Leading article

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_3_July_2014_v4.mp3" title="Frank Field and Isabel Hardman discuss the Modern Slavery Bill" startat=1865] Listen [/audioplayer]Who would have expected to find slavery on the outskirts of Cardiff? Not the locals, who were shocked when police carried out a raid while investigating the case of two men understood to have been held in captivity for 26 years. ‘Human trafficking is becoming more prevalent across the United Kingdom,’ said Gwent Police. That’s one way of putting it. Another is to say it has been prevalent for years, but the authorities are only now beginning to take notice. The last government was more interested in apologising for the old form of slavery than recognising the new one.

We have not heard much from Hugh Grant this week. Nor from Max Mosley, Steve Coogan or any of the other bizarre array of celebrities and moguls who wanted to use the phone-acking scandal as an excuse to end British press freedom. For some time, they argued that the press had become a law unto itself, and it was time for politicians to regulate it. We have just seen why such a draconian step is not necessary. Hacking is already against the law, which is why £100 million has just been spent trying former executives of Rupert Murdoch’s News International. The woman who used to run the company, Rebekah Brooks, has been acquitted of all charges — after being investigated and scrutinised for three years solidly. Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor, was convicted.

It would have been easy enough to imagine the 25th anniversary of the Eastern European revolutions being marked with a conference on liberty held in honour of Lady Thatcher — a conference which was held this week. But that is just about the only thing which could possibly have been foreseen from the vantage point of a quarter of a century ago. Who could have predicted then that the stream of Eastern European migrants flooding westwards in the hope of a better life, so welcomed then in their Trabants, would come to be seen so negatively that the desire to keep them out caused the rise of a fourth party in British politics? Even harder to foresee from the month of Tiananmen Square was the economic rise of China.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_12_June_2014_v4.mp3" title="Former solider Tom Tugendhat and Fraser Nelson discuss ISIS in Iraq" startat=1758] Listen [/audioplayer]Seven weeks ago, Barack Obama proclaimed that ‘it’s time to turn the page on more than a decade of war’. The people of Iraq do not have this option. They’ve seen, in Basra, Iran-backed militias take on and defeat the British military. They’ve seen highly effective jihadis, disowned by al-Qa’eda for their brutality, take control of a major city, Fallujah, just 40 miles from Baghdad. This week they have seen their second city, Mosul, fall to that same band of psychopaths.

The Cold War was won by 26 words contained within article five of the Treaty of Washington, which founded Nato in 1949: ‘The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.’ There was no wriggling and no qualification. The message to Stalin was perfectly clear: you nibble at one inch of Western Europe and you won’t just get an ad hoc response from war-weary Europeans; you will have to face a nuclear-armed Uncle Sam. The last time Britain held a Nato summit, in 1990, the organisation was triumphant.

What has happened to Dame Helen Ghosh? Last October the director-general of the National Trust seemed prepared to stand against the green orthodoxy which exists in the public and voluntary sectors. She declared that she had an ‘open mind’ on fracking, while she rejected the case for wind farms on the Trust’s land. Her approach was entirely logical. The Trust’s job is to guard the aesthetic integrity of the landscapes which it has bought with its donors’ money, or been gifted, in order to preserve. Not to deface this land with 300 ft-high wind turbines that generate pitifully little electricity. This week, however, Dame Helen and the National Trust appear to have done a double backflip.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_24_April_2014_v4.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Alex Massie explain why we need more optimism in Scotland and Westminster" startat=1538] Listen [/audioplayer]For centuries, the possibility of Scottish independence seemed so remote as to be laughable. Until recently the nationalists seemed quixotic, rather than menacing. Now, however, we are facing the very real prospect of a ‘yes’ vote in the Scottish referendum in September, which would in all probability result in the resignation of David Cameron as Prime Minister. An ICM survey published at the weekend found that 48 per cent of voters who have made up their minds intend to vote for separation. The stakes are terribly high.

Possibly because his oratory is no match for his much-displayed pectoral muscles, the speeches of Vladimir Putin are seldom reported at length in the West. But as a means of understanding the manoeuvres in eastern Ukraine this week, there is no better starting point than the speech he made to the Duma when the Russian parliament annexed Crimea. Lest anyone thinks his words have been enriched by an over-imaginative reporter, the translation is provided by the Kremlin itself.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_20_March_2014_v4.mp3" title="Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the 2014 budget" startat=749] Listen [/audioplayer]It is easy to see why George Osborne seemed so confident ahead of the Budget. His radical reform of the pension system, allowing people far easier access to their pension pots, will not only help the retired (in the short term) but will raise money for the government, as it taxes what they spend. The Chancellor boasted that this was the biggest single reform to the pension system since the 1920s, and he has a point. Until now, the system had operated on the premise that people should save, and that banks normally offer reasonable rates of interest.

Next week’s Budget marks George Osborne’s last chance to make a game-changing reform before the next election. The Chancellor will have his boasts ready: he’ll say that Britain has the fastest growth of any developed country. What he won’t say is that no developed country has needed to pile so much debt onto its citizens to buy this growth. Statistics about GDP are not much use if the average British breadwinner can put less food on the table than five years ago. To make a proper recovery, something fundamental needs to change in the way the British economy is run. Where Osborne has had the courage to change the Labour system he inherited, it has worked.