The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Farage’s climbdown, Yorkshire’s floods and Australia’s fires

Home Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit party, climbed down from his resolution to field 600 candidates in the general election, promising not to contest the 317 seats won by the Conservatives in 2017. The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats said they would spend large sums of taxpayers’ money on things that might please voters (such as the NHS or, from the Lib Dems, a ‘skills wallet’ of £10,000 for every adult). The Conservatives claimed that Labour’s promises would cost £1,200 billion, which Labour denied. A review commissioned by the government into the HS2 railway said it should be built, despite the cost.

The Spectator

Books of the year – part two

Richard Ingrams A book that gave me great enjoyment (for all the wrong reasons) was Harvest Bells: New and Uncollected Poems by John Betjeman (Bloomsbury Continuum, £16.99). The compiler, Kevin J. Gardner, professor of English at Baylor University, Texas, claimed that all the poems in the book had been subjected to his ‘rigorous scrutiny’; yet somehow a spoof Betjeman poem, published in Private Eye after the exposure of Anthony Blunt as a Russian agent in 1979 (for which I was partly responsible), had found its way into the professor’s ragbag of a compendium: Who’d have guessed it? Blunt a traitor And a homosexualist, Carrying on with tar and waiter — There’s a sight I’m glad I missed.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: How to squash a Speaker

No special protection Sir: Rod Liddle’s joke that the election might be held on a date when Muslims cannot vote, thereby reducing support for Labour, has apparently led to outrage. There has been no similar outrage over your front cover (‘A vote is born’), which satirises the Christian nativity by portraying Johnson, Corbyn and Swinson visiting the stable in Bethlehem. It should be a principle of free speech in any free society that all religions are equally subject to satire, criticism and even gentle mockery; there should be no special protection for one set of beliefs over another. In allowing satire about two mainstream religions in the same issue, you have shown admirable balance.

The Spectator

Do ‘Workington Man’ and ‘Worcester Woman’ decide elections?

National characters How useful is it to characterise an election with a single anthropological specimen such as ‘Workington Man’? ‘Worcester Woman’ was identified by Tory strategists ahead of the 1997 election as a key voter who had helped John Major win, against expectations, in 1992. Worcester was then a Conservative seat. Has the city followed the national trend since?

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Bercow steps down, Hoyle steps up and an election begins

Home Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Labour MP for Chorley and deputy Speaker since 2010, was elected Speaker by the Commons. His first words were: ‘No clapping.’ Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit party, proposed an electoral pact with the Conservatives, but only if Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, repudiated the agreement on Brexit that he had made with the European Union. When this was not forthcoming, he said: ‘We will contest every single seat in England, Scotland and Wales.’ But he declined to stand for parliament himself (which he had done seven times before, without success). Philip Hammond, the former chancellor of the Exchequer, decided against standing as an independent in the election after all.

The Spectator

The case for amnesty: why it’s time to offer citizenship to illegal immigrants

There is an unspoken truth about British life: we have two classes of citizen. The first are those born or formally settled here, who have all the rights and protections of the law. Then there are perhaps a million others who may have lived here with their families for years but without the proper documents. They can be our neighbours, work in our shops, contribute to our economy — yet they do not have the same basic protections and are far more vulnerable to exploitation. These are the so-called illegal immigrants, and it is past time to offer them amnesty. Britain has become the most successful melting pot in Europe, absorbing 2.5 million people over this decade without the far-right backlash seen in much of the continent.

The Spectator

to 2430: Petite traveller

On 19 October John le Carré turned eighty-eight (hinted at by TWO FAT LADIES (19/26/20)). His real forenames are DAVID JOHN MOORE (1A). The titles suggested were A Perfect Spy (GOLDEN MOLE: 16), The Looking Glass War (RAW: 29), A Small Town in Germany (BAD REICHENHALL: 46), The Russia House (ROMANOV: 21) and The Little Drummer Girl (the puzzle’s title). CORNWELL (27) was to be shaded.   First prize Alastair Aberdare, London SW13 Runners-up David Morris, Birchington, Kent; D & D.

The Spectator

Books of the year – part one

Philip Hensher The best novels of the year were Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys (Fleet, £16.99) and James Meek’s To Calais, In Ordinary Time (Canongate, £17.99). These days, novels are often praised for the gravity of their subjects, but what elevates Whitehead’s treatment of race and American brutality is the elegance of its style and the satisfying inventiveness of its form. Meek’s book is an astounding linguistic fantasy about the advent of the Black Death. French, Anglo-Saxon and Latin collide in a world of fake news, uncertain sexual borders and the dread of a catastrophe which looks in some ways very much like our own.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: What would be the point of a second referendum?

Another referendum? Sir: Matthew Parris’s article ‘What question should a second referendum ask?’ (26 October) occasioned a wry smile from me this morning. His first question — whether Britain should remain in or leave the European Union — has already been asked and answered, at great expense and trouble, in 2016. The only logical reason why it should be re-asked is if the first time it was asked was illegitimate in some way. But it was only after the result was known that questions were raised about its legitimacy. At the time, not a breath was raised. However, I do like Mr Parris’s second question. We shouldn’t have a second referendum, but if we do let’s make the choice ‘deal or no deal’.

The Spectator

How unusual is a December general election?

A December election How unusual is a December general election? Of the 56 elections held since 1800, 5 essentially took place in December: in 1868, 1900, 1910, 1918 and 1923, although prior to the first world war voting took place over several days and weeks and so cannot be pinned down to a single date. In 1910, voting took place between 6 December and 19 December. — The month with the most elections is May, with 8 (5 of which have been held since 1979, followed by June and August with 7 apiece). No election has been held in September. We haven’t had an election in the second half of the year since October 1974. The last December election, in 1923, resulted in the first Labour government, although Ramsay MacDonald relied on support from the Liberals. How many people?

The Spectator

Boris is taking a huge gamble with an election – but it could pay off

Contrasting Boris Johnson’s enthusiasm for a general election with Jeremy Corbyn’s reluctance, it would be easy to assume that the result was pretty well assured: the Conservatives will win a majority. The pollsters and the bookmakers seem to concur — as they have done before misjudging the result of virtually every major election on either side of the Atlantic in the past few years. But make no mistake: the Prime Minister is taking a huge gamble in pushing for an election now. In the Conservatives’ favour is the prospect that the resurgent Lib Dems could split the Remain vote, and that Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity seems to have reached depths seldom seen in democratic politics.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: An election date is set, al-Baghdadi dies and a row over gay giraffes

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, having shelved his Brexit Bill in the face of parliamentary opposition, persuaded the Commons to vote by 438 to 20 for a general election on 12 December. A one-clause Bill was given its third reading after an amendment put by Labour to change the date to 9 December was defeated by 315 to 295. That majority of 20 coincided with the voting power of 10 MPs to whom the Conservative whip had earlier that day been restored, including Alistair Burt, Ed Vaizey and Sir Nicholas Soames, but not Philip Hammond, Sir Oliver Letwin, David Gauke, Dominic Grieve or Kenneth Clarke. The government had failed the day before to secure an election through the provisions of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which required the support of two-thirds of MPs.

The Spectator

to 2429: Homo

The unclued lights are linked with MAN (at 7A). AXE and AGE were also allowed at 40A. Thanks to various people for pointing this out.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: David Cameron’s real referendum mistake

Cameron’s fatal error Sir: Jo Johnson’s otherwise informative review of David Cameron’s For the Record (Books, 12 October) suggests Cameron’s ‘mistake’ was to not call the referendum earlier, and his ‘fatal error’ was his failure to nail down the Leave campaign on how they ‘would actually deliver Brexit’. Not so. Cameron’s mistake was to assume the referendum would produce a Remain result. Cameron’s fatal error was to have taken sides in the referendum.