Andrew Neil

In common with thousands of companies up and down the country, The Spectator magazine group availed itself of government funds to furlough some of its staff during the Covid crisis. We feared the impact of Covid on our finances, especially on our cash flow, as parts of our business slowed or ground to a halt, leaving some staff without work to do. We were grateful for government help, which allowed us to conserve cash and still see our people paid 80 per cent of their salaries. Though some parts of our business – especially the revenue lines from events, newsstand sales and advertising – have been hit badly by the crisis and ongoing economic downturn, overall our magazines have weathered the Covid crisis better than we expected.

We’ve all been there, I’m sure. You work your pan off to get everything done in time. You count down the days until you can break out of the madhouse of pre-Christmas London. Then you’re brought down by the dreaded lurgy. I was all for cancelling our travel plans and spending Christmas under the duvet. But the Swedish Engineer was having none of it: she’d been promised Christmas in her homeland and it was a promise I was going to keep, even if I had to be med-evaced there. I don’t really remember arriving in Stockholm. Too much Lemsip, Jameson’s and nasal spray can cloud the memory. But our fellow passengers, all pictures of Swedish health when we boarded at Heathrow, were now engaged in a mass cough-and-splutter at the carousel.

No rest for the wicked. We touch down before dawn in Sydney after a 22-hour flight and by 7 a.m. I’m live on radio 2GB with Alan Jones. I’m aware talk radio is big in Australia — as you’d expect in a country full of refreshingly forthright people — and Mr Jones’s breakfast show is one of the biggest. Predictably, talk turns to the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Aussie commentators are a bit sheepish about it all. Only 15 years ago, supposedly informed opinion, on the left and the right, confidently predicted that Australia would be a 21st-century republic. They were confounded — disgusted, even — when folks voted in a referendum to keep the monarchy.

The below is an extract from Andrew Neil's evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, published today. You can read the whole document here. ‘How we treat Rupert Murdoch’s media interests when in power,’ Mr Blair told me in 1996, a year before he became Prime Minister ‘will depend on how his newspapers treat the Labour party in the run up to the election.’ That is exactly how it panned out.  The Sun and the News of the World fell in line behind New Labour in the run up to the 1997 election, The Times stayed broadly neutral and the Sunday Times unenthusiastically Tory.

I make no apologies for returning to government spending on health. The Tory promise in the election to ring-fence health spending and increase it in real terms every year even during a period of public spending cuts was distinctive and much-touted during the 2010 election campaign. A quick recap: during my extended interview with Health Secretary Andrew Lansley which went out live on the BBC News Channel on Sunday evening, I suggested that higher inflation than anticipated when the health spending promise was given would make it more difficult to meet the Tory promise of real annual rises. Indeed I put to him a projection for real health spending which showed it would decline.

In my recent BBC2 documentary, Posh & Posher, I explained how networking and contacts played a crucial role in giving those with the right connections an early leg up in their careers. Internships and work experience are proving increasingly crucial to opening doors and opportunities in later life. Many have expressed the view that the best intern and work experience opportunities in fields like politics, finance and the media are going disproportionately to those who are already privileged and well-connected. From what I've seen myself in recent years I suspect that to be true. The Mail on Sunday gives a classic example (and a potentially embarrassing one for the Tories) of how it can work.

I caught the figure strolling towards me out the corner of my eye. At first I thought I was mistaken. Then it nearly took my breath away. I was standing in the impressive wooden-beamed assembly hall of Paisley Grammar, where I’d gathered at the start of each school day many years before, silent and smartly uninformed, along with 900 other pupils. The current head was explaining how this ancient institution, dating back to the 16th century, was still giving children as fine an education as the one I had enjoyed. It was then I noticed the policeman coming along the corridor and into the hall, sauntering along as if his presence were as natural as a French or physics teacher. His uniform was clean and tidy. So was his stab vest.

In the current unprecedented economic circumstances, politicians and policy-makers are having to learn as they go. So are economic commentators. It was widely predicted by economists in the City and the media that the latest inflation figures would show the Retail Price Index (RPI -- a broad measure of inflation) plummeting into deflation territory with prices falling by around 0.8 percent, while the Consumer Price Index (CPI -- which excludes housing costs) would slump from 3 percent to closer to 2 percent, a harbinger of further falls to come.   They were wrong. The headline RPI fell only to 0 percent in February from 0.1 percent in January while the CPI rose to 3.2 percent in February from 3 percent. Even the underlying rate of RPI inflation rose to 2.5 percent from 2.4 percent.