Books and Arts – 6 July 2017
From our UK edition
The Spectator
Thursday
to 2314: 4÷4=8
From our UK edition
One of the unclued 4-letter lights is placed in the very middle of another to form each of the four unclued 8-letter solutions: 8, around 30=44; 19, around 22=2, 37, around 25D=20; 38, around 21=13.
Russia’s revolutionary soul
From our UK edition
From ‘The Russian awakening’, 6 July 1917: M. Kerensky, the Russian Minister of War, has kept his word. He promised his Western Allies an early military Offensive and on Monday he was able to telegraph to his Prime Minister, Prince Lvoff: ‘On July 1st the Army of Revolutionary Russia took the offensive with great enthusiasm.’ … We wish our Eastern Allies the best of good fortune in the military sense, but whether their offensive succeeds or fails, for the present its significance is not to be measured merely by a military rule laid upon the map.
Thursday
Letters | 29 June 2017
From our UK edition
The Tory quagmire Sir: While the media has been preoccupied in divining what went wrong with the Conservatives’ appalling election result, Fraser Nelson (‘What are the Tories for?’, 24 June) neatly perceives some of the more obvious causes. Quite what possessed seemingly intelligent people to come up with so many half-baked ideas that found their way into a poorly thought-through manifesto is beyond comprehension. To witness the volte-faces was truly nauseating and not worthy of a party with such a long and distinguished record in government. The quagmire Mrs May finds herself in bodes poorly for both Brexit and a host of pressing domestic issues. The Tory party have an enviable economic story to tell — one that should be trumpeted from the rooftops.
Barometer | 29 June 2017
From our UK edition
Sharon and Tracy MP Darren Jones, the new Labour MP for Bristol North West, says he is proud to be the first person called Darren ever to be elected to Parliament. Other MPs whose first names have been subject to snobbish derision from some quarters: Gary Streeter CON Gavin Newlands SNP Gavin Robinson DUP Gavin Williamson CON Keith Simpson CON Kevan Jones LAB Sir Kevin Barron LAB Kevin Foster CON Kevin Hollinrake CON Lee Rowley CON Michelle Donelan CON Michelle Gildernew SINN FEIN Sharon Hodgson LAB Tracy Brabin LAB Tracey Crouch CON Proletariyurts Jeremy Corbyn told a Glastonbury crowd, ‘Nothing was given from above by the elites and the powerful. It only ever came from the bottom.
Portrait of the week | 29 June 2017
From our UK edition
Home In preparation for the vote on the Queen’s Speech, the Government, after weeks of negotiations, bought the support of the Democratic Unionist Party in the House of Commons by promising to spend a billion or two pounds in Northern Ireland on broadband and other good things. In reply to expostulations from the Opposition, Nigel Dodds, the parliamentary leader of the DUP, told the Commons: ‘We might publish all the correspondence and conversations we had in 2010 with Labour front-benchers, and in 2015 with Labour front-benchers, and indeed also the Scottish National party, because some of the faux outrage we have heard is hypocrisy.
Stronger together
From our UK edition
There is unlikely to be much of a legacy from Theresa May’s premiership, which could yet be truncated a short way into its second year. Yet one very good thing looks like coming out of it: the strengthening of the United Kingdom. The Union suddenly looks in better health than it has done for several years. Nicola Sturgeon did not quite scotch her dream of a second independence referendum this week, but in delaying the required legislation until the autumn of 2018 at the earliest she has bowed to the inevitable. She has been sent, as the Scottish national anthem says, homeward tae think again. Meanwhile, the importance of Northern Ireland in Westminster has been enhanced. The deal between No.
Books and Arts – 29 June 2017
From our UK edition
to 2313: Goldfish
From our UK edition
Extra letters in clues gave SAM GOLDWYN, to whom are attributed I’LL GIVE YOU (5) A DEFINITE (8) MAYBE (1A), INCLUDE (23) ME OUT (7), and IN TWO (33) WORDS (34A) IM-POSSIBLE! (38). Goldfish was his former name.
Thursday
Letters | 22 June 2017
From our UK edition
May’s convictions Sir: Nick Timothy seeks sympathy by revealing that his ‘loved ones’ are upset by the personal attacks to which he is now subject (Diary, 17 June). They could have been spared distress if he had not invited retaliation by swearing at senior ministers and civil servants who crossed him. How could a prim vicar’s daughter have allowed endless profanities from this ill-mannered man and his ill-tempered associate Fiona Hill? Perhaps Timothy’s most extraordinary claim is that ‘a return to traditional campaigning methods’ was planned but Lynton Crosby vetoed it. Traditionally the Tories did not contract out their campaign to consultants charging vast fees. The leader and party chairman took charge. The manifesto was carefully costed.
Barometer | 22 June 2017
From our UK edition
A mountain to climb Brexit secretary David Davis gave the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, a copy of Regards vers l’Annapurna by Maurice Herzog and Marcel Ichaq. What can be read into the gift? — The book is about the 1950 French expedition to scale Annapurna 1, a 26,414ft peak in Nepal. Although the expedition was a success, it was eclipsed by the British Everest expedition three years later. — Annapurna 1 was not scaled again until 1970, when a British army expedition and a separate bid by Chris Bonington to scale the south face reached the summit within days of each other.
Opening gambit
From our UK edition
The unexpected outcome of the general election has led some to hope that a weakened government will be forced to pursue a ‘softer’ Brexit. They are right to think that the emphasis of the negotiation will have to change, but they use the wrong adjective. The choice before David Davis and his team as they start work in Brussels is not and never has been between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ Brexit; it is between an open Brexit and a closed Brexit. The former is one where Britain retains open trade with, and a high degree of free movement to and from, other EU countries — as well as taking fresh opportunities to liberalise trade with the world beyond.
Portrait of the week | 22 June 2017
From our UK edition
Home The burnt-out skeleton of Grenfell Tower, the 24-storey block of 127 flats at Latimer Road, west London, became a focus of recrimination. Initially, kind-hearted community action provided food and clothing for survivors, but organisation by the authorities was not apparent. After five days the police estimate for those dead or missing presumed dead was put at 79. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, said that properties in Kensington should be ‘requisitioned if necessary’ to house the survivors. Supporters of Mr Corbyn denounced Theresa May, the Prime Minister, for talking only to emergency services when she visited the scene. Her advisers sent her back to a church, from which she was driven in a car with cries of ‘coward!’ from the crowd.
Books and Arts – 22 June 2017
From our UK edition
to 2312: Bandleader
From our UK edition
The thematic BEATLES ALBUM (38 32) is SERGEANT PEPPER (1A 6A). 1A defines 17, and can be divided into words defined by 31 and 20; 6A defines 6D, 19 and 24. First prize Margaret Lusk, Preston, Lancashire Runners-up C.G.
Spectator Events: 5 ideas to change the world
From our UK edition
How best to challenge the status quo? A week after an election result that surprised just about everyone, today's best free thinkers descended on Church House, Westminster, to put forward their ideas to change the world. As Jo Coburn took a night off from BBC politics to chair Spectator Event's '5 ideas to change the world' in association with Quilter Cheviot, the first speaker Toby Young spoke of his relief to be welcomed on a friendly footing by Coburn – rather than the Daily Politics interrogation he had become accustomed to. Young's big idea related to education. The associate editor of The Spectator – and cofounder of three free schools – said its charter schools that hold the secret sauce to successful education.
Wednesday
Queen’s Speech: Full text
From our UK edition
My Lords and Members of the House of Commons. My government’s priority is to secure the best possible deal as the country leaves the European Union. My ministers are committed to working with Parliament, the devolved administrations, business and others to build the widest possible consensus on the country’s future outside the European Union. A bill will be introduced to repeal the European Communities Act and provide certainty for individuals and businesses. This will be complemented by legislation to ensure that the United Kingdom makes a success of Brexit, establishing new national policies on immigration, international sanctions, nuclear safeguards, agriculture, and fisheries.
Saturday
No, the election was not a rebellion against Brexit – or ‘austerity’
From our UK edition
The lessons to be learned from the Conservatives’ poor showing in the election could fill more pages than the national curriculum. Don’t unleash on the public a manifesto which has not even been tested among senior ministers. Don’t think you can get through a seven-week election campaign by endlessly repeating the same mantra, especially when you are being ridiculed for it. Don’t underestimate how quickly public opinion can change. Sell yourself, your party and its ideas, rather than just attacking your opponent. Yet there is a serious danger that Theresa May and the rest of the Tory party could pick up the wrong message.
Thursday
Letters | 15 June 2017
From our UK edition
Divining Rod Sir: Please congratulate Rod Liddle on being the only commentator who accurately forecast the uncertain general election result (‘This is the worst Tory campaign ever’, 27 May). His prediction of the ‘stickiness’ of the Labour vote and the likelihood that Ukippers would return to the Conservatives in the south, where they mostly were not needed, were especially prescient. Mr Liddle goes to show that instinct, common sense and a sceptical nous are worth more than all the pseudoscience of polling. Well done him. Poor old us! Dr Barry Moyse North Petherton, Somerset Our lefty deplorables Sir: An astonishing 41 per cent of the British electorate voted for Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister.
Barometer | 15 June 2017
From our UK edition
Keep walking George Osborne called Theresa May a ‘dead woman walking’. The expression ‘dead man walking’ was called out by US prison officers to clear the way for a condemned inmate on his way to execution. It fell into disuse in the 1960s but was rekindled in 1993, first by the publication of a book of that title about a death row inmate called Elmo Patrick Sonnier, then by a successful film version starring Sean Penn. Sonnier was convicted in 1978 of the murder of two teenage lovers and executed in 1984. If Theresa May spends that long on political ‘death row’, it will last beyond a five-year parliamentary term. Against the bias Britain’s electoral system used to favour the Conservatives, then Labour, and now it seems to favour the Tories again.