The Spectator

Thursday

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.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 July 2018

From our UK edition

Home The administration of Theresa May, the Prime Minister, staggered on, as Conservative MPs exchanged angry words in the Commons, with supporters of Brexit and its enemies voting in turn against government bills. The government even failed to shorten the parliamentary session by five days to avoid trouble, instead provoking threats of defeat on the adjournment debate. An amendment to the Trade Bill seeking to impose a customs union on the government was defeated by 307 to 301, thanks to four Labour MPs who voted with the government. Guto Bebb resigned as minister for defence procurement to vote against the government on amendments that it accepted to the Customs Bill.

The Spectator

to 2365: Beds

From our UK edition

GARDEN (at 46 Across) reveals the theme. Paired solutions are ‘gardens’ in ‘countries’; 8/10, 32/1D, 33/28+29, 12/36, 37/34, 38/2, and 41 on its own.   First prize Helen Stone, Horfield, Bristol Runners-up Jenny Atkinson, Amersham, Bucks; Sara Macintosh, Darlington, Co.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 12 July 2018

From our UK edition

Marriage proposal Sir: Matthew Parris’s proposal that marriage be abolished, and civil partnerships installed in its place, is absurd (‘The term “marriage” needs to be untangled’, 7 July). This would not simplify the ambiguous connotations that the word ‘marriage’ has come to hold; rather, it would diminish its importance at a time when it is greatly needed. Committed and legally recognised relationships are a salient component of a functioning society: providing a stable environment in which to raise children, and serve as a welcome source of privacy in an era where such a concept is scarce.

The Spectator

Disruptor-in-chief

From our UK edition

It is appropriate that the 45th President of the United States has come to Britain this week on a working visit rather than the state visit that was originally intended by Theresa May. Donald Trump’s habit of expressing his frank and impolite thoughts through early morning tweets is undiplomatic and demeaning to his office. It is hard to imagine another leader of a western democracy taking the opportunity to undermine a Prime Minister shortly before arriving in Britain, as Trump did this week by describing the country as being ‘in turmoil’. He then appeared to take sides with Boris Johnson just after the former foreign secretary had resigned in protest at Mrs May’s attempt to unite the cabinet on a shared vision of Brexit.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 12 July 2018

From our UK edition

Home Boris Johnson resigned as Foreign Secretary the day after David Davis resigned as Brexit Secretary, both in reaction to a government plan for Brexit agreed by the cabinet after being held incommunicado at Chequers for 12 hours, their mobile phones confiscated. At Chequers, Mr Johnson was reported to have said: ‘Anyone defending the proposal we have just agreed will find it like trying to polish a turd.’ In his resignation letter he said that the Brexit ‘dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt’, adding: ‘We are truly headed for the status of a colony.’ Dominic Raab, the housing minister, replaced Mr Davis; Kit Malthouse replaced Mr Raab.