Charles Moore

In the early Cameronian period, which now feels prehistoric, the only news was good news. It shows how the recession has turned everything topsy-turvy that this week the Tories have actually been aiming for ‘bad’ headlines. They have succeeded: cut invalidity benefit (weekend press), make people retire later (Tuesday), the ‘new age of austerity’ (Wednesday). This inversion also means that a boring speech is considered a good one. On Tuesday, George Osborne came on to the platform here. ‘Platform’ was the right word, because the set, a photograph of suburban houses from first-storey level, made it look as if George was waving goodbye to his family from an elevated railway before jumping on to the 8.14 from Esher.

Last week at Policy Exchange, the think tank of which I am chairman, General David Petraeus gave a fascinating lecture about what we are now not allowed to call the War on Terror. He spoke tactfully, but between the lines I thought I read a feeling that the fight in Afghanistan is in the balance. This made him emphatic in his praise of British troops: he can see the political dangers if we withdraw, he needs more of our men, and he wants this to be clear to a new Tory government. Now the Washington Post has leaked the views of the general on the spot, Stanley McChrystal. He sounds almost desperate for a greater US effort.

One can understand — if not agree with — Gordon Brown’s idea that a deal with Libya was so worthwhile that the release of al Megrahi was a price worth paying. One can see, by the same unpleasant reasoning, why Mr Brown wished to avoid trying to get compensation out of Libya for the victims of its supply of explosives to the IRA. But two points occur. The first is that, as the plot unravels, the boldness of the Libyans shows that they have nothing to fear from us: they have us over a barrel (of oil?). When they first came to the table with us, they were frightened that they were next in George Bush’s war on terror. Now it is only we who look fearful. The other point is about Mr Brown’s way of making decisions.

‘Moderate Taleban’ are being talked of. It is a very strange, almost oxymoronic concept, like ‘moderate fanatics’; but the conventions of Western political discourse are such that the Foreign Office and the BBC have to deploy the word ‘moderate’ to legitimise whatever our diplomats might be up to. Hunting the moderate is a favourite sport of ‘that old fox, Britain’, as the Iranian regime likes to call us. It conceals the less palatable point that sometimes Western democracies feel the need to make deals with people who are thoroughly vile, but capable of delivering results. The old fox may even be right.

No one seems to have noticed, but next week the House of Lords will be abolished. I don’t mean the entire chamber, but the highest court of appeal in the land. Until now, this body has been a committee of the House of Lords, and has met in committee rooms of the House. When it resumes its work in the autumn, it will be known as the Supreme Court, and will have moved to new premises in the old Middlesex Guildhall across Parliament Square. We are always told by people like Mr New Speaker Bercow how marvellously unstuffy our institutions are these days, but in fact they are characterised by ever greater pomp and expense. Being a mere committee, the Law Lords do not wear any robes when hearing cases. As the Supreme Court, they will wear gowns.

It may well be true that some equipment given to British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan is inadequate. It almost certainly is the case that the government has willed ends without willing means, and it deserves to be criticised for that. But it is a mistake to encourage bereaved parents to think that their sons’ deaths were essentially avoidable. All wars are difficult. No army is perfectly provided for. The fundamental reason that soldiers die in wars is because wars are dangerous. Soldiers know this when they join up, and though they complain (grumbling being the sacred right of the soldier throughout history), they accept it.

As the Conservatives try to make themselves fiscally responsible against spendthrift Gordon Brown, there are now only two departmental programmes which they will ‘ring-fence’ against cuts — health and international development. As the Conservatives try to make themselves fiscally responsible against spendthrift Gordon Brown, there are now only two departmental programmes which they will ‘ring-fence’ against cuts — health and international development. The politics of this is clear: both subjects are areas in which the Tories are seeking to ‘decontaminate the brand’. They are frightened of being depicted as heartless penny-pinchers. But there are plenty of reasons why one might suspect waste and misspending in both these departments.

Since the Speakership of the House of Commons depends on general acceptance for the holder to be able to do his job, it would seem to be right to say nothing further against the new one, and wish him well. The trouble is that John Bercow does not have that general acceptance. His own Conservatives dislike him with a unanimous virulence which I have never seen before about any other politician (and there is hot competition). Significant numbers of the Labour MPs who voted him in did so precisely for that reason. So he is the focus of disunity. You could argue, of course, that Mr Bercow will see which way the wind is blowing, and go out of his way to be nice to the Tories, since they will be the masters soon. But would that be any better?

Should the next Speaker speak? It is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. It seems obvious that, in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, the ‘first Commoner in the land’ should add his voice to the public conversation. Until now, he has been forbidden by convention from doing so. The favourite for the post, John Bercow, wants to get out there on the media, being, he says annoyingly, ‘a Speaker and a Listener’. But if Mr Speaker Bercow (or whoever) gets lots of invitations to appear on GMTV, he will have to say something, and if he says something, he will be expected to say something interesting, and if he says something interesting, it will be hard to avoid stirring controversy among the MPs towards whom he must be impartial.

When you are invited on to programmes like the BBC’s Question Time, the idea is that you express your opinions. So that is what I did when I last appeared on Question Time, on 12 March. In the wake of the Luton Islamists who insulted the British troops parading through the town, I made some unfavourable comments about the attitude of the Muslim Council of Britain to British troops serving in Muslim countries. There is always an hour’s pause between the recording of Question Time and its broadcast, partly intended so that the programme can be checked for libel. (I know this, because I once had to fight, successfully, for the BBC lawyers to keep in some things I had said on the programme about Martin McGuinness.

By chance, Mr Speaker had invited me to a party on Tuesday evening. I had decided, rude though it would have been, to attend, but to tell him to his face that he should go. But by the time I got there, he had. All emotions went into reverse. The reception was in aid of St Margaret’s, Westminster, the parish church of Parliament, which needs £2 million. Showing none of the chippy defensiveness which has made him so unpopular, Michael Martin gave a charming little talk about how, despite being a Scottish Roman Catholic, he had been made to feel at home at St Margaret’s when he first arrived 30 years ago. Even pre-Vatican II, he said, his mother had always encouraged him to seek out the Glasgow boys’ clubs organised by Protestant churches.

In the great row about MPs’ expenses, which big party looks worse so far? It is a difficult question to answer. With the Tories, words like ‘portico’, ‘swimming pool’, ‘moat’, ‘gravel’, ‘Farrow and Ball’, ‘chandelier’ and ‘helipad’ are, as officials put it, ‘unhelpful’. One sees a constant attempt to uphold a certain style of living at the expense of people who cannot afford such living themselves. It looks terrible. On the other hand, Labour seems to be even more stuffed with out-and-out serious cheats. They build illicit property empires, filling dismal flats with unusable barbecues and patio heaters paid for by the Fees Office.

Thirty years, almost to the day, after we greeted our first woman Prime Minister, we greet our first woman Poet Laureate. Unlike Margaret Thatcher, who was careful not to press the sex point, Carol Ann Duffy describes her own appointment as ‘a historic day for women’. She says she wants 300 years of female poet laureates, to balance the past three centuries of males. She has lots of ideas about ‘the vocation of poetry’, and wants to use the laureateship to get her fellow poets into schools, preach about how homosexuality (she is a lesbian) is ‘a lovely, ordinary thing’ etc. I fear that the post may suffer from what economists call ‘producer capture’.

For once, the unity of comment on the Budget was perfectly justified. It may well have been the worst Budget in history. Which makes it all the more annoying that the ‘Red Book’, which contains the Budget details, is this year entitled ‘Budget 2009: Building Britain’s Future’. It is insulting that official documents should have propagandist titles. They should be plainly called according to what they are. ‘Borrowing Britain’s Future’, for instance, would have been soberly true. But at least the sheer awfulness of government finances is making it fashionable to think about cuts.