The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

The road to Panama

The 11 million documents leaked from Panama lawyers Mossack Fonseca tell us much that we know already. It’s hardly news that the Central American state is a popular destination for those who dislike paying tax. But to obsess about this aspect of the story, as so many did this week, would be to miss the most striking discovery, which is just how many politicians and government officials have been using Panama to disguise their extraordinary wealth. Few were under any illusions about Vladimir Putin being a good and faithful public servant, yet it comes as a surprise that he appears to have a personal fortune that would have made the tsars look like paupers.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 7 April 2016

Home Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, said that the government would like a buyer to save Port Talbot steelworks. ‘We’re going to also have to offer support to eventually clinch that buyer and to give this steel plant a long-term viable future,’ he said. Andrew Tyrie, the chairman of the Commons Treasury Select Committee, said that he expected to learn by the end of this month the proportion that remained active of the 655,000 National Insurance numbers granted to people from the EU in the year up to September 2015. An online survey by Opinium for the Observer on the forthcoming EU referendum put the ‘leave’ side at 43 per cent and ‘remain’ at 39 per cent.

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Zeppelin raids

From ‘Per Mare, Per Terras, Per Coelum’, The Spectator, 8 April 1916: The very worst the Germans can do in the way of Zeppelin attacks is negligible from the military point of view. They are a great and grim annoyance, but nothing more… A scientific betting man, if asked what were the odds on John Smith or Mary Brown being killed in the next raid, would put it, we presume, at something like a million to one.

Thursday

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Letters | 31 March 2016

Amber warning Sir: James Forsyth’s interview with Amber Rudd (‘The Amber Express’, 19 March) was very revealing, but also slightly disappointing. She is right about the succession of ‘zealots’ who preceded her in setting British energy policy, but after the billions wasted on wind and solar, paid for by stealth taxes added to our electricity bills, and now providing around 2 per cent of capacity, does she still support the drive towards ‘renewable energy’? Britain now has the most expensive electricity in Europe, hardly an encouragement for business investment.

The Spectator

Barometer | 31 March 2016

Area of doubt Hillary Clinton has said that if she is elected she will open files on the US military facility in Nevada known as Area 51. Some rumours which will almost certainly not be confirmed: — According to a physicist who claims to have worked there, nine captured alien spacecraft have been examined there. Another says that a small band of aliens works there. They are 5ft high, wear dungarees and came from a planet called Quintumnia, 45 years’ travel time away. — Scientists there are working on a 6,000mph plane called Aurora, a prototype of which has already been flown. — Workers are suing the USAF after their skin turned red and peeled off.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 31 March 2016

Home The Indian company Tata decided to sell its entire steel business in Britain, putting more than 15,000 jobs in jeopardy. The buy-to-let business was squashed by the Prudential Regulation Authority imposing more stringent borrowing criteria in parallel with an increase in stamp duty from this month. The Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee said that ‘the most significant’ domestic risks to financial stability were connected to the referendum on EU membership. The French utility company EDF agreed to take on part of its Chinese partner’s financial risks from cost overruns in building the Hinkley Point nuclear power station. BHS, the department store chain, attempted to secure its future in the face of a £571 million pension deficit.

The Spectator

Power failure | 31 March 2016

A fortnight ago, the energy minister, Andrea Leadsom, declared grandly that Britain, alone in the world, would commit to a target of reducing net carbon emissions to zero. ‘The question is not whether but how we do it,’ she told Parliament. It is now becoming painfully clear how this target will be reached: not by eliminating our carbon emissions but by exporting them, along with thousands of jobs and much of our manufacturing industry. This week, Tata Steel announced that its entire UK business is to be put up for sale. That came after Stephen Kinnock, whose South Wales constituency includes Tata’s giant plant at Port Talbot, joined a union delegation to the headquarters of Tata Steel in India to beg the company to keep the plant open.

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The Spectator podcast: Eugenics, Tory wars and poetry

We're delighted to have Berry Bros sponsor our flagship podcast. For some years now their 'Good Ordinary Claret' has been The Spectator's house red, served to all our guests (who are always impressed).  It's just £9 a bottle. Lara Prendergast presents this week's podcast. She speaks to Fraser Nelson about the return of eugenics - which, according to his cover article, is back with a vengeance. He's alarmed - but Toby Young isn't. He says eugenics should be on the NHS so the poor can have more intelligent babies. Next, James Forsyth discusses the latest in the Tory wars over Brexit.

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The road to remembrance

From ‘The “Via Sacra”’, The Spectator, 1 April 1916: When the war is over, France, Belgium, and Britain will be faced with the problem of finding some form of war memorial adequate to the greatest and longest battle of which the world has any record… We propose that a wide Memorial Road should be laid out in the no-man’s-land, the dead ground, between the two trench lines… from the sea to the Alps — a great road with monuments to the fallen, and to the deeds of heroism done by this or that individual company, regiment, brigade, division, and army, scattered along it.

Wednesday

The Spectator

How is Britain going green? By shutting down industry

A fortnight ago, the energy minister, Andrea Leadsom, declared grandly that Britain, alone in the world, would commit to a target of reducing net carbon emissions to zero. ‘The question is not whether but how we do it,’ she told Parliament. It is now becoming painfully clear how this target will be reached: not by eliminating our carbon emissions but by exporting them, along with thousands of jobs and much of our manufacturing industry. This week, Tata Steel announced that its entire UK business is to be put up for sale. That came after Stephen Kinnock, whose South Wales constituency includes Tata’s giant plant at Port Talbot, joined a union delegation to the headquarters of Tata Steel in India to beg the company to keep the plant open.

Thursday

The Spectator

The Spectator Podcast: Brussels, Tory wars and Brexit feminists

This podcast is sponsored by Berry Bros, The Spectator’s house red. In this week’s episode of the Spectator Podcast, Isabel Hardman is joined by Douglas Murray and Haras Rafiq, managing director for the Quilliam Foundation, to discuss the Brussels attacks. ‘In the wake of a terrorist attack, everything barely worth saying will be said endlessly. And the only things that are worth saying won’t be said,’ said Douglas, writing for The Spectator after the attacks. So what can be said? And what can be done to stop Isis striking again? In his cover story this week, James Forsyth looks at the Conservative crack-up.

Wednesday

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Letters | 23 March 2016

PC and abortion Sir: It is heartwarming that Simon Barnes’s son should not suffer the stigma experienced by those with Down’s syndrome in earlier generations (‘In praise of PC’, 19 March). But is it not ironic that in this kinder, more generous and respectful age, over 90 per cent of fetuses diagnosed with Down’s are aborted? Rather than hiding the children away, we now ensure that most of them are not even born. If political correctness had really become sane, surely our kindness, generosity and respect would extend to the womb as well? Matthew Hosier Poole, Dorset Naming conditions Sir: Simon Barnes, makes a couple of assumptions which do not bear scrutiny.

The Spectator

The jihad continues

On Tuesday morning Belgium was the latest European country to suffer a major terrorist attack. It is a disturbing reminder of the war that has not gone away. After the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, chief suspect over atrocities at the Bataclan centre in Paris last November, Belgian officials warned of the prospect of revenge attacks: perhaps spectacular atrocities, aiming at killing hundreds. They came four days later in Brussels airport and Metro — a demonstration of the jihadis’ ability to act quickly. After such an attack we can expect to be offered a blizzard of explanations, many of them erroneous. One commonly heard claim is that Islamist terrorism is a response to western foreign policy. Yet few countries have been less active in foreign policy than Belgium.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 23 March 2016

Home Iain Duncan Smith resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary two days after the Budget, throwing the government into a fine pickle. In his letter of resignation, he said that new changes to benefits to the disabled were ‘not defensible in the way they were placed within a Budget that benefits higher-earning taxpayers’. With a dig at George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he questioned whether ‘enough has been done to ensure “we are all in this together”.’ In his reply, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, wrote: ‘Today [18 March] we agreed not to proceed with the policies in their current form.’ He was, therefore ‘puzzled and disappointed’.

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Barometer | 23 March 2016

Bottling out Does any country have experience of a sugary drinks tax? — Denmark introduced a tax on sweetened soft drinks in the 1930s which by 2013 was being levied at a rate of €0.22 a litre and brought in €60m a year. — However, the Danish government also estimated that it was losing €38.9m in VAT from illegal soft drink sales. — In 2011, the government also introduced a fat tax, levied at 16 Kroner (£1.78) on food items with more than 2.3% saturated fat, and planned a more general sugar tax. — However, the fat tax was abandoned after 15 months when surveys suggested only 7% of Danes had reduced their fat intake. The tax was, however, blamed for 1,300 lost jobs as Danish shoppers crossed to Germany or Sweden.

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Flying start

From ‘Common-sense and the command of the air’, The Spectator, 25 March 1916: The Air Service will be the great fighting Service, the Service which will seal the fate of nations. We say this, not because the Air Service is a novelty, but because of a plain, undeniable physical fact — the universality of the air… No nation can ever be excluded from the air. Therefore in the last resort the right to live freely and independently will be won and secured by nations in the air.

Tuesday

The Spectator

Belgium is, again, fighting the enemy within

This morning, Belgium became the latest European country to have suffered a major terrorist attack. The scenes in Brussels serve as a grotesque reminder of the war that has not gone away. After the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, chief suspect over atrocities at the Bataclan centre in Paris last November, Belgian officials warned of the prospect of revenge attacks: perhaps spectacular atrocities, aiming at killing hundreds. They came four days later in Brussels airport and Metro — a demonstration of the jihadis’ ability to act quickly. And a reminder that their capacity for atrocity is far from exhausted. After such an attack we can expect to be offered a blizzard of explanations, many of them erroneous.