Charles Moore

Much speculation where we live about the identity of the Stonegate fare-dodger, one stop up our railway line. He recently paid £43,000 to Southeastern, the franchise holder, to escape criminal charges after five years of constant cheating on his daily commute to London. Obviously no suspicion falls on such fine local citizens as my fellow

‘Show, don’t tell’ is the mantra of PR advisers when telling public figures how to communicate. Pope Francis’s technique does both at once. By confessing his sins to what the media call ‘an ordinary priest’ in St Peter’s basilica without entering the confessional box, he seemed almost to be boasting that he is, like everyone,

The Daily Telegraph’s revelation last Friday that the Financial Conduct Authority was going to arraign companies for 30 years of mis-selling pensions and other products ‘wiped’, as papers like to say, £4 billion off insurance stocks. George Osborne is putting pressure on the chief executive Martin Wheatley to go. The leak was highly embarrassing for

Everyone can see that the West has no idea what to do about Russian power in the Ukraine. Britain, in particular, is at the margins. It is time for the Mayor of London to fulfil his historic role of stealing a march on more conventional politicians. Boris should take a leaf out of President Putin’s

Thirty years ago this weekend, I became editor of The Spectator. In the same month, the miners’ strike began, Anthony Wedgwood Benn (as the right-wing press still insisted on calling him) won the Chesterfield by-election, the FT index rose above 900 for the first time and the mortgage rate fell to 10.5 per cent. Mark Thatcher was

Thirty years ago this Saturday, I became editor of this magazine. In the same month, the miners’ strike began, Anthony Wedgwood Benn (as the right-wing press still insisted on calling him) won the Chesterfield by-election, the FT index rose above 900 for the first time and the mortgage rate fell to 10.5 per cent. Mark

People seem bewildered that the National Council for Civil Liberties in the late 1970s gave house-room to the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). It is certainly embarrassing for Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt that they held leading posts in the NCCL then, but the fact that this was going on should not be so surprising. I

It is 15 years since the publication of the Macpherson Report into the investigation of the death of Stephen Lawrence. The report may have done some good by making the police take crime against black people more seriously, but its main legacy is bad. Macpherson promulgated the doctrine that ‘A racist incident is any incident

It is 15 years since the publication of the Macpherson Report into the investigation of the death of Stephen Lawrence. The report may have done some good by making the police take crime against black people more seriously, but its main legacy is bad. Macpherson promulgated the doctrine that ‘A racist incident is any incident

Those of us who want a referendum on the European Union need to be cautious in our approach to the Scottish one. What is sauce for Alex Salmond’s goose may prove sauce for the European gander. We should not assume, for example, that José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, is telling the truth. Or

A reader sends me a card for sale in Scribblers in the King’s Road, Chelsea. It depicts two slices of cheese standing vertically on their thinner ends. On both, black beards and eyes are crudely superimposed, and above them two gold rings form haloes. The caption says ‘Cheeses of Nazareth’. The joke is pathetically bad,

Last week, David Cameron said that we have ‘seven months to save the most extraordinary country in history’. He meant the United Kingdom. It was a powerful speech, part of a welcome and overdue campaign to make us all think about what is at stake in the referendum on Scottish independence. It seems strange to