The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 2 February 2017

From our UK edition

Going Dutch Sir: As a Dutch man who lives in Britain, I found it heartening to read two such different but well-considered articles on the state of my home country (‘Orange alert’ and ‘Dutch courage’, 28 January). Douglas Murray is right to attack the Dutch government for its attempts to criminalise opinions it doesn’t like. I take issue, however, with his defence of Geert Wilders, who does indeed resemble Donald Trump in his eagerness to stoke outrage for political gain. His film Fitna, while pretending to be an honest statement about the nature of Islam, was really just an attempt to be so shocking as to provoke the liberal establishment into fierce condemnation, so that he could squawk about free speech. He is a hate-merchant.

The Spectator

Barometer | 2 February 2017

From our UK edition

Trump’s rivals More than 1.7m people signed a petition on Parliament’s website demanding that Donald Trump’s state visit be cancelled, and more than 200,000 one calling for it to go ahead. What are the most and least signed of the 2,500 or so other live petitions? Most signed Repeal new surveillance laws 209,000 Ban firework sales to public 150,000 Set £1,200 maximum price on car insurance for 18- to 25-year-olds 148,000 Least signed Offer discounted counselling to housing professionals 6 Plain bottles for alcoholic drinks 6 Scrap juries 6 Visiting rites Which countries have been awarded the most state visits to Britain?

The Spectator

Victims of hysteria

From our UK edition

This week, 49,000 gay men were granted posthumous pardons. Had Harold Macmillan’s government taken notice of this magazine in 1957 that number would have been far smaller. After the Wolfenden Report, we called for decriminalisation of homosexual acts between consenting adults and at the time we stood out among Fleet Street publications in taking this view, earning us the appellation ‘The Bugger’s Bugle’. It would be tempting to think that the pardons, which form part of the Policing and Crime Bill, mark the end of a dark chapter. No longer, we are invited to believe, could good people like Alan Turing — himself pardoned in 2013 — be hounded to their deaths by misplaced and misapplied hysteria.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 February 2017

From our UK edition

Trump news Theresa May, the Prime Minister, let it be known that she was ‘very happy’ about having extended an invitation from the Queen to Donald Trump to make a state visit to Britain. An online petition calling for its cancellation had attracted more than 1.7 million signatures and a rival petition supporting it also gained enough signatures to warrant a Commons debate, scheduled for 20 February. Mrs May had left Washington in a brief interlude of happy achievement after being the first head of government to meet President Trump formally at the White House.

The Spectator

Tax demand

From our UK edition

From ‘Lenders and taxpayers’, The Spectator, 3 February 1917: As to the general financial soundness of the country there can be no question… Indeed, one of our worst economic troubles at the present moment is that many classes of people are in possession of more money than they have ever handled before, and cannot resist the temptation of spending it lavishly. Somehow or other their expenditure on their personal gratification has to be controlled in the interests of the state. A considerable amount of control is being exercised through the power which the government possess of regulating our imports. That power, as we shall presently urge, must be more extensively used as regards certain commodities.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 26 January 2017

From our UK edition

What is a university? Sir: As a former Russell Group vice chancellor, I think that Toby Young’s appeal for more universities (Status anxiety, 14 January) needs several caveats. First, what is a university? Recently some have been created by stapling together several institutions without any substantial element of research and renaming them as a university. There is even some suggestion that research is inimical to good teaching, because some university researchers with a duty to teach shirk it. But the presence of a weighty research community lends a university an invaluable ambience. In America, many colleges that teach only to the bachelor degree are well regarded without possessing the title of university.

The Spectator

Barometer | 26 January 2017

From our UK edition

Nuclear near-misses It was revealed that last June an unarmed Trident missile test-fired off Florida from a British submarine headed in the wrong direction, towards the US. Some other accidents involving nuclear weapons: 24 Jan 1961 A B52 bomber exploded in mid-air after taking off from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. Three of the four activation devices on one of the two hydrogen bombs it was carrying were turned on. 8 Dec 1964 A B-58 caught fire on the ground at Bunker Hill Air Force Base in Indiana. The nuclear bomb on board was burned but did not explode. 18 Sept 1980 A worker at Little Rock Air Force Base dropped a spanner on a Titan II missile, causing an explosion in which the warhead was blasted 100 feet — without being set off.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 26 January 2017

From our UK edition

Home The Supreme Court ruled by eight to three that, without an act of Parliament, the government could not effectually invoke Article 50 to start Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. It argued: ‘If, as we consider, what would otherwise be a prerogative act would result in a change in domestic law, the act can only lawfully be carried out with the sanction of primary legislation enacted by the Queen in Parliament.’ The court said that devolved assemblies did not have to assent to the move. In general, it said, ‘The effect of any particular referendum must depend on the terms of the statute which authorises it.’ The government announced a bill to invoke the article.

The Spectator

Trading places | 26 January 2017

From our UK edition

After any other US election it would cause little comment that the new president had chosen the British Prime Minister for his first meeting with a foreign leader. Yet this time, Theresa May’s trip to Washington feels quite a coup. She has fallen out of favour with her fellow EU leaders, sent home from December’s summit in Brussels without any supper as they tried to portray her as internationally isolated. Yet here she is being invited to the White House, lured with the promise of a trade deal. How long ago it seems that Barack Obama was threatening to send Britain to the ‘back of the queue’ if the country voted for Brexit.

Friday

The Spectator

Donald Trump’s inaugural address: full text

From our UK edition

Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world: thank you. We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people. Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for years to come. We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done. Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent. Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning.

The Spectator

Wanted: a new production editor for The Spectator

From our UK edition

One of the most important jobs in The Spectator is opening up, and we’re looking for a pretty exceptional person to fill it. Peter Robins, our brilliant production editor (read about him here) is off to the New York Times. We’re looking for someone with skill, patience and a love of writing to take his place. When Graham Greene was working at The Spectator, he said the magazine can be described rather simply: it’s the best-written weekly in the English language. As such, we’re one of the few titles to have increased what we invest in sub-editing over the years. The calibre of The Spectator can be seen in the attention we pay to small details.  The production editor (a full-timer who manages two part-time sub-editors) oversees this, and more.

The Spectator

Farewell Obama, a president who promised unity but left a legacy of rancour and division

From our UK edition

The irony of Barack Obama’s presidency is that while it began at a time when it seemed America’s fortunes could only improve, his inauguration day turned out to be his personal high water mark. The retiring President’s speech in Chicago last week contained flashes of the optimism that he brought to a country and a world which was reeling from the banking crisis and mired in the deepest recession since the 1930s. It recalled the sense of hope that he would lift America’s reputation abroad, shattered as it was by the Iraq war. Yet eight years on, even Obama’s keenest supporters are struggling to answer: what exactly is his legacy? ‘Yes, we did,’ he roared to the crowd, in reply to his old rallying cry of ‘Yes, we can.

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 19 January 2017

From our UK edition

Starting cold Why is US Presidential Inauguration Day always on 20 January? — The date was moved from 4 March in the 20th amendment to the US constitution, passed on 23 January 1933, but it is hard to find any significance to the date. The change was made in an attempt to reduce the lame-duck period of an outgoing president, though it did increase the risk of a repeat of what happened in 1841 when William Henry Harrison was sworn in. Choosing not to wear a coat, hat or gloves, he made the longest inaugural speech of any president, at two hours. Three weeks later he was reported to be suffering from a cold, which developed into pneumonia and then pleurisy, leading to his death on 4 April — although some doubt the connection with inauguration day.

The Spectator

An emperor’s inauguration

From our UK edition

Given that Donald Trump is not the most popular president the USA has ever seen, even among his own party, it is salutary to be reminded what induction ceremonies can be like for those who devised imaginative routes to power. Pertinax, who started life as a schoolmaster, was a governor of Britain and a highly respected consul before succeeding the ghastly Commodus as emperor on 30 December AD 192. But the military did not appreciate his immediate attempts to restore discipline and financial stability, and he was assassinated three months later.

The Spectator

Letters | 19 January 2017

From our UK edition

Particle of faith Sir: Fraser Nelson draws our attention to the most worrying aspect of economists getting it wrong, which is their reluctance to recognise it (‘Don’t ask the experts’, 14 January). Some economists, seduced by sophisticated mathematical models, aspire to the status of, say, particle physicists, who can tell us they have found something called the Higgs boson. The fact that we tend to believe the particle physicists despite being more familiar with prices, jobs and buying and selling than with quantum equations comes down to physicists having a long track record of heeding the biologist E.O. Wilson’s advice: ‘Keep in mind that new ideas are commonplace, and almost always wrong.

The Spectator

Doing Brexit right

From our UK edition

From the start of the European Union referendum campaign, competing visions of Brexit have been advocated. To Nigel Farage, the case for leaving the European Union was all about what we did not like (the diktats, the immigration, etc). This played into the caricature cleverly presented by the Remain campaign: the shaking fist of Little England, a country that had had enough of foreigners and the tolerance that the European project represented. Then came the vision put to Britain by the Vote Leave campaign, articulated by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. It was of a globally minded Britain, fed up with the EU’s parochialism. A country itching to go out and into the world. Theresa May has now firmly endorsed the Boris Johnson vision.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 January 2017

From our UK edition

Home Britain will leave the single market on leaving the European Union, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said in a speech at Lancaster House. Britain will leave the customs union to boot, she said, and ‘Brexit must mean control of the number of people who come to Britain from Europe.’ As for EU citizens living in Britain, she wanted to ‘guarantee their status here in the UK, but we do need reciprocity’. She proposed a ‘phased process of implementation’ of a Brexit agreement, but not ‘some kind of permanent political purgatory’. Parliament would be able to vote on the final agreement between Britain and the EU. In sum, she declared: ‘No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain.

The Spectator

Who commands the sea?

From our UK edition

From ‘Raiders, submarines and some naval problems’, The Spectator, 20 January 1917: At the moment the enemy’s fleet is compelled to remain in its own ports and to challenge us from safe retreats, sometimes behind lock-gates and always behind well-sown minefields. Still, the fact remains that the enemy can come out if they like, though we cannot make them do so when we like, and further that with good luck they can actually smuggle out a raider or two. We are top-dog, but up till now we have not been able to get a good bite at the under-dog, and he remains, though in a humiliating position, quite fit for work and mischief.