More from The Week

Saturday

Tamzin Lightwater

Notting Hill Nobody | 17 November 2007

Monday This Aitken business is all v confusing. Has led to heated debates about some extremely odd-sounding things that happened ten years ago. I thought Mr Blair invented ‘sleaze’! But it seems there were all sorts of shocking goings-on in the 1990s under poor Mr Major. Poppy knows all about them, of course, and thinks it terribly amusing that I don’t. Well, excuse me if I wasn’t reading Parliament Today under the duvet in my chalet in Switzerland when I was 18! I guess I just had too much fun to be getting on with — not to mention upmarket catering. (It’s not easy helping large groups of people to burn their own fondue, you know). It was hardly surprising that I embarrassed myself this morning by asking who Piers Merchant was.

Saturday

The Spectator

The vision thing

Gordon Brown managed to keep a straight face last month when he claimed that he was abandoning plans for a snap election because he needed time to spell out his ‘vision for change’. The rest of the country, it must be said, was laughing at this nonsense, knowing full well that it was polling evidence that had changed the Prime Minister’s mind. But let us take Mr Brown at his word: he explicitly invited the electorate to judge him not only by his competence, but by the scale of his ambitions and political philosophy. The Queen’s Speech on Tuesday was intended to impress voters with its sheer sweep, as well as with the 32 individual measures it launched. This was a curate’s egg from a son of the manse.

Fraser Nelson

What’s so special about 2020? Brownism is all about postponement

It took the Queen only eight minutes to read the speech Gordon Brown’s advisers had prepared for her and even she looked bored by the end of it. The Prime Minister may have waited ten years for this chance to set the parliamentary agenda, but one searches this Queen’s Speech in vain for any sense of direction or drive. It was a compendium of mainly old policies, in which a wider ‘vision’ was always difficult to discern. Instead, it was a speech remarkable for what it did not contain. Gone is the sense of adventurism. Under Tony Blair, the Gracious Speech gave notice of his next series of battles with his party.

Tamzin Lightwater

Notting Hill Nobody | 10 November 2007

Monday Whisked to Oxfordshire with Jed and Wonky Tom as part of Queen’s Speech preparation team! Spent whole day in outer inner sanctum!! Dave was in kitchen with his River Cottage apron on making slow-roast organic pork sandwiches when we arrived. If only people could see him like this, we would definitely win the next election. (Actually, Bonny from events was filming with the hand-held, so I guess people will see it at some point, luckily!) There were so many issues to cover we split into sub-groups. I was on ‘Gordon Small Talk’ committee. Dave v worried about what to say on the long walk across central lobby to the House of Lords. After three sarnies (yummy!) finally came up with some killer lines that will have the two of them chatting like old chums in no time.

Saturday

The Spectator

How to save the Union

When Nigel Lawson was Chancellor of the Ex­chequer, he liked to say that the problem with tax simplification was that you always end up complicating tax, too. The same is true of much constitutional reform: any attempt to remove an anomaly will often create another. New Labour’s devolution experiment responded to the desire of the Scottish and Welsh people for greater autonomy. In so doing, however, it has created new and growing grievances among the people of England.

Tamzin Lightwater

Notting Hill Nobody | 3 November 2007

Monday Dear me! How are we supposed to have a grown up argument about immigration when silly Lithuanian ambassadors can’t see the funny side of a little joke about one-legged dance troupes? If you ask me, people with names that look like the last line of the optician’s testing chart shouldn’t be allowed to start rows. It creates an awful lot of press releases which the spellcheck on the word processor can’t handle. Jed says we’ll only stop it by sending Mr Hague to Vilnius to eat humble Cepelinai, whatever that means. Thank goodness am getting out of office to help Dave do Sky News . . . Later: What is going on? We were only at Sky five minutes when we managed to get into another row.

Saturday

Theodore Dalrymple

Global warning | 27 October 2007

At last somewhere in Europe as filthy and littered as almost the whole of Britain! If we can’t make ourselves better — and of course we won’t, so long as the final purpose of our public service is to employ the people employed by the public service — we can at least rejoice in the degradation of others. Indeed, in one respect Marseilles was worse than anywhere I have seen in Britain: for I have never seen so much graffiti anywhere in the world. Every concrete surface — and, to adapt the words of a well-known song slightly, there is an awful lot of concrete in Marseilles — was covered in the handiwork of — well, of whom exactly?

The Spectator

Not-so-little Britain

It is almost 40 years since Enoch Powell delivered his notorious speech on immigration to the Annual General Meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre on 20 April 1968. ‘As I look ahead,’ said Powell, ‘I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”.’ That Virgilian prophecy has not come to pass, but the effect of Powell’s incendiary speech — combined with the restrictive power of town hall ‘multiculturalism’ in the 1980s — was to make level-headed discussion of immigration all but impossible. That discussion is now, at last, beginning — better late than never — and it could scarcely be more important.

Tamzin Lightwater

Notting Hill Nobody | 27 October 2007

Monday Great balls of justiciable fire! If one more person asks me to write a memo about ‘opt-outs’ I will explode. People are talking in fluent Alphabetti Spaghetti. It’s all ‘IGC mandates’ this, and ‘QMV’ that, as if anyone had the faintest clue what they were on about. And what are ‘justiciable rights’ anyway, when they are at home? Clearly a made-up word or a mistake by the silly Belgian translators. Disgraced myself this morning by asking if The Passerelle Clause was a book written by Robert Harris. How was I to know it was another bit of the beastly Constitution, or whatever they are calling it now.... Stole a copy of The Bluffer’s Guide to the EU Treaty from Foxy’s office.

Saturday

The Spectator

De quoi avez-vous peur, Gordon?

Let us step aside for a moment from the political posturing and horse-trading at the Lisbon EU summit and go back to the beginning. On 20 April 2004, Tony Blair announced to the House of Commons that there would, after all, be a referendum on the EU Constitutional Treaty. It is important to restate the precise reasons the then Prime Minister cited for his dramatic U-turn. Mr Blair was emphatic that his decision did not in any sense signify a recognition that the proposals represented a fundamental constitutional change. ‘The Treaty,’ he stressed, ‘does not and will not alter the fundamental nature of the relationship between member states and the European Union.’ Set aside for a moment the accuracy or inaccuracy of that claim.

Stephen Pollard

Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne: no one can change the Lib Dems’ failure to find a niche

The past week has seen history repeating itself, skipping the tragedy and moving straight to farce. Two weeks ago a Scottish MP, tipped from his first days in the Commons as a future leader of his party and hyped for years as his party’s one true statesman, stood exposed as a leader with a reputation built on so much hot air, and took a decision which plunged his party into chaos. On Monday a Scottish MP, tipped from his first days in the Commons as a future leader of his party and hyped for years as his party’s one true statesman, stood exposed as a leader with a reputation built on so much hot air, and took a decision which plunged his party into chaos. The hype surrounding both Gordon Brown and Sir Menzies Campbell has always been puzzling.

Tamzin Lightwater

Notting Hill Nobody | 20 October 2007

Sunday Bonjour, mes amis! Am in Paris for Compassionate Conservative hen weekend! All the girls from the office are here giving Abby from Dave’s team a Right-Of-Centre-Yet-Modern send-off. Staying in what Poppy describes as a dump, but is actually a boho chic boutique hotel (I checked the brochure). We were going to stay at a place called the George but it flooded, or something. Every time we drive down the Champs Elysées everyone sighs, and says, ‘Ah, the George sank’. V odd. Also, what is ‘Urmeez’ — and what does it have to do with scarves? Anyway, big party tonight. We are dressing up as blue bunny girls and going to a bar where there are lots of rugby fans. Dave’s sent a telegram which I’m going to read out.

Theodore Dalrymple

Global warning | 20 October 2007

People have only to talk for a short time for it to become obvious that the greatest of human rights is not freedom of opinion, but freedom from opinion. It is a mercy that there are so many languages that one does not understand. While in Venice recently I joined a queue for an exhibition in the Doge’s Palace. It was very long, and the conversation behind me obtruded itself upon my consciousness. It was between a middle-aged couple, formerly of Detroit, Michigan, but now of Sarasota, Florida (out of the frying pan into the warm bath, as it were) and a young Canadian woman, the large number of whose earrings in her upper ear served as her Declaration of Independence.

Saturday

The Spectator

From clunk to cluck

Rattled, hoarse and angry, Gordon Brown did not look a happy man at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday. Small wonder: it is only weeks since his clunking fist was pounding the Tories into submission. Now, he has allowed himself to be caricatured as a clucking chicken, as fearful of an election as he is of an EU referendum. ‘How long are we going to have to wait till the past makes way for the future?’ David Cameron asked — and the PM had no convincing reply. It may be true that Mr Brown’s decision not to go to the country this November will fast fade from public memory, and that the nickname ‘Bottler Brown’ and the jokes about ‘bottle banks’ will not last.

Tamzin Lightwater

Notting Hill Nobody | 13 October 2007

Monday What can I say?! Happiness and General Wellbeing levels through roof! Dave is the greatest! We’re definitely going to win in 2009!! But more importantly, I have been seconded on to the Brown Attack Unit! Am at centre of fevered preparations ahead of PMQs involving cut-throat political strategy. So far have come up with Great Clunking Cowardy Custard and Big Fat Miserable Loser. For some reason, neither of these seem to have made it on to Jed’s shortlist of insults to be hurled across dispatch box by Dave, but there’s time yet. Have never seen Gids so happy. He’s commissioned limited-edition flock wallpaper with the words ‘I Told You Gordon Was Crap!’ in fancy lettering. So glad it came right for him in the end.

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 13 October 2007

A-bomb or B-movie? Sir: I have no idea whether or not we really came close to WW3 last month, as your correspondents Douglas Davis and James Forsyth insist (‘We came so close’, 6 October), but one line in their exciting piece brings doubts to mind. After ‘secretly’ crossing into Syria (as opposed to coming in on a guided tour, presumably) soil samples collected by ‘elite’ Israeli commandos (thank heavens they didn’t use run-of-the-mill commandos) at Tartous ‘suggested that the cargo [from North Korea] was nuclear’. Really? Presumably any such nuclear material would have been transported and stored in rather robust, sealed and shielded containers.

Saturday

The Spectator

A man worthy to be Prime Minister

Ten years after New Labour came to power, it is remarkable that the unions can still hold us all to ransom. This issue of The Spectator has gone to press a day earlier than usual, to minimise the risk of disruption to our readers from the threatened postal strike. It is depressing that such precautions should still be necessary in 2007. So much for strong, Thatcher-esque leadership in No. 10. Those who ask why the country needs a fresh start need look no further than this petty display of Jurassic union power. In Blackpool this week, David Cameron confounded those who said that he is incapable of leading the Tories into government.

Fraser Nelson

The hoodie-hugging, Polly-praising, huskie-drawn days are over. The Tories are back

For a party still facing defeat at the next general election, the Conservatives left Blackpool feeling remarkably upbeat. ‘It’s the spirit of Gallipoli,’ said a veteran of William Hague’s election campaign. ‘They’re united against Brown,’ mused one shadow Cabinet member. Neither image is quite right. This was no deluded optimism, no awestruck reaction to David Cameron’s speech. The mood at the conference had changed long before he stood up on Wednesday. Something had gone badly right. The week started with the party in a murderous mood, with talk at the candidates’ party centring on who would replace the evidently doomed Mr Cameron.

Tamzin Lightwater

Notting Hill Nobody | 6 October 2007

Sunday Am shattered from lugging huge bag of policies around. Felt like asking Mr Gove what exactly he’d put in his blasted School Reforms, but just about controlled self. Plus, the poor girls working for Gids are having to cope with a Mulberry hold-all each of tax cuts so I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Anyway, was already tired and emotional when Mrs May got up on stage in her leopard-patterned wellies. As if it’s not bad enough that I’ve forgotten to pack my London Sole sequinned ballet pumps, I now have to go rummaging around Blackpool for designer wellingtons. I simply couldn’t be more stressed. Am also v worried about these tax cuts.

Theodore Dalrymple

Global warning | 6 October 2007

When we were students, a professor of public health once told us that the death rate declined whenever or wherever doctors went on strike. This was an even stronger argument, he implied, than the purely ethical one against doctors resorting to such action, or inaction. No profession should lightly expose its uselessness to the public gaze. Crossing Belgium recently, at a time when it had had no government for several weeks, I could not help but notice that it looked very much the same as when it did have a government. Obviously the crisis would have to be resolved sooner or later because otherwise people would realise the redundancy of the political class. According to one Belgian I met, the only real function of the latter is to vote a budget so that the bureaucrats got paid.