‘England shall bide till Judgment Tide, By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn! says Kipling. Possibly we shall have to bide with just oak and thorn now (and oak, too, is threatened). People have already attacked the government for being slow to intervene against ash dieback. But it is also interesting to note the tardy feebleness
Instead of looking at the BBC’s behaviour over the Jimmy Savile programme through the red mist of self-righteous hindsight, consider the editorial problem it presented at the time. You have already planned Christmas tribute programmes to one of your most popular contributors of the past 40 years (God knows why he was so popular, but
Probably it will all be all right. Probably the Scots, rightly offered an either/or rather than a third way, will vote to stay in the Union in 2014. But there is something unhappy about the choreography of this week’s announcement of a referendum agreement. It is not clear why David Cameron had to negotiate this
It is such a mistake for senior Tory politicians and journalists — Ken Clarke and Max Hastings are the latest — to complain that Boris Johnson ‘isn’t serious’. It is because he isn’t serious that people like him. And since we live in postmodern politics, his lack of seriousness is seen by his fans to
Ed Miliband, in Manchester, invoked a speech by Disraeli 140 years ago, in the same city. Prudently, he did not quote it: you won’t find much ‘One Nation’ stuff there. In it, Disraeli devoted his energies to attacking the radical forces which ‘were determined to destroy the Church and the House of Lords’ and were
Andrew Mitchell, accused of being a bully, was bullied in turn. There was tremendous journalistic laziness in the reporting of his alleged remarks to police officers at the Downing Street gates. A few months ago it was considered a national scandal that the police were always slipping information to the Murdoch press. Now they planted
Departing as Conservative MP for Corby, Louise Mensch writes a ‘letter of resignation’ to the Prime Minister. Why? Being an MP is not a government post: she is not a minister. An MP should write to his or her constituents and/or the chairman of the constituency association. It is constitutionally wrong for Mrs Mensch to
Have you been following Mitt Romney’s ‘gaffes’? In Britain, he said that there were some concerns about security before the Olympics. In Israel, he said that the ‘economic vitality’ of Israel compared favourably with its neighbours and attributed this in part to ‘the power of culture’. He said that Iran should be confronted, not appeased.
‘Make hay while the sun shines’ is advice to be taken literally as well as metaphorically, and so, as I walked up from the station after a particularly Olympics-cursed visit to London, I was soothed by the sound and smell of mowing coming from our little fields. Haymaking should have taken place almost two months
Having asked around, I can fairly confidently report that the government’s efforts to push ahead with some even slightly elected House of Lords will not work. The rebels are quite rightly holding their ground. Only if the Labour party comes to the government’s rescue can the plans get through, and why should it? People are
A big reason for opposing these Lords reforms is that they would threaten the power of the Commons. If the Commons passed them, however, it would deserve to be threatened. It would display — like No. 10 Downing Street — an ignorance of the constitution and an arrogance about process which undermines the point of
The Governor of the Bank of England raised his legendary eyebrow and Barclays tried to singe it. If there was any doubt about the badness of Barclays’ behaviour in the Libor-rigging scandal, it is surely removed by the way Barclays has dealt with its denouement. Bob Diamond and co claimed they had no part in
For too long, out of a high-minded desire not to spoil anyone’s pleasure, this column has avoided the subject of the Olympics. But when I came to London this week, after an absence of ten days, I found I could remain silent no longer. My walks through St James’s Park, so good for body and
In the Tintin books, there are Thompson and Thomson (‘without a p, as in Venezuela’). So it is with the BBC. Mark Thompson is the Director-General, and Caroline Thomson is the Chief Operating Officer. The latter now seeks the former’s job. It is impossible not to laugh at the perfection of Miss Thomson’s BBC pedigree.
‘Chilly day with frequent showers,’ begins my grandfather’s entry for Tuesday 2 June 1953, the day of the present Queen’s Coronation. He hoisted the Union flag in one of his fields, where the bonfire was being prepared, and walked up to a disused chapel where the whole Sussex village watched the Coronation on something most
At a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, Nick Clegg said that if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were to have a first-born girl, she would succeed to the throne in preference to any subsequent brothers. This rule would apply even if the proposed law to change the succession had not yet been passed. The reason
The RSPCA is supposed to be a charity, but it seems to be embarking on the modern form of political aggression known as ‘lawfare’. Islamists use this with the libel laws, though the Queen’s Speech has promised to ban it: the RSPCA is trying it on with the Hunting Act. It is launching a private
If you want proof that we have not got over our banking crisis, you need look no further than the reaction to Mervyn King’s Today programme lecture last week. Almost all of it reflected — although it did not, of course, directly express — the rage of bankers at the Governor’s criticisms. ‘Already we see
Is the hour of socialism upon us? Thanks to the exhausted financial orthodoxies of those who rule the eurozone, austerity is producing slump. No electorate, it seems, is yet ready to elect leaders who go to the root of the problem and reject the European currency, but almost all have lost faith in the Frankfurt
Like everyone, especially his old friends and colleagues, I can think of unkind things to say about Boris Johnson. He is a lazy workaholic — too busy doing things to do them thoroughly. He can be exasperating. But as the mayoral election campaign reaches its climax, I must dispute the central current criticism of Boris