The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 9 August 2018

From our UK edition

Why we love Boris Sir: Stephen Robinson is right: Boris Johnson is not loathed outside the Westminster bubble (‘Brexit means Boris’, 4 August). The reason is simple — people can tell he loves the country and is prepared to fight for it. Jacob Rees-Mogg is also very popular for the same reason. Many of our politicians and political commentators seem to have nothing but contempt for the country, or at least the people who live in it. Fullerton Bromsgrove, Worcestershire Virtue-signalling MPs Sir: James Forsyth writes, ‘Both Labour and the Tories are being accused by their own MPs of abandoning the liberal centre’ (Politics, 4 August).

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 9 August 2018

From our UK edition

Home Brandon Lewis, the chairman of the Conservative party, demanded that Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary, should apologise for saying, in an article defending the right of women in Britain to wear the burka or the niqab, that it was at the same time ‘absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes’. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said: ‘The language that Boris used has offended people.’ Jennie Formby, the general secretary of the Labour party, wrote to Dame Margaret Hodge saying that no further action would be taken against her. Dame Margaret was said to have called Jeremy Corbyn, the party leader, an ‘anti-Semite’.

The Spectator

Bravo Boris

From our UK edition

Ever since Boris Johnson resigned as foreign secretary, it was generally assumed that there would — in time — be a dramatic clash with Theresa May. But it was thought that the Prime Minister would pick her battle over a point of principle, perhaps on Europe, rather than over a joke in his Daily Telegraph column. Boris was defending the right of Muslims to wear what they like in public, but added that he thinks niqabs look like letterboxes. The ministerial reaction has been extraordinary, and deeply unedifying. Boris’s point was that, in banning the niqab, Denmark had passed a surprisingly illiberal piece of legislation — all the more surprising in that it has emerged from a country often viewed as a bastion of liberty.

The Spectator

to 2368: Cobbled together

From our UK edition

The unclued lights (6, 20/9, 21, 23/31, 30D/13, 34/3 and 42/32) are characters in Coronation Street with its COBBLED streets.   First prize Lucy Robinson, London N16 Runners-up D.P.B.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 2 August 2018

From our UK edition

Memories of drought Sir: I read your leading article with interest as I well remember the hardship caused by the drought of 1976, particularly to the farmers and the tourist industry (‘Troubled water’, 28 July). I was a director of the South West Water Authority and was deputed to issue drought orders, which included hosepipe bans. The privatised company to which I had been appointed to the board then built Roadford Reservoir, which has a huge capacity, and the company has never had to impose restrictions since. I agree that the industry is far from satisfactory. The companies, particularly Thames Water, found it cheaper to allow leaking pipes than to repair them. There is also the question of the exorbitant salaries of certain chief executives.

The Spectator

Barometer | 2 August 2018

From our UK edition

Ranking railways A director of the Rail Delivery Group claimed that Britain’s railways were the ‘envy of Europe’. Could it be true? For an independent analysis, the Boston Consulting Group compiles a Rail Performance Index of European rail systems (latest ed. 2015). — The UK came 8th out of 25 countries, behind Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany and Austria. — The UK came top for safety, but dropped to joint 15th place for quality of service (which includes fares as well as punctuality). — The index is also plotted against the public cost of the rail system. Britain’s railways came out at average value. The best-value rail systems were Finland, Switzerland, France, Sweden and the Netherlands.

The Spectator

How to negotiate

From our UK edition

Ever since Theresa May declared that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ she has seemed to be drifting towards the ‘bad deal’ option. The government has put forward numerous constructive proposals, only for them to be shot down by Michel Barnier — who goes on to warn of ticking clocks and the need for Britain to cede ever more ground. His strategy is logical and amply rewarded: every time he rejects a British plan, more concessions are offered. All along, Barnier’s approach has been to portray a post-Brexit trade deal as if it were a favour to Britain rather than an agreement of mutual interest. Britain, he has asserted, has everything to lose — while the EU could carry on after a ‘no deal’ Brexit as if nothing had happened.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 August 2018

From our UK edition

Home When families and doctors are in agreement, medical staff will be able to remove tubes supplying food and water to people in a permanent vegetative state without applying to the Court of Protection, the Supreme Court ruled. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists called on Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, to allow women in England to take abortion pills at home rather than in a clinic. A man was jailed for four and a half years and his wife for three and a half years at Leeds Crown Court for tricking their daughter into travelling to Bangladesh in order to force her into marriage. Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, in a meeting with his Chinese counterpart during his visit to China, said: ‘My wife is Japanese. My wife is Chinese.

The Spectator

to 2367: When pigs fly

From our UK edition

The quotation ‘NEVER (1A), NEVER (35), NEVER (41), NEVER (7), NEVER (32)!’ is from King Lear (V.iii.310). Lear was the FATHER (18) of GONERIL (19), REGAN (15A) and CORDELIA (23). LEAR (in the ninth row) was to be shaded. First prize R.J.

The Spectator

Victory is nigh

From our UK edition

From ‘The fifth year of war’, 3 August 1918: There are those who think that Germany will try to regain the initiative, and may very likely succeed. They point to the large unexhausted reserves under the command of Prince Rupprecht, and remind us that we have an unpleasantly narrow slit of territory to manoeuvre in between the Flanders front and the Channel coast. We are more sanguine. The recent rains have re-created the bogs of Flanders, and though the ground is drying, the autumn is not far distant. The ‘greatest effort’ of Germany lies in the past.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Why Tommy Robinson has been released on bail

From our UK edition

Tommy Robinson has been released on bail after he won an appeal against a conviction for contempt of court. Here is the summary of the judgement from today's hearing at the Court of Appeal. The key passage explaining the decision is in bold: BACKGROUND TO THE APPEALS The appellant attended Canterbury Crown Court on 8 May 2017 during the trial of four defendants for rape. The jury had been sent out for deliberation. The appellant carried out filming with a commentary on the steps of and inside the court building, although he did not film in the courtroom itself. He had intended to film the defendants but the trial judge had been made aware of his activities and had diverted the defendants through another exit.

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 26 July 2018

From our UK edition

Relax Asked about her spare time, Theresa May said she liked walking, cooking (she has 150 cookbooks) and watching the US TV series NCIS. How typical is she in choosing how she spends her leisure time? — A Sport England survey in 2016 suggested that 18.6 million Britons had walked for leisure in the past 28 days. — An Aviva survey last year claimed Britons had an average of 158 books in their homes. One in ten homes did not have a single book. — The fifth series of NCIS (which stands for Naval Criminal Investigative Service) has an average of 2.6 million viewers when shown on Channel 5. In the US, it has 18.6 million. Attacks A three-year-old boy had acid thrown at him in Worcester. Who throws acid at whom?

The Spectator

Letters | 26 July 2018

From our UK edition

The Stauffenberg plot Sir: Matthew Olex-Szczytowski argues that the German officers who tried to kill Hitler did so only to save Germany from defeat, and were themselves Nazi war criminals (‘An alternative history’, 21 July). He is wrong on both counts. In fact, they tried to overthrow Hitler long before defeat was imminent. The first attempt to assassinate the Führer took place in 1938, one year before the war. The conspirators tried again in 1939 and 1940, when the Nazi regime was still triumphant. Many of them joined the movement in order to oppose Hitler’s genocidal policies. Their resistance to the Holocaust and the crimes against Poles and Russians is documented in wartime diaries, postwar testimonies, Gestapo documents and Soviet interrogation transcripts.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 26 July 2018

From our UK edition

Home Dame Margaret Hodge accused Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, of being an ‘anti-Semite’ and a ‘racist’ in front of a number of MPs at Westminster; within 12 hours she had received a disciplinary letter. ‘People have to be judged on what they do and not on what they say,’ she insisted on BBC radio. The government announced pay rises for a million public sector workers, with 2.9 per cent for the armed forces, 2.75 per cent for prison officers, up to 3.5 per cent for teachers and 2 per cent for police and general practitioners. The budget for London’s Crossrail project rose from £14.8 billion to £15.4 billion.

The Spectator

Troubled water

From our UK edition

The year 1976 rises like a spectre whenever the sun shines for more than a few days. That long, dry, hot summer has become a regular reference point for people in their late forties and over searching for happy memories of childhood or young adulthood. Those too young to remember it will nevertheless be familiar with photographs of people dipping in the fountains in Trafalgar Square, walking alongside dried-up reservoirs or showing a ‘Blitz spirit’ as they filled buckets from standpipes in the streets. Yet rarely does anyone see the summer of 1976 in a clear light: as a time when our then state-owned water industry failed to cope with adversity.

The Spectator

to 2366: The square

From our UK edition

THE RUSSIA HOUSE, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY and A MURDER OF QUALITY are novels by JOHN (41) LE CARRÉ, whose surname is the puzzle’s TITLE (13) in FRENCH (30).

The Spectator

Hitting home

From our UK edition

From ‘The munitions strike’, 27 July 1918: It is necessary for the Government to make it clear that the present strike of munition workers is unlike all previous strikes in that it is a direct challenge to the authority of the State. Such a challenge in time of war is in the nature of sedition and treason, and must be treated accordingly… If this is not made plain, the authority of the Government will disappear, and we may as well all say good-bye to the glorious prospect of handsomely winning the war. If the production of the munitions of war is to be held up, there is no political principle…which can be retained if dispensing with it would help the prosecution of the war.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 19 July 2018

From our UK edition

Remainers are to blame Sir: I was intrigued by the parallel drawn by an ally of Michael Gove’s in James Forsyth’s piece on Brexit (‘Brexit in a spin’, 14 July), comparing Mr Gove to the Irish Independence leader Michael Collins. I think this misses the fundamental point that Collins and the Sinn Fein ultras led by De Valera were agreed on the destination: independence from Britain. It was just the timing and context on which they differed. There was no organised political body within the Irish Free State seeking to remain in the UK. In contrast, to ‘leave’ the EU under Mrs May’s plan, Mr Gove is supporting a platform on which the Remainers will seek to ensure that any difficulty, any problem, becomes a rationale to rejoin the EU.

The Spectator

Barometer | 19 July 2018

From our UK edition

Blimpish beginnings Protesters flew a ‘blimp’ depicting President Trump as a baby in central London. Why are balloons known as ‘blimps’? — One explanation is that the US military had two kinds of balloon: the Type A (rigid) and the Type B (limp). The use of the term ‘B class’ for balloons was not used till 1917. — In December 1915 Lt A.D. Cunningham was inspecting a balloon at the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) station at Capel-le-Ferne near Folkestone when he tapped it and it gave out a sound close to ‘blimp’. — The term has also been attributed to Horace Short, who is said to have coined it at RNAS Kingsnorth in February 1915, though why he chose the word is not clear.

The Spectator

The road not taken | 19 July 2018

From our UK edition

Handling Brexit was never going to be easy for Theresa May, given that the Tories have been fighting a civil war over Europe for at least a quarter of a century. But the past ten days have been so calamitous that there is a real possibility that her Chequers gambit — threatening a general election unless MPs support her watered-down version of Brexit — could lead to the fall of the government and the ceding of power to the most left-wing Labour administration in history. The mood in Parliament is now as anarchic as it was during the last days of the Callaghan government in 1979: the Maastricht crisis in 1992 looks rather tame by comparison.