The Spectator

Wednesday

The Spectator

Letters | 17 April 2019

From our UK edition

Moaning minnie MPs Sir: I was recently quoted in the Sun newspaper in a story about how MPs were reacting to the Brexit drama in the House of Commons. I said: ‘It feels like the Commons is having a collective breakdown — a cross between Lord of the Flies and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. People are behaving in ways that were unimaginable even just a year ago, whether they be Remainers, Leavers or in-betweens. The Brexit madness has affected us all.’ Following Melissa Kite’s article in last week’s Spectator berating MPs for being such wastrels and using my quote as an example of ‘wimpishness’ personified, I learn we are all moaning minnies and should just get on with the job of delivering Brexit (‘Uncool Britannnia’, 13 April).

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 17 April 2019

From our UK edition

Home Although the latest date for Brexit had been postponed by the European Council until Halloween, 31 October, the government had to confront the prospect of holding elections to the European parliament on 23 May if parliament would not agree to Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement before then. Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said that May should go before those elections, which ‘would be a disaster for the country. What are you going to say on the doorstep — vote for me and I’ll be gone in three months?’. Nigel Farage launched his Brexit party. The House of Commons went into recess until 23 April, St George’s day.

The Spectator

Out of the ashes | 17 April 2019

From our UK edition

‘Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries,’ wrote Victor Hugo in Notre-Dame de Paris. ‘The man, the artist, the individual, is effaced in these great masses, which lack the name of their author. Human intelligence is there summed up and totalised.’ The foundation stone of the cathedral of Our Lady of Paris was laid 850 years ago, but it was the work of generations, and took 200 years to complete. It soon became one of the greatest churches in Christendom and, as such, was ripe for desecration by the Jacobin fanatics of the French Revolution. In 1793, its altar was torn out in a ceremony that was too grotesque even for Robespierre.

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to 2401: sign here please

From our UK edition

The unclued lights are ACCENTS or DIACRITICAL SIGNS and any appearing on letters in the grid had to be ignored.   First prize Professor Colin Ratledge, E. Yorkshire Runners-up V.A. Plomer, Swindon; B.

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Israel and the UN

From our UK edition

From ‘Israel’s Candidature’, The Spectator, 22 April 1949: Israel’s application for UN membership received a chillier reception than had been expected. There was a widespread feeling more needs to be known about Israel’s intentions on certain points before the final seal is given to her international position. Does she propose to do anything about the Arab refugees except quibble ? Was the round-up of the Stern Gang which followed Count Bernadotte’s assassination a piece of window-dressing, or is there a serious intention to bring the murderers of the UN mediator to book? Does Israel mean to block or to co-operate with plans for the internationalisation of Jerusalem?

Thursday

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Barometer | 11 April 2019

From our UK edition

Flextensions Some organisations which may have benefited from Donald Tusk’s offer of a ‘flextension’ to Article 50: — Adidas, which has marketed a ‘Porsche Design Sport Flextension Easy Trainer’. — DB Flextension, a South Africa company which makes commercial signage systems. — Flextension, a Dutch charity which supports the development of wheelchairs and other equipment for boys and young men suffering from muscular dystrophy. Worse than smoking? A University of Washington study claimed that poor diet kills more people globally than smoking does.

The Spectator

Letters | 11 April 2019

From our UK edition

All Cameron’s fault Sir: In this time of febrile political speculation, there can have been few more arresting subject headings on your Letters page than ‘Not Cameron’s fault’ (6 April). Your correspondent Mike Jeffes added to the sense of unreality by writing that ‘Cameron did nothing wrong’. You need to be neither a Remainer nor Brexiteer to follow in horror the painful result of Cameron’s opening of this Pandora’s Box in 2016. In the 2010 and 2015 elections, the subject of Europe was well down on the list of voter concerns, but with a mixture of hubris, stupidity, and narrow political interest, Cameron’s decision to call the referendum has driven us into this political quagmire.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 11 April 2019

From our UK edition

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, wrote to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, asking for an extension until 30 June of the period under Article 50 for which the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union. She hoped for parliament to agree to an ‘acceptance of the withdrawal agreement without reopening it’, perhaps through reaching a consensus by means of ‘a small number of clear options on the future relationship that could be put to the House in a series of votes’. She thought her talks with Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, might reach such a consensus. Not only that, but she hoped that parliament would give its agreement before the elections to the European Parliament, due on 23 May, in which case they would be cancelled.

The Spectator

Friends and allies

From our UK edition

The European Union’s official goal — an ever-closer union of people — remains its single most attractive feature. Our continent is marked by its diversity: nowhere can you find a greater range of languages, histories and cultures. Closer co-operation is within everyone's interests, and the EU has done much to facilitating this. Its mistake was a lack of respect for the democratic traditions of its member states, and when it sought to impose a fixed set of rules over the most culturally and economically diverse club of nations it became a source of instability in Europe. The rise of populist parties in Europe is the most visible sign of the over-reach.

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to 2400: Unclued

From our UK edition

The preamble suggests that unclued entries are partial anagrams of UNCLUED. The ‘repeated cryptic clue (= anagram of CLUE)’ ‘fixes not only’ LUCE ‘but also’ the central 2x2 block as [CE/LU] and ‘as a result’ LUNE.

Saturday

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Theresa May should let Britain leave without a deal

From our UK edition

One of the many tragedies of Theresa May’s premiership is that, having come up with a coherent policy on how to enact Brexit, she spent her prime ministerial career failing to follow it.  The words she used in her speech at Lancaster House in 2017 seemed clear enough: ‘No deal is better than a bad deal.’ It made sense to repeat this in the last Tory manifesto. She was to seek a free trade deal with the EU, but if that proved impossible, then Britain would be leaving anyway. In the event, the EU has not merely failed to offer a good deal, it has refused to offer any trade deal at all — only a withdrawal agreement that might or might not lead to a trade deal in future but which in the meantime threatens to trap Britain in the customs union indefinitely.

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 4 April 2019

From our UK edition

German customs The original customs union, or Zollverein, was established by Prussia along with 17 other states which make up modern Germany in 1834. Prior to that, traders crossing what is now Germany, were obliged to make multiple declarations and pay taxes as they moved across state borders. — It had taken 15 years to establish, but achieved a big step towards realisation in 1828 when Prussia formed a union with neighbouring state Hesse-Darmstadt, Bavaria formed its own union with Wurttemberg, and Saxony with Thuringian. — Not everyone was convinced. Hamburg and Bremen, which conducted much external trade by sea and made a lot of money from import duties, were not persuaded to join until 1888, by which time they had already been part of the German Empire for 17 years.

The Spectator

Letters | 4 April 2019

From our UK edition

About the Bible Sir: I was confirmed by Richard Holloway as a schoolboy at Fettes College, and then taught by John Barton while an Anglican ordinand at Oxford University. So I was intrigued to read Holloway’s review of Barton’s latest book, A History of the Bible (30 March), and disturbed by their conclusions. Indeed, both the book and the review go a long way to explaining why the median size of a Church of England congregation is 28, and why numbers are at an all-time low. One doesn’t have to be an anti-intellectual fundamentalist to believe in orthodox biblical Christianity, or to realise that being a disciple of Christ means one cannot have a lower view of the Bible than he did.

The Spectator

Where Brexit failed

From our UK edition

One of the many tragedies of Theresa May’s premiership is that, having come up with a coherent policy on how to enact Brexit, she spent her prime ministerial career failing to follow it.  The words she used in her speech at Lancaster House in 2017 seemed clear enough: ‘No deal is better than a bad deal.’ It made sense to repeat this in the last Tory manifesto. She was to seek a free trade deal with the EU, but if that proved impossible, then Britain would be leaving anyway. In the event, the EU has not merely failed to offer a good deal, it has refused to offer any trade deal at all — only a withdrawal agreement that might or might not lead to a trade deal in future but which in the meantime threatens to trap Britain in the customs union indefinitely.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 4 April 2019

From our UK edition

Home Brexit exerted ever stranger effects on politics. After an eight-hour cabinet meeting, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said she would ‘sit down’ with Jeremy Corbyn ‘to try to agree a plan’, though it ‘would have to agree the current withdrawal agreement’. The United Kingdom had been required to present a plan to a European Council summit on 10 April in order to be granted a long extension of the Article 50 process, or else leave the European Union on 12 April with no withdrawal agreement. But now Mrs May wanted a short extension, to pass a withdrawal bill before 22 May and avoid EU elections due the next day.

The Spectator

to 2399: Lines of Work

From our UK edition

The unclued lights form the folk rhyme ‘Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief’.  A.A. Milne (MILNE had to be highlighted) used this as the basis for Cherry-Stones, (9d) though the beggar-man became a ploughboy. Milne’s next five jobs are also mentioned in various clues.

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Supreme but not respected

From our UK edition

From ‘The disconsideration of the House of Commons’, 5 April 1919: The House of Commons is legally supreme in the land; it has eaten up and destroyed all competitors and become the sole depository of political power under the Constitution; and yet, instead of earning the respect which one might imagine would belong to such absolutism, it is, as we have said, suffering from a disconsideration such as has never before attached to it in its history. How has this come about? What is it that has, as it were, robbed the House of Commons of the complete authority at which it grasped? Why has its supremacy made it less, not more, respected by the nation at large?