The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 5 October 2017

From our UK edition

What do the Tories offer? Sir: I have been hoping that someone more eloquent than me would respond to your contributors’ rants about Jeremy Corbyn, but as they have not, I thought I’d chip in (‘Corbyn’s big chance’, 30 September). As someone who is reasonably financially secure, the Tories would probably consider me a shoo-in voter. But what do they offer? Tax cuts, while paying for them by cutting services and benefits to those less fortunate, and in effect, pulling up the ladder behind me. ‘Capitalism’ to many in this country is really only a description of how Thatcher sold, or destroyed, the country’s wealth-creation industries, and a few years later the government of the day gave the proceeds to the banks as a bailout.

The Spectator

Barometer | 5 October 2017

From our UK edition

Bunny beginnings Hugh Hefner, creator of Playboy, died. How did he get the idea for bunny girls? — Hefner said he had been inspired by Bunny’s Tavern, a bar in Urbana, Illinois, named after its owner Bernard ‘Bunny’ Fitzsimmons, who opened it in 1936. — A closer match for Hefner’s clubs was the Gaslight Club opened in Chicago in 1953, where customers were served by ‘gaslight girls’ dressed in corsets and fishnets. — Originally, Hefner proposed dressing up his hostesses as baby dolls, then toyed with the idea of ‘stag girls’ wearing antlers, to match the name he wanted to give Playboy magazine, Stag Party. He had to drop that name when Stag magazine (men’s adventure stories) threatened to sue.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 5 October 2017

From our UK edition

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, told her audience at the Conservative party conference that she wanted to continue, like them, to ‘do our duty by Britain’. She said the government planned to make it easier for local authorities to build council houses. On the eve of the conference, Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, in an interview with the Sun sketched out four ‘red lines’ that he said should apply to Brexit. These included a transition period that must not last ‘a second more’ than two years. His stipulations went beyond anything agreed by the government, but Mrs May sidestepped questions about whether he was ‘unsackable’.

The Spectator

Tory blues

From our UK edition

Theresa May’s conference speech — interrupted by coughing fits and with part of the set falling apart behind her — served as an unfortunate metaphor for her premiership and party. She is carrying on and in doing so, she demonstrates her resilience, but also her frailty. The horrified faces of cabinet members watching as her voice dried up on stage seemed to sum up their wider concerns about whether their party is in a fit state to see off Labour, so recently dismissed by them as a joke. Now, they are left wondering if their party is falling apart. The Prime Minister spoke about taking the fight to Jeremy Corbyn, but her announcements suggest that she is suing for peace — accepting his argument, and seeking to copy some of his solutions.

The Spectator

to 2327: Exhibition

From our UK edition

Five unclued lights (1D, 14, 21, 24 and 41) are titles of paintings by EDWARD HOPPER (5 39).   First prize J.P. Carrington, Denchworth, Oxfordshire Runners-up Jenny Mitchell, Croscombe, Somerset; F.A.

The Spectator

Always a dull moment

From our UK edition

From ‘Perfect peace’ by Christopher Hollis, 21 October 1960: In Mr Terence Rattigan’s The Final Test, an English spectator of the match is asked by an impatient American: ‘Is anything going to happen?’ ‘Good Lord, I hope not,’ replies the Englishman. He must, I fancy, have been in professional life an organiser of a Conservative Party conference. For a Conservative Party conference is intended to be, and is, the dullest thing that ever happens.

Wednesday

The Spectator

The Conservative party’s existential crisis

From our UK edition

Theresa May’s conference speech — interrupted by coughing fits and with part of the set falling apart behind her — served as an unfortunate metaphor for her premiership and party. She is carrying on and in doing so, she demonstrates her resilience and sense of duty but also her frailty. The horrified faces of cabinet members watching as her voice dried up on stage seemed to sum up their wider concerns about whether their party is in a fit state to see off Labour, a party they so recently dismissed as a joke. Now, they are left wondering if their party is falling apart. https://twitter.

Tuesday

The Spectator

Liam Fox’s Conservative conference speech, full text

From our UK edition

OK. It’s time for some optimism. It doesn’t seem like a year since we last met together in Birmingham. When we did so, my Department had been in existence for little over two months. We had the challenge, but more importantly the wonderful opportunity, to build a new department designed for the trade challenges of the 21st century. It has been a huge honour to be at the centre of such a historic project and to work alongside some of the most talented and energetic people in our country. In a short time, we have achieved so much. We have attracted the brightest and best talent from across Whitehall, the private sector and abroad in order to make sure that we have the skills we need to help British business succeed.

The Spectator

David Lidington’s Conservative conference speech, full text

From our UK edition

“Yesterday morning, as Lord Chancellor, I joined our country’s senior judges and lawyers in Westminster Abbey to mark the opening of the new legal year. Then we processed together across Parliament Square to Westminster Hall – the heart of our democracy. It was a great occasion, a celebration of the long history and ancient traditions of our legal system. But at heart, what was being honoured was not wigs and robes, nor ritual and protocol, but the living constitutional principles which that ceremony affirmed. The rule of law and the independence of the judiciary underpin our democracy and lie at the heart of our way of life. They are the very cornerstone of our freedoms. No individual, no organization, no government is above the law.

The Spectator

Jeremy Hunt’s Conservative conference speech, full text

From our UK edition

“We have a great team at the Department of Health so let me start by thanking them: the wise Philip Dunne, the savvy Steve Brine, the smart James O’Shaughnessy, the street-smart Jackie Doyle-Price and our perfect PPS’s Jo Churchill and James Cartlidge. Sometimes something happens that reminds you how lucky we are to have an NHS. That happened right here in Manchester in May. When that bomb went off at the Arena, we saw paramedics running into danger, doctors racing to work in the middle of the night, nurses putting their arms round families who couldn’t even recognise the disfigured bodies of their loved ones. One doctor was actually on the scene picking up his own daughter when the bomb went off.

Sunday

The Spectator

Ruth Davidson’s Conservative party conference speech, full text

From our UK edition

It’s great to be here in Manchester. Or as I call it, the Southern powerhouse. I want to talk to you about the general election. In fact, I want to talk to you about two of them. The first one - two years ago.  And for us in Scotland, the same old story. Knocking our pans in. Hitting countless doors, delivering thousands of leaflets, too many conversations to count, another pair of boots ruined.  And at the end of it all? We started with one MP. We ended with one MP.  We’d survived the SNP tsunami, but were no further forward than when we began.…we were still outgunned by those sodding pandas.  But, two years later, we had a second election – this June. Back on the stump.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 28 September 2017

From our UK edition

Fight and fight again Sir: In her Florence speech, Theresa May yet again declared that: ‘No deal is better than a bad deal.’ Yet in his piece ‘Brexit Wars’ (23 September), James Forsyth claims that minimal planning is being made for a ‘no deal’ under WTO rules. If true, this is insulting to the electorate as it means that the Prime Minister is being neither serious nor truthful. It is inexcusable for our civil service not to prepare for an event that is a clear possibility when it would be catastrophic if we had no plan. Couldn’t the 80 MPs in the Tory Research Group start preparing for a WTO deal? They could liaise with Eurosceptic groups plus friendly economists and other experts, to produce a viable exit plan.

The Spectator

Barometer | 28 September 2017

From our UK edition

Lost in the post Postcard maker J. Salmon is to close after almost 140 years, because holidaymakers now send phone selfies rather than cards. — What is believed to be the very first postcard was a selfie of sorts. It was a caricature of postal workers that practical joker Theodore Hook sent to himself in Fulham using a penny black stamp in 1840, the year the penny post was introduced. — It was another 30 years before postcards were officially accepted by the Royal Mail, and the now standard design of a picture on the front, address and message on the back was established only in 1902. — Mr Hook’s card was sold at auction in 2002 for £31,750. Pay walls Which countries have the largest pay gaps between men and women, in a survey of 33 countries?

The Spectator

It’s time to talk trade

From our UK edition

Thirty years ago, the Conservatives would have had no problem countering what Jeremy Corbyn had to offer in Brighton. But as they gather in Manchester for their own conference, they know they are going to have to find a new way of appealing to a generation born after the fall of Soviet communism, which has no memory of (or interest in) the 1970s, with its industrial strife and moribund state-run industries. Socialism, as we found out in June, is this year’s surprise hit. For younger voters struggling to find a way on to the property ladder, a bigger, all-embracing state may seem to be the answer. As for financial crises, the only one they have witnessed in their adult lives was one blamed on reckless banks.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 28 September 2017

From our UK edition

Home Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, told the party conference that Labour was ‘on the threshold of power’. The party had been ‘war-game-type scenario-planning’ for things like ‘a run on the pound’, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said at a fringe meeting. Mr McDonnell had delighted conference-goers by denouncing Private Finance Initiatives: ‘We will bring existing PFI contracts back in-house. We’re bringing them back! We’re bringing them back!’ But next day, Jon Ashworth, the shadow health spokesman, said: ‘It’s only a handful which are causing hospital trusts across the country a significant problem.’ Mr McDonnell also promised to renationalise rail, water, energy and the Royal Mail.

The Spectator

Is being green good for business?

From our UK edition

On Monday 11th September, The Spectator hosted a round table discussion over lunch about whether being green is good for business. Guests included: Philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, Shaun Spiers, CEO of Green Alliance, Mark Saxon from Coca-Cola Great Britain, journalist Harry Mount, Tom Robinson, founder of Adaptavate, Bill Wiggin MP, Peter Aldous MP, Neil Parish MP, Scott Mann MP and Anthony Marlowe of Edelman. Fraser Nelson chaired the discussion. A podcast was recorded on the same day, which can be played above. Recent bedtime reading for Sir Roger Scruton was a 50-page treatise by an art historian on the design of the classic Coke bottle, whose twists, it transpires, were designed specifically to foil counterfeiters.