The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 7 January 2016

From our UK edition

The outsiders Did the seven members of Harold Wilson’s cabinet who campaigned to leave the Common Market in the 1975 referendum damage their careers? Michael Foot, Employment Secretary. Made deputy leader by Jim Callaghan in 1976. Elected leader in 1980. Tony Benn, Industry Secretary. Challenged Denis Healey unsuccessfully for Labour deputy leadership in 1981. Barbara Castle, Social Services Secretary. Sacked from cabinet by Jim Callaghan when he became prime minister in 1976. Eric Varley, Energy Secretary. Swapped jobs with Tony Benn after referendum. Fifth in shadow cabinet elections in 1979. John Silkin, Planning and Local Government Secretary. Became agriculture secretary in 1976. Stood for Labour leadership in 1980 but was defeated. Peter Shore, Trade Secretary.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 7 January 2016

From our UK edition

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, decided to allow ministers to campaign for either side in the referendum on membership of the European Union, once his negotiations had been concluded on Britain’s relationship with the EU. The government said it was commissioning 13,000 houses to be built by small builders on public land made available with planning permission. Junior doctors decided to go on strike after all, starting with a day next week, after talks between the government and the British Medical Association broke down. In an extraordinarily drawn-out reshuffle, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour party, replaced Michael Dugher as shadow culture secretary with Maria Eagle, who was replaced at defence by the Trident-hating Emily Thornberry.

The Spectator

Through the roof

From our UK edition

When David Cameron said this week that he is worried his children would not be able to afford to buy their own homes, he struck on one of the greatest economic problems of his premiership. The old British promise is that if you work hard and make the right decisions, you can advance in life and own your own home. This is the ladder that most aspire to climb. But for an entire generation, even the hope of home ownership is slipping out of view. A huge number of young Britons cannot hope to have the kind of life their parents enjoyed. The Prime Minister must know he is on dangerous ground here. His own children, of course, will not have to worry — just as he did not have to worry.

The Spectator

Florence King, 1936 – 2016: a great American conservative

From our UK edition

Let’s not get sentimental — she would not have liked that — but Florence King, the American writer and splendid reactionary, has died. It is sad because Florence was brilliant, brave and most of all funny. Her best-known work, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, is a tremendous book — essential reading, I’d say, for anyone who wants to understand spirited American conservatism, rather than the lobotomised crap churned out on TV or talk radio, or by Republican Party candidates. She deserves to be better known, though it is heartening today to see fans sharing her quotes on Twitter. (My favourite: 'while watching 'Psycho' a single question ran through my head: "Where can I get a shower head with that kind of capacity?

The Spectator

George Osborne has made his own ‘dangerous cocktail’ of economic risk

From our UK edition

When David Cameron said this week that he is worried his children would not be able to afford to buy their own homes, he struck on one of the greatest economic problems of his premiership. The old British promise is that if you work hard and make the right decisions, you can advance in life and own your own home. This is the ladder that most aspire to climb. But for an entire generation, even the hope of home ownership is slipping out of view. A huge number of young Britons cannot hope to have the kind of life their parents enjoyed. The Prime Minister must know he is on dangerous ground here. His own children, of course, will not have to worry — just as he did not have to worry.

The Spectator

Church service

From our UK edition

From ‘A Mobilisation of the Church’, The Spectator, 8 January 1916: Suppose the Church were mobilised so that the majority of the younger clergy and all the ordinands were set free for service in the Army, the situation at the end of the war might be very different from that which we have been anticipating. There is no life more intimate than that of the barrack-room. There is no life where the essential characters of men are so fully revealed as the life of the trench. Those of the combatant clergy who returned from the war would know all that was worth knowing of the characters of ordinary men…With such men as clergy a new era might dawn for the Church in this land, and the Kingdom of Heaven be brought very nigh.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Jeremy Corbyn’s new shadow cabinet in full

From our UK edition

Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn MP Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Party Chair and Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office Tom Watson MP Shadow First Secretary of State, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Angela Eagle MP  Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell MP  Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Seema Malhotra MP  Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham MP  Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn MP  Opposition Chief Whip Rosie Winterton MP  Shadow Secretary of State for Health Heidi Alexander MP  Shadow Secretary of State for Education Lucy Powell MP  Shadow Secreta.

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 31 December 2015

From our UK edition

In with the new How the new year is being celebrated around the world. From 1 January… BRITAIN: Annual Investment Allowance for businesses cut from £500,000 to £200,000. Deposit Guarantee Limit for savers — the sum which the government will refund to savers after a bank collapse — is cut from £85,000 to £75,000. Drink industry workers face a fine unless they sign up with the Alcohol Wholesaler Registration Scheme. RUSSIA: Food imports from Ukraine banned. SWITZERLAND: Cost of private language schooling no longer tax-deductible. SOUTH AFRICA: Carbon tax introduced. Out with the old In 2015… — 142m people were born and 56m people died, making for population growth of 83m. — 2,030m tonnes of grain were harvested.

The Spectator

Letters | 31 December 2015

From our UK edition

What Blair omitted to say Sir: Mr Blair’s latest in these pages, like his recent Foreign Affairs Committee appearance on Libya, papers over so much history that one hardly knows where to start (‘What I got right’, 12 December). His own Libyan history will do. We all know the ‘deal in the desert’, whereby Gaddafi relinquished a feeble ‘WMD’ programme to come in from the cold, lift the sanctions, and pave the way for oil deals. What was not known until 2011 was the real price of this bargain. The price was a UK-US-Libyan conspiracy to kidnap two whole families from exile and ship them to Gaddafi. Had we not seen the proof in black and white after the dictator’s fall, who would have believed it? But documents don’t lie.

The Spectator

Soggy thinking

From our UK edition

As the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, Lord Deben, observed this week, there is a bizarre dislocation between the government’s pronouncements on climate change and its attitude towards spending on flood defences. Only a month ago, David Cameron was at the Paris climate summit lending his weight to apocalyptic warnings of flood and tempest unless the world acted quickly to reduce carbon emissions. Yet with tracts of northern cities underwater, his government continues with a make-do-and-mend flood-defence policy which, never mind climate change, is incapable of dealing with the climate we already have. While lecturing us on the threat of greater rainfall and rising sea levels, the government has reduced spending on flood defence.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 31 December 2015

From our UK edition

Home Thousands of houses were flooded in York, Leeds, Manchester and other parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, after weeks of repeated flooding in Cumberland and Westmorland. On the River Foss in York, a flood barrier was lifted to avoid even more houses being flooded by keeping it in position. Tim Peake, the British astronaut in the International Space Station, tweeted a photograph of northern England as he passed overhead and said that his ‘thoughts are with all those affected by flooding’. After a fund-raising drive, two brothers from Leicestershire, aged 11 and seven, born without toes, were given silicone ten-toed feet to wear like galoshes over their own. The growth of Britain’s economy in the third quarter of 2015 was revised to 0.4 per cent from an earlier 0.