap of humour and wit and I love it. That song is not our enemy. That woman is a strong woman. She’s there because she wants to be! It’s cold outside. They’re making love. Come on!

Thursday

Rory Geoghegan

How verbal and physical abuse drove me out of the police

The past decade has not been kind to those we entrust, in the words of Sir Robert Peel, ‘to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen’. Since 2010, police numbers have fallen by more than 20,000, with too many choosing to leave the force owing to physical and emotional assaults in a stressed and underfunded job. I can sympathise, because I had to step away from the front line and the job I loved three years ago. At the time, friends and family repeatedly asked me why I felt I had to leave. Set against the latest news of escalating assaults on police, I’m not so sure they’d ask now. There were approximately 31,000 assaults on officers last year, an increase of almost 5,000 on the year before.

David Gunnlaugsson

Why Britain, like Iceland, will thrive outside the EU

I have no doubt that Britain will thrive after leaving the EU, whether or not it leaves with a deal. I say this as a former prime minister of a country, Iceland, which left the EU before it had even joined — and which went on to prosper in a way which would have been impossible had its application for membership been carried through to conclusion. I think Britain can learn from Iceland’s experience and find a way to avoid any major disruption when 31 October comes round. In late 2008 Iceland suffered especially harshly from the international financial crisis. The country’s banking system experienced a near-total collapse. The value of the currency tumbled, inflation surged, government debt as a percentage of GDP more than tripled in an instant.

Laura Freeman

How woke is your home?

Quick! Roll up the Persian carpet. Hide the willow-pattern service. Sweep the wok and chopsticks under the Berber rug. Mr and Mx Virtue-Signaller from number 12 are on their way over for tea. How woke is your house? If your impeccably enlightened neighbour ran a finger along the mantelpiece, would you pass the cultural-appropriation test? First it was yoga classes. Then fancy dress. Don’t go near a costume shop until you’ve consulted one of many online guides advising party-goers ‘how not to dress like an offensive idiot’. Tread carefully with turbans, kimonos, cheongsams, saris, bindis and Native American headdresses. Dare to wear a sombrero? On your own head be it.

William Shawcross

We need the monarchy more than ever

One part of our unwritten constitution has been functioning perfectly during the Brexit upheaval: the monarchy. Unhappy behaviour by some younger royals reminds us how jealously the institution must be protected. It will also be essential to guard the monarchy’s impartial ‘light above politics’ (Roger Scruton’s happy phrase) with more care than ever in the inevitable Brexit arguments of the next few months. Since Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952, aged only 25, she has provided a comforting, non-political presence throughout immense and often unsettling change in this country. There is no way in which a succession of republican presidents (probably politicians kicked upstairs) could have done the same.

Jan Moir

By royal disappointment: Meghan and Harry’s behaviour is undermining the monarchy

August on Royal Deeside. Soft rain falls without cease on the Caledonian pine forests, it soaks into the ancient peatlands and it darkens the pelts of the red deer chewing heather out on the moor. Behold the beauty and the glory of the Scottish land and skies, from deep inside a luxurious estate where the troubles of the world melt into this velvety panorama. Certainly, one has always found this to be the case. One has taken peaceful refuge here every summer since one was one. However, one’s tranquillity is being tested this year, most sorely. Recent newspaper headlines and strident television bulletins will have made uncomfortable reading and viewing for the Queen during her annual holiday at Balmoral.

Colin Freeman

How did my children become more middle class than me?

In a café in Norfolk last week, my seven-year-old son uttered words that mortified me. No, he didn’t comment loudly on someone’s weight, or ask why the lady next to us had a moustache. It was worse than that. Asked by a kindly man at the next table if he was enjoying his bacon sandwich, he declared to the café at large: ‘Yes, but I prefer them with rocket!’ Judging by the gentleman’s slightly blank smile, I’m not sure if he even knew what rocket was, let alone that in the London suburb where I live, it’s now as much a part of breakfast as smashed avocado on toast. Inwardly, though, I cringed — just as Peter Mandelson presumably did when, according to legend, he mistook mushy peas for guacamole in a Hartlepool chippy.

Thursday

Douglas Murray

War of words | 15 August 2019

Italy is preparing to go back to the polls and this time Matteo Salvini looks set to return as the undisputed king of Italian politics. His Lega party (formerly the Northern League) has split with its coalition partner, the Five Star movement. For Salvini, the appeal of a general election is obvious: Five Star’s popularity has slumped during the 14-month government, but Lega’s has soared. It now boasts of being the biggest party not only in the north of Italy but — previously unimaginably — in the south. So Salvini can now ditch his coalition partner and seek his own majority. If he succeeds, this will cause fresh headaches for Brussels and embody a far deeper conundrum.

Nicholas Farrell

The secret of Il Capitano’s success

Last summer, when Italy became the first major European country to get a populist government, Steve Bannon was cock-a-hoop. The former White House chief strategist had spent much of his time in Europe last year aiding and abetting populists. He called Italy ‘the centre of the political universe right now’. He was full of praise for what he described as the altruism of the alt-left Five Star movement led by Luigi Di Maio and the radical right Lega led by Matteo Salvini. The two populist parties had buried their differences for the sake of the nation, Bannon believed, as they formed a coalition government. But for all his excitement, this anti-establishment honeymoon couldn’t last.

Peter Oborne

India’s land grab

Frank Johnson, editor of The Spectator until cruelly sacked to make way for Boris Johnson, never wasted ideas. He liked to reuse them. Often. Every summer he would write the same column attacking the silly season. August, Mr Johnson maintained, was not silly at all. The first world war started in August. The Nazi-Soviet pact was signed in August. Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland in August. Saddam Hussein marched into Kuwait also in the horror month of August. Once again August has vindicated Mr Johnson — and not only because of Brexit. Darkness has descended on the former princely state of (British-controlled) Kashmir. Meanwhile freedom is dying in the former British colony of Hong Kong. These two events are reported as if unconnected.

Robert Tombs

Time warp

How we love bringing history into our political debates. It may seem strange in a country where so little history is taught at school, but perhaps that makes it easier. We grab hold of vague notions of the past for a Punch-and-Judy brawl. There could hardly be a better example of this than Brexit, in which we skim through the whole of our history to search for analogies to batter the other side with. The Roman empire, the Norman conquest, the Wars of the Roses, the British Empire, appeasement, the second world war, Suez… Leavers have fulminated against ‘traitors’ who deserve the Tower for flouting Henry VIII’s assertion of sovereignty. Remainers have accused Leavers of being racists, imperialists, indeed, worse than Nazis.

Melissa Kite

For the love of dog

The picture on the front of the Animal Blessing Service programme featured a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a goldfish, a cockatoo, a hamster, a snake and a ferret. In the event, the congregation was confined to people and dogs, including my two cockers. We sat in a circle in the shady courtyard of St James’s Church, Piccadilly as the Reverend Lindsay Meader, resplendent in a rainbow stole, led us in prayer. If a passing tourist wanted to understand British people and their animals, they had come to the right place. A few sightseers did wander into the square and watch for a while. St James’s is a dog-friendly church where members of the congregation regularly attend Sunday communion with their pooch at their side.

Thursday

Ross Clark

The towns making waves

The real secret behind Margate’s revival isn’t so much the restored Dreamland amusement park, but the trains. A decade ago, it gained high-speed, InterCity-like trains to St Pancras, putting it within 90 minutes of London. Before the trains get to Margate they stop in Whitstable, which I remember as a bit of a hole in the 1970s. I went back recently and couldn’t believe how horrible the beach is — black sludge, sharp stones and shells. But then I got to the quayside and it was all posh seafood restaurants. Accessibility as much as native charm has made Whitstable one of the most remarkable turnaround stories of any seaside town over the past 20 years.

Rod Liddle

Home and away | 8 August 2019

The epiphany came when I was standing in the oxymoron of a speedy boarding queue at Gatwick, waiting to have my ticket checked by Eva Braun, mewling middle-class brats squabbling beneath my feet, all of us en route to somewhere in the EU which is both searingly hot and supported by British taxpayer subsidies (for a while). I had been wondering where on the plane we would be seated. Almost certainly that very row in the middle which is the last to be served by the drinks trolley, and where the stale flatus tends to congregate. And probably behind some ignorant cow who will put her seat back so that I can inhale her rancid scalp while I’m trying to eat my sickly Thai chicken ‘wrap’.