Features

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Now the war on poverty can begin

Iain Duncan Smith comes striding into his office with the look of a man who still can’t quite believe his luck. Even the very un-Conservative artwork on the walls of his office can’t dampen his spirits. He explains that it was the choice of his predecessor (‘what was her name? Ed Balls’s wife…’). Yvette Cooper’s choice of paintings, it seems, is not long for this world. ‘I’ll have to get some pictures of battle scenes,’ he says — looking at his aides with a mischievous grin. They, too, seem unable to believe that they have finally made it to the Department for Work and Pensions. It is an unlikely nirvana.

Philip Delves-Broughton

Not so slick, Mr President

Philip Delves Broughton says that Barack Obama has not dealt well with the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico — and his party will pay at the congressional elections in November I suppose £260 million isn’t all that much in the scheme of things. Not when you are used to dealing in billions and trillions. Yet at the very moment when the entire Western world is hitching in its belt, slashing public spending and preaching austerity, work is to begin on the most extensive renovations at the White House in 60 years. New heating, cooling, electrical and fire alarm systems will be installed over four years. For £260 million, there must be a few contractors in Washington howling up their sleeves.

Rod Liddle

Prince Philip is my favourite, but in fact I love all the royals

I became a monarchist in the late afternoon of 19 November 2009; a dark and chilly day, damp brown leaves blowing balefully along the gutters, the smell in the air of a hard winter to come. This ended more than 30 years of what I considered principled soft-leftish republicanism; the notion that however practically effective and traditional the royal family might be — all those tourist dollars, plus a sense of national continuity — it was still sort of wrong. Monarchists would argue with me, saying listen, if we didn’t have the Queen, we’d have Tony Benn or Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson as an elected president — an idea which rather appealed, frankly.

Theo Hobson

In search of disorganised religion

Theo Hobson attends Grace, an alternative Christian service in west London, and finds it arty, irreverent, postmodern — and full of people seeking a new way to worship I went to church last weekend. Sort of. It was a Saturday evening service run by a group of laypeople in an Anglican church in Ealing. It’s a monthly event called Grace. What sort of people attend? Quite trendy ones. People who are a bit too trendy for normal church. The sort who know how to link a computer up to sound and visual equipment. No grannies, no kids. Soft club music pulsed as I entered, and a big screen showed an art installation: furniture made of neon strips. In the middle of the pewless nave were a couple of sofas, a table and chairs, and a fridge; round the edges were some beanbags.

Saturday

Mira Barhillel

Must do better: Boris Johnson’s half-term report

On Question Time last month, Boris Johnson, London’s Mayor, was asked about his plans to build a new airport in the Thames estuary: an idea seen as reasonable by some and insane by others. As he blustered amiably away, saying not very much, a lady interrupted and asked: ‘Why can’t you just admit it when you are wrong instead of waffling on?’ The audience roared with approval. It was an Emperor’s New Clothes moment. The innocent questioner had put her finger on Boris’s fatal flaws: he can’t admit he’s wrong, but he’s a little too lazy to do his homework properly, and that often leaves him intellectually denuded.

Robert Beaumont

‘It’s a fight to the death here’

David Cameron has said that the two most beautiful constituencies in England are his own, in Oxfordshire, and Oliver Letwin’s in Dorset. He obviously knows little of Thirsk and Malton, a small slice of North Yorkshire heaven, but the area will certainly be on his mind next Thursday. For here, the now supposedly united tribes of Tories and Liberal Democrats are engaged in a vicious local election, the first of the new parliament. If the nasty tone and temper of this rural battle is anything to go by, the national Lib-Con alliance hasn’t a chance. In the Left corner (or thereabouts) stands Howard Keal, a local Lib Dem bigwig with a strong base in his home town of Malton.

David Lammy

Clegg has given Cameron his Clause 4 moment

For ten years in parliament, I have sat opposite Conservative and Liberal Democrat colleagues. Never did I imagine they would form a government together. How on earth did we get here? And what does it all mean? The Tories won the most seats not just because we looked tired and stale as a government. It was because under Cameron, the Conservative party stopped falling for New Labour’s triangulation trap. Taking their cue from Bill Clinton, New Labour strategists made the decision to close down debate on certain issues, like crime, by moving to the right. This tactic allowed the Labour leadership to focus political debate elsewhere. Four elections in a row were fought on ‘investment versus cuts’ in health, education and childcare.

John C-Hulsman

Not so special any more

However cosy they may appear, neither Obama nor Cameron care much for the ‘special relationship’. But, says John C. Hulsman, that may be no bad thing Good student that he is, Barack Obama has been careful to dot his ‘i’s and cross his ‘t’s after the British election. Well aware that he is viewed as uninterested in transatlantic relations, Obama made sure he was quick off the mark; he was the first foreign leader to phone David Cameron when he became PM. It’s well known in Washington that the President considered Brown uninspiring, but Obama made it clear that this time it was different; that between them, Barack and Dave, they were truly the new guardians of the special relationship. So — did he mean it?

Fraser Nelson

Can Cameron assuage the Tory tribes?

Amid the chaos in the House of Commons, with newly elected MPs finding their offices and newly appointed ministers being kicked out of them, Graham Brady is the picture of calm. As the only MP to resign on principle from David Cameron’s front bench (over grammar schools), he knew there would be no phone call from Number 10. Yet next week, he may end up being more important than any minister of state. He is favourite for a position that has suddenly started to matter again: chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs. In the era of Blair-style landslides, the likes and loves of backbench MPs mattered little: the government’s majority was big enough to force through most votes. But the loyalty of Tory MPs to a coalition government is untested.

Rod Liddle

Was it in the public interest to stitch up Lord Triesman?

No, says Rod Liddle, in fact it was against it — but you won’t see the Press Complaints Commission punishing the Mail on Sunday for breaching its own code You know as soon as you see the posed photograph of some sweetly smiling young and hitherto unknown bint on the front page of your morning newspaper that somewhere a man, probably a famous and powerful man, is in the doghouse. Stitched up by the papers, having been dragged towards his doom by the relentless, exhausting power of his own gonads. I say stitched up by the papers, but most of the time we can be more specific than that; it will almost certainly be a newspaper of which the editor-in-chief is also the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission’s Editorial Code of Practice, i.e. Paul Dacre.

Tanya Gold

‘I never talk to anybody’

So Ben Kingsley, or, as he apparently demands to be called, Sir Ben Kingsley, who are you? I’m sitting in a windowless corridor in the Dorchester Hotel, waiting for him. It’s amazingly pink, this corridor. It looks like a cake. He comes out to collect me and he doesn’t look like he belongs here at all. Perhaps it’s because misery clings to all his famous roles — Gandhi, Simon Wiesenthal, Otto Frank, the sociopath gangster Don Logan, the accountant Itzhak Stern in Schindler’s List. And now he’s neither in prison nor a concentration camp, but standing behind an enormous teapot, looking as Home Counties as a John Lewis valance. We sit down and I am slightly tongue-tied because I think he’s a great actor, one of the best.

Brendan O’Neill

China’s parents have begun to rebel

Brendan O’Neill says that the state’s cruel and antiquated one-child policy is being propped up by British environmentalists with an agenda — but the Chinese are striking back Professor Yang Zhizhu is a brave man. In flagrant defiance of China’s womb-policing one-child policy, he and his wife have chosen to become outlaws by having two children and flat out refusing to pay the second-child fine (around £18,000). ‘Why should I pay money for having my own kid?’ asked Professor Yang in an interview last month. ‘It’s our right as citizens.’ For the crime of starting a two-child family, Professor Yang was fired from his job at the Beijing Youth Politics College and now faces an uncertain future.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Can this marriage of convenience work?

‘It is not the prize. It is a means to the prize.’ This is how one long-time political ally of David Cameron described the Tory leader’s entrance into Downing Street at the head of a coalition government. The deal with the Liberal Democrats which has put Cameron in Downing Street is, as this Cameron ally admits, ‘an arranged marriage not a love match’. In the run-up, the bride’s family was trying to negotiate a better dowry from an alternative suitor, and many in the groom’s family were praying that he would be jilted at the altar. Guests on both sides of the church could be heard whispering that the marriage would never last.

Phil Collins

Beyond Brown and Blair

Labour has to reinvent itself to fight the next general election, says Phil Collins. The leadership contenders must look to the party’s radical roots So, they were looking in the wrong place all along. For years now the Labour party has been seeking a steely assassin to deal with its unelectable leader. Finally, where James Purnell failed tragically and Geoff Hoon failed farcically, Nick Clegg has succeeded. Gordon Brown has gone and the Labour party is even more leaderless than when he was actually there. Now that Britain has finally settled on a government, the campaigns will start. Or rather, resume. Discreet campaigning has been going on for some time. For Ed Balls, that means visiting constituency dinners and spending Saturdays writing the front half of the Sunday papers.

Lloyd Evans

A man of many parts

‘Heroin?’ I say to Simon Russell Beale. ‘Sorry?’ he says. ‘To relax after a show. To come down off the high. You take heroin?’ ‘Oh yes, yes,’ he says. ‘Yes… if only. Well, as you can probably tell from my shape I like my beer. I can’t imagine a performance without a pint or two afterwards.’ ‘Which brand?’ ‘Oh cheap stuff. Stella or Export, yes, cheap as chips, cooking lager.’ The man widely regarded as the finest theatrical talent of his generation has surprisingly simple tastes.

Irwin Stelzer

Requiem for a heavyweight

It’s a dirty business. When you’re on top, everyone wants something from you; when you’re not, well, as Billie Holiday says, ‘God bless the child that’s got his own.’ It is a business of sharp elbows, few loyalties, and one in which winning is all that matters. That’s how Rod Serling describes the boxing racket in his Requiem for a Heavyweight. He could just as well have been describing politics. Tony Blair might have been the Labour party’s meal ticket (as Margaret Thatcher was the Tories’) through three general elections, just as Serling’s boxer was the meal ticket for his managers and entourage.

Rod Liddle

The real political fight was Boulton v Campbell

Why can’t Alastair Campbell understand that proper journalists aren’t partisan and malevolent, asks Rod Liddle. Most of them just genuinely want to uncover the truth Who were you rooting for in the real political battle of the week, Adam Boulton of Sky News versus Alastair Campbell? It didn’t quite come to a ruck, which is an enormous shame, but Adam did pursue Campbell in the manner of one of those inexplicably angry men you sometimes meet in a kebab shop at two in the morning, driven by a splenetic fury and a sense of implacable self-righteousness and with sputum dribbling down the front of his nursery-coloured acrylic leisurewear. You can watch it right now, on YouTube, if you like.

Patrick Marnham

Is it all over for Sarko?

The French president’s chances of re-election look bleak. But the problem is not his politics, says Patrick Marnham, so much as his embarrassing personal life Gordon Brown is not the only European leader who is regarded as an electoral liability by his own party. With two years to go before France’s next presidential election Nicolas Sarkozy’s chances are not looking good. He is entitled to run for a second five-year term, but in 2012 it will be 24 years since the French chose a president from the left. Many voters think it is time for a change. Mr Sarkozy is now one of the most unpopular political personalities in France.

Ferdinand Mount

Raise a glass to Alan Watkins

Ferdinand Mount mourns the passing of his friend and colleague — and a former Spectator columnist — whose wit, humour and clarity of expression remain unrivalled As Alan Watkins lay dying last Saturday, his younger grandson Harry recited to him the passage from Macbeth he had just learnt at school. It was an apt send-off for the most enchanting political commentator of his day, as meanwhile in Downing Street Birnam Wood was inching closer to Dunsinane (though to be fair to Macbeth he did not claim that he was merely ‘securing a progressive coalition’). To those who professed to be shocked by the shenanigans of the past few days, Alan would surely have rolled his great bloodhound eyes and sighed, ‘politics is a rough old trade, you know’.

Saturday

The Spectator

What the new government must do first

After an exhausting election, the incoming administration is expected to introduce reforms immediately. But which ones are most urgent? The Spectator asked some of its favourite writers and thinkers to advise the new Prime Minister Stabilise the economy The new government now has to move with utmost swiftness to stabilise British public finances, which Gordon Brown has left in a truly abysmal condition. We are in the middle of the worst debt explosion in the Western world, according to the Bank for International Settlements, and nothing discussed during the election campaign would remotely suffice to bring the situation under control.