Features

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Meet Alex Salmond’s secret weapon: the England football team

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_29_May_2014_v4.mp3" title="Freddy Gray and Alex Massie on Salmond's secret weapon" startat=1363] Listen [/audioplayer]Why did Alex Salmond choose this year to hold the Scottish independence referendum? People have said it is because 2014 is the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn, Scotland’s greatest victory over the English, inspiration for that ridiculous last scene in Braveheart. Others believe it is because in July Glasgow will host the Commonwealth Games, after which the Scottish nationalists reckon they will be surfing a wave of yes-we-can enthusiasm. But maybe Salmond, canny fellow that he is, had another event in mind: next month’s Fifa World Cup in Brazil.

Roger Scruton

Humans hunger for the sacred. Why can’t the new atheists understand that?

Does the world have a purpose? The new atheists regard the question as absurd. Purposes emerge in the course of evolution, they tell us; to suppose that they could exist before any organism can gain a reproductive advantage from possessing them is to unlearn the lesson of Darwin. With the theory of evolution firmly established, therefore, there is no room in the scientific worldview for an original purpose, and therefore no room for God. Today’s evangelical atheists go further, and tell us that history has shown religion to be so toxic that we should do our best to extinguish it. Such writers describe the loss of religion as a moral gain — even though, for most ordinary believers, it looks like the loss of all that they most seriously value.

Andrew J.

If we have to let generals run Egypt, must we pay for them, too?

The polls have closed, and the result was never in doubt. With a whopping majority, Egyptians have chosen Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to be their next president. Much like his several predecessors going back to 1952 when army officers overthrew King Farouk, the new president brings to office ambitious plans to whip his countrymen into shape. What Egyptians need, Sisi believes, is discipline. He has volunteered for the role of drill sergeant-in-chief. ‘Will you bear it if I make you walk on your own feet? When I wake you up at five in the morning every day? Will you bear cutting back on food, cutting back on air-conditioners?

Anna Reid

Viktor Yanukovych’s palace is full of tasteless treasures – and London auction-house tags

 Kiev On a cobbled street above the Maidan, an elderly man dressed in fatigues rubs his stubble in the morning sunshine. Would I like a lesson in throwing Molotov cocktails? He picks up a bottle with a long wire loop for a handle, and leads me to a burnt-out public lavatory. A match to the rags stuffed in the bottle’s mouth; an overarm swing, and the bottles smashes against the far wall, flames licking round broken stalls. Would I like to pose for a photo? A young American who has stopped to watch takes up the offer. Three months after protests toppled Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, the Maidan has turned into a tourist attraction. The scene of the protests is still an impressive sight.

Thursday

James Forsyth

‘Every pub is a parliament’: on the campaign trail with Nigel Farage

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_22_May_2014_v4.mp3" title="Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss what will happen in this week's elections" startat=921] Listen [/audioplayer]Ambushing your opponent’s walk-about is a classic tactic of the political insurgent. When a major party leader comes to town, you position guerrilla campaigners on his route, near the cameras. Then you pounce, so the local news features your posters and messages, rather than his. Senior Tories often complain about how often Ukip has done this to them. But in this European election campaign, it is the Tories who were trying to muscle in on Nigel Farage’s action.

Peter Oborne

How Nigel Farage gave British democracy back to the voters

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_22_May_2014_v4.mp3" title="Peter Oborne debates Matthew Parris on Ukip's impact on British politics" startat=41] Listen [/audioplayer]Whether or not Ukip wins, this month’s European election campaign has belonged to one politician alone: Nigel Farage. Single-handedly he has brought these otherwise moribund elections to life. Single-handedly he has restored passion, genuine debate and meaning to politics. Single-handedly he has reinvented British democracy. This is a superlative achievement, and Mr Farage deserves to be celebrated. Instead strenuous attempts have been made to turn him into a figure of odium and contempt.

Sebastian Payne

The most shocking thing about young Ukip supporters: they’re normal

Close your eyes and imagine a young Ukip voter. Let me guess: mustard trousers, swivel eyes and foaming mouth, ranting furiously about the European Union, socialism, ‘lib-tards’ and so on. Now meet Dayle Taylor, a young Ukipper working at McDonald’s in Accrington. He’s no fruitloop, just a typical modern student who grills Big Macs to pay his way through university and feels that none of the major parties speak for him. What distinguishes him from your average British youth is a lack of apathy about politics. ‘I’m always encouraging Ukippers at McDonald’s,’ he says, ‘and I build up a rapport with the regulars who say they haven’t voted before but will lend their support to Ukip on 22 May.

Digby Warde-Aldam

Happy birthday, spam! Do you mind if we don’t celebrate?

The other day, I got an email advertising ‘miracle’ weight loss. You know the sort: English as defined by Boggle and no way on earth that anyone would ever buy the product in question. I opened it without thinking, and was redirected to a blank page. Within minutes, my Hotmail, Twitter and Wordpress accounts had gone haywire; I stared at my computer screen as the original message replicated itself and fired off to every single one of my contacts. My groan lasted about 20 minutes: why, I asked myself, would anyone bother doing this to me? It turned out I’d been hacked on a convenient anniversary. In April 1994, two American lawyers called Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel sent out the first ever commercial spam message.

Nigel Farndale

Why it’s time for a Cad of the Year Award

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_22_May_2014_v4.mp3" title="Harry Cole and Camilla Swift debate the return of the cad" startat=1527] Listen [/audioplayer]Plans are afoot to introduce the Flashman novels, those politically incorrect celebrations of cowardice, bad form and caddish behaviour, to a new generation of readers. But according to Sarah Montague on the Today programme, ‘Flashman is not typical of our times.’ Is she correct? I can think of quite a few latterday Flashmans off the top of my head, such as Fred ‘The Shred’ Goodwin, whose knighthood had to be prised from his cold Scottish fingers. Not only did Fred keep his pension millions when all about him were losing theirs, he also had an extramarital affair.

Evan Davis

Has Thomas Piketty met his match?

I feel a certain disappointment with myself at the moment. On the big question of the day, ‘How worried should we be about inequality?’, I find myself miserably unable to give a simple answer. In the last few months, I’ve had a chance to speak to two notable economists on the topic, representing opposite extremes of the argument — both arguing their case so well that I can’t disagree with either. On one side of the debate, I got to interview the man of the moment, Thomas Piketty, author of the much talked-about Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Merryn Somerset-Webb

They made me sit an exam on giving financial advice. And I’m glad

There was a time, not that long ago, when financial advisers as we know them today didn’t really exist. Pension and tax advice came from accountants. If you bought shares you bought them via a stockbroker (who gave you advice along the way). Unit trusts came directly — you responded to advertisements or perhaps got your accountant to do it for you. Occasionally you used an insurance broker. And that was that. It wasn’t particularly complicated and as a result no one (your accountant aside) was officially qualified to do anything. Brokers and dealers didn’t take exams to prove their proficiency and no one really thought they should. In the June 1963 edition of the Stock Exchange Journal, a Mr H.H.

Robert Cole

What is an investment trust?

A strange language is spoken on Planet Finance. It often seems designed to baffle the average investor, and save the richest pickings for the professionals. Take, for example, ‘investment trusts’ — they’re investments, certainly, but they are not trusts. And since blind faith is the last thing to invest in any money-making exercise, the two terms make an odd pairing. The most important decision an average investor has to make is to trust their money with a good manager in a promising sector. And this is the main attraction of Investment Trusts. If you fancied a bet on Japan, for example, your first thought may be a straightforward fund, like Fidelity’s Japan Fund, with a 1.5 per cent annual management fee.

Matthew Lynn

Why education is no longer the best way to invest in your child’s future

Teenagers have never exactly been short of things to complain about to their parents. You didn’t give them enough support, sent them to the wrong schools, stopped them going to the right parties, or didn’t get them the latest iPhone. But Generation Rent, perhaps stirred up by too much time spent reading Ed Miliband’s Twitter feed, are likely to be especially aggrieved. To add to the traditional litany of charges from the younger generation against the older can be added one that might even have a kernel of truth in it — you stole our future. There is a case to be made that the big divide in British society, as indeed in most developed economies, is not between classes, races, religions or regions, but between generations.

Thursday

Nicholas Wade

The genome of history

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_15_May_2014_v4.mp3" title="Nicholas Wade discusses what we've learnt from decoding the human genome" startat=44] Listen [/audioplayer]Ever since Darwin published his uncomforting theory, people have been trying to exempt themselves from one or another of its unwelcome consequences. Today’s equivalents of the 19th century’s outraged clerics include the many social scientists, economists and historians who insist that evolution is of no relevance to their disciplines. In the United States the leading social science organisations proclaim that race is a social, not a biological construct.

Nick Cohen

The curious case of Mo Ansar

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_15_May_2014_v4.mp3" title="Douglas Murray and Haras Rafiq discuss how Mo Ansar came to prominence" startat=1154] Listen [/audioplayer]If a curious stranger asked you to name a British Muslim commentator, I guess you would name Mo Ansar. So omnipresent has he become, he seems at times to be Britain’s only Muslim commentator. ‘Mo Ansar: Open for business,’ read his first tweet on 8 August 2011, and business has been rolling in ever since. Ansar understands better than most that if you want to exploit the media you must always be available to harassed researchers on rolling news programmes. ‘He invented himself as a rent-a-quote commentator,' says the LBC broadcaster Iain Dale.

Martin Gayford

Why the BBC will never match Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation

One afternoon in 1942, Kenneth Clark and his wife Jane called on two young painters for tea. The artists were John Craxton and Lucian Freud, then both around 20 and sharing a house in St John’s Wood. The visit was a success, as Craxton told me many years later, but not without its awkward moments. Jane Clark had to be headed off from helping in the kitchen, since the oven contained dead monkeys that were currently serving as models, placed there to restrict the smell. After consuming a flan cooked by Lucian’s mother and viewing the artists’ work, the Clarks decided to return to what Craxton described as ‘the Olympian heights of Upper Terrace House, Hampstead’, where they lived.

Matthew Kroenig

Would Obama bomb Iran?

What is worse: Iran with the Bomb or bombing Iran? This is a question we must reconsider as diplomats return to Vienna this week to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme. Of course, we all hope that the negotiations will result in a lasting diplomatic accord that resolves the Iranian nuclear challenge once and for all. The election of a new and more pragmatic Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, last August and the successful conclusion of an ‘interim’ nuclear pact in November mean that the prospects for a ‘comprehensive’ settlement have never been brighter.

Nigel Evans

Rape suspects need anonymity

As I came into Parliament last Thursday, I swung by the newspaper stand  to take a brief look at the headlines. ‘Oxford Union president, 21, arrested on suspicion of rape and attempted rape,’ said one. My heart sank. A photo of the beaming Oxford Union president, Ben Sullivan, dominated the front page in his swanky dinner jacket. He looked as if he had the world before him — until, that is, the police knocked on his door, warrant in hand. ‘Are you Ben Sullivan?’ they would have asked. The long, lonely journey to the police station would have followed, leading him in the opposite direction to his ambitions. I should know. A similar journey took me from my home to Preston police station in the early hours of 4 May last year.

Thursday

James Delingpole

The gilded generation – why the young have never had it so good

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_8_May_2014_v4.mp3" title="James Delingpole and Daniel Knowles discuss the gilded generation" startat=42] Listen [/audioplayer]No one likes being told they’ve never had it so good. When Lord Young of Graffham tried it three years ago, he was quickly forced out of his job as David Cameron’s enterprise adviser. And rightly so, you might think, for it was an affront both to the evidence before our eyes and to our most basic human instinct: that the past was golden and ahead of us lies only misery, penury, falling standards, overcrowding and the on-going destruction of our once green and pleasant land.

Andrew Haldenby

How France’s left-wing government learned to love austerity

For years, George Osborne cut a rather lonely figure on the European stage. He was portrayed as the only major statesman who advocated austerity. But finally he has some company. Another European leader has burst away from the pack and is promising to freeze all welfare benefits for a year, cut health spending, cut taxes — and to be honest with the people by saying that ‘we cannot live beyond our means’. The Chancellor can derive much pleasure from the fact that his new ally is François Hollande. Until now, the French president has been the great hope of Keynesians the world over. He revelled in this celebrity. He was out to prove that, with just one more push from the government, the economy could be launched upwards.