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Thursday

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Portrait of the week | 21 February 2019

Home Seven MPs resigned from the Labour party and sat in the Commons (next to the DUP) as the Independent Group, or Tig. They were Luciana Berger, Ann Coffey, Mike Gapes, Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith and Chuka Umunna. The next day they were joined by Joan Ryan and the following one by three Tories, Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen. The Labour eight said they objected to anti-Semitism in the party, the security risk should Jeremy Corbyn become prime minister and Labour’s lukewarm attitude to a second referendum. Derek Hatton, who had been the deputy leader of the Militant-controlled council which set an illegal budget in Liverpool, was readmitted to the Labour party after 34 years.

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to 2393: Monster Mash-up

HORROR FILM (1D) ACTOR (15) BORIS (10) KARLOFF (26), né PRATT (21A) died on 2 February 1969. Most famous for THE (7A) MUMMY (37), he was also in HOWARD HAWKS (1A)’s SCARFACE (24).   First prize M.J.

Wednesday

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Full text: Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston’s Tory resignation letter

Dear Prime Minister. It is with regret that we are writing to resign the Conservative whip and our membership of the Party. We voted for you as Leader and Prime Minister because we believed you were committed to a moderate, open-hearted Conservative Party in the One Nation tradition. A party of economic competence representing the best of British business, delivering good jobs, opportunity and prosperity for all, funding world class public services and tackling inequalities. We had hoped you would also continue to modernise our party so that it could reach out and broaden its appeal to younger voters and to embrace and reflect the diversity of the communities we seek to represent.

Thursday

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Ragwort: an apology

An article published in The Spectator on 11 August 2018, Root out ragwort!, stated that the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 obliges landowners to stop ragwort spreading to adjacent grazing land. In fact, orders to stop ragwort spreading may be made under the Weeds Act 1959. We also said that the RSPCA ‘will prosecute’ the owners of horses found grazing among ragwort. We are happy to clarify that, while the RSPCA may prosecute such owners, they will only do so when horses have no choice but to eat ragwort. The article also stated that a website, Ragwort Facts, ‘insists there is no evidence that horses are being killed by ragwort’. The website in fact says ragwort ‘doesn’t really kill many horses’.

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Barometer | 14 February 2019

Places in Hell President Donald Tusk said there must be a ‘special place in Hell reserved for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan of how to carry it out safely’. Yet there are a number of places, as defined by Dante, where many on either side of the Brexit debate could be accommodated. Some groups who have space reserved in the Inferno, in descending order: Opportunists; Hoarders and wasters; Wrathful and sullen; Fortune Tellers; Hypocrites; Evil Counsellors; Sowers of Discord; Falsifiers. Lost planes The wreckage of a plane was discovered off the Channel Islands and the body of the footballer Emiliano Sala recovered. How many planes are there on the seabed off the British Isles?

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Letters | 14 February 2019

We need a generosity report Sir: Your leading article bemoaning the lack of charitable giving in Britain misses the mark (‘The power of giving’, 9 February). It is not a lack of generosity that’s the problem, but a lack of acknowledgement. Our lifeboats and air ambulances are kept in operation by charitable donations. In 2016/17 Cancer Research UK raised £190 million from individual donations. First aid and other services at public events are supplied by volunteers. Every NHS trust in the land has buildings and equipment funded by charitable donations. Every art gallery, theatre and museum has facilities funded by donations.

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Break point

Even the most fervent Brexiteer would have to admit to being impressed at the cohesion and chutzpah of the European Union negotiating team. Michel Barnier talks as if it is the UK that most needs a deal, while the rest of the EU could carry on just as well as before, or better, without one, given that it would be able to attract business and investment away from us. For the EU to concede a trade deal, therefore, would seem to be little more than an act of kindness towards a fallen friend. As a diplomatic bluff, it is strikingly successful. But the economic reality is rather different. A free-trade deal benefits all. But if there were to be no deal, then what would happen?

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Portrait of the week | 14 February 2019

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, returned from a trip to Brussels and Dublin and hurried to the Commons to ask for more time to do something or other about the Irish backstop. The much-kicked Brexit can was expected to land in the parliamentary road again on 27 February, though the government envisaged no ‘meaningful vote’ until March. Oliver Robbins, Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator, was overheard in a bar saying that the choice might be between Mrs May’s deal or a delay to Brexit, to which the EU would agree.

Sunday

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David Harding’s donation to Cambridge is the perfect antidote to Jeremy Corbyn 

The British are said to be among the most generous people on earth. When it comes to ordinary people scraping together pennies to give to children’s hospitals or donkey sanctuaries, this is unquestionably true. Yet when it comes to wealthy individuals using large slices of their fortunes to make transformative donations to institutions such as universities and schools, we are a long way behind America. Where are the Carnegies, the Rockefellers? We do have wealthy donors, but they are generally on a much smaller scale, and quite often feel inclined to make their donations anonymously, as if it were an embarrassment to be seen to be acting with generosity.

Thursday

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Letters | 7 February 2019

Fawning over China Sir: In reading your recent leading article on Huawei (‘Red-handed’, 2 February), I feel I should point out that it is not solely the British government who have been wrong-footed by the rise of China. Here in Canada, Prime Minister Trudeau has long desired to open up Canadian markets to Chinese companies, going so far as to express admiration for the country’s ‘basic dictatorship’. The Chinese press even bequeathed him with a charming nickname: the Little Potato. Now, in the face of the Huawei charges, Mr Potato has been forced to change course and has fired his ambassador, John McCallum, after he defended Huawei’s Chinese executives rather than supporting Canadians who have recently been imprisoned in China.

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The power of giving

The British are said to be among the most generous people on earth. When it comes to ordinary people scraping together pennies to give to children’s hospitals or donkey sanctuaries, this is unquestionably true. Yet when it comes to wealthy individuals using large slices of their fortunes to make transformative donations to institutions such as universities and schools, we are a long way behind America. Where are the Carnegies, the Rockefellers? We do have wealthy donors, but they are generally on a much smaller scale, and quite often feel inclined to make their donations anonymously, as if it were an embarrassment to be seen to be acting with generosity.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 7 February 2019

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, went off to Brussels again to talk about ‘alternative arrangements’, for which parliament had voted, to the Irish backstop in her EU withdrawal agreement, which parliament had rejected. First she gave a speech in Northern Ireland, saying: ‘There is no suggestion that we are not going to ensure in the future there is provision for this insurance policy… the backstop.’ Lord Trimble (once an Ulster Unionist, now Conservative), the winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, said he was ‘exploring’ the possibility of a legal challenge to May’s deal on the grounds that it undermines the Belfast Agreement of 1998.

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2391: Stout and bubbly

The LITTLE GENTLEMAN IN BLACK VELVET (4/8/16D) was a Jacobite toast to the MOLE (34) who made the molehill on which KING (30D) William III’s horse fatally stumbled. Frances HODGSON BURNETT’s (10) LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY (4/1D) also wore black velvet, which also describes Guinness mixed with champagne.

Thursday

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Letters | 31 January 2019

Vegan excess Sir: As a lifelong vegetarian I am heartily sick of vegans and of the amount of attention that is being paid to them. (‘The great carniwars’, 26 January). Vegan food is everywhere, in places where it used to be difficult to find vegetarian dishes. Often it tastes of nothing much and has the consistency and flavour of sawdust. Their principles of not harming animals seem to me to be a little warped. I accepted long ago that animals have to die to provide meat for people and pets. Vegans would do well to campaign, if campaign they must, against factory farming and cruel methods of slaughter. Issuing death threats for farmers seems a little extreme. Why should the life of an animal have more importance than that of a human?

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Red handed

The world is a better place for China’s emergence from behind the bamboo curtain where it hid for half a century. Economic and market reforms have led to the greatest reduction of poverty in world history. For some western manufacturers, competition from low-cost China has sometimes proved fatal, yet the overall economic effect has been beneficial, helping to deliver years of global growth without the inflation which once acted quickly to snuff out the boom times. All this arouses a protectionist backlash, especially in America, but the American case against Huawei, the largest Chinese tech company, shows how many of these concerns are well-grounded.

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Portrait of the week | 31 January 2019

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, set off to seek a change to the Irish backstop of the EU withdrawal agreement after the Commons voted by 317 to 301 for a government-backed amendment by Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 committee, proposing unnamed ‘alternative arrangements’. Mrs May said there was ‘limited appetite for such a change in the EU’ and hardly had the words passed her lips before Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, said: ‘The withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.’ An amendment by Dame Caroline Spelman to rule out no deal passed 318 to 310, but lacked legal force.

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2390: Tea Shop

The theme word is GRASS (for which the title is a cryptic clue). 1A, 1D, 6 and 37 are informers; 28, 29, 33 and 39 are types of grass; 8A, 15, 22 and 26 are German Nobel literature laureates.   First prize Mrs R.J.C.