More from The Week

The waters of the River Avon, recounted the vicar of Bengeworth, outside Evesham, ‘reached almost to the keystone of the arch of the bridge, and extended up Port Street to the public pump on the south side of the street... The waters of the River Avon, recounted the vicar of Bengeworth, outside Evesham, ‘reached almost to the keystone of the arch of the bridge, and extended up Port Street to the public pump on the south side of the street, so that inhabitants were compelled to pass out of their houses through the upper windows, and were thence conveyed by boats along the street’.

As Spectator readers would have expected, this magazine was an early and enthusiastic backer of Boris Johnson as the next Mayor of London. On 4 July we gave him our official endorsement and urged him to run on our Coffee House blog (new.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse). Now that he has thrown his bandana in the ring, we shall be providing regular updates on Boris’s progress: Toby Young, who will cover the campaign in these pages and online, delivers his opening despatch on p14 and his first video diary can be seen on our website.Yet our support for a former editor reflects much more than tribal loyalty. His entry to the race has been an energising moment in British politics.

‘Among all criminals and murderers, the most dangerous type is the criminal physician.’ ‘Among all criminals and murderers, the most dangerous type is the criminal physician.’ So said Dr Miklos Nyiszli, a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz who acted as pathologist to Josef Mengele. The unspeakable depravities of the Nazi doctors were catalogued at the Nuremberg Medical Trial, which led to the conviction of 15 German physicians and scientists. The discovery that those arrested in connection with the planned car-bomb attacks have links with the NHS, as doctors, medical students and technicians, and that the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley appears to have been the headquarters of the cell, is deeply shocking.

Rarely has there been such a triumph of expectation management as the arrival in No. 10 of the new Prime Minister. Only eight weeks ago, Labour was agonising over the loss of 900 council seats in England, the victory of the SNP in Scotland and the gloomy prospect of Gordon Brown’s succession. The then Chancellor’s depressed share price was always hugely to his advantage and, displaying the awesome patience which is one of his most formidable qualities, he bided his time before pouncing. Since the launch of his campaign — really a victory lap — he has been confounding expectations, visibly more relaxed, but also more nimble, unleashing a series of surprises upon his party and his opponents which have changed perceptions of what he might be like as PM.

‘We will have to get new targets in Europe,’ Vladimir Putin said in an interview last week. ‘Which weapons will be used ...ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or some completely new systems — that’s a technical matter.’ The apparent purpose of this outburst was geopolitical blackmail. Ostensibly at least, the Russian President was warning George W. Bush of terrible consequences should the US pursue its plan to station anti-missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. Not quite Khrushchev banging his shoe, but the closest that Mr Putin has come to such tactics. Speaking in advance of the G8 summit in Germany, President Bush parried with an attack on Mr Putin’s human rights record.

The most perceptive indictment of the Blair era was delivered, in an admirably candid speech last September, by Alan Milburn (interviewed by Fraser Nelson on page 14). Describing his own rise from a council estate to the ranks of the Cabinet, Mr Milburn asked, ‘Do we think that for a child growing up today in one of Britain’s poorest estates such mobility is possible or likely? Sadly, I think not.’ That observation should inspire the core mission statement of the next Conservative government. Asked about his gilded schooling at Eton and youthful indiscretions, David Cameron has stuck to the mantra that a person’s origins should be irrelevant: ‘What matters most of all is what you’re going to do.