The Spectator

Saturday

The Spectator

December Wine Club

From our UK edition

This is our positively final offer for Christmas, and it’s terrific. Thanks to Lay & Wheeler we have half a dozen French classics, all of which would be very welcome on the Yuletide dinner table, or at a memorable party. What’s more, every one is generously discounted. They are not cheap wines, but they are tremendous value. Take the magnificent 1966 Lay & Wheeler 150th Anniversary Cuvée Champagne (1). It’s made by the people at Duval-Leroy, and at £27, its list price, it is a good buy. For £22 (a £60 discount per case) it’s incredible. You can easily pay that for a non-vintage champagne from one of those companies that seem to spend more on advertising than on wine-making.

The Spectator

The sense of an ending

From our UK edition

‘Sleaze has been the dominant factor throughout,’ declared the opposition, ‘and sleaze has been the end issue. Nothing better encapsulates what people think of this government. Sleaze will be one of the things that brings this government down.’ The opposition in question was New Labour and the government was Conservative. A decade on, with poetic symmetry, the positions are reversed: it is the supposedly irreproachable Gordon Brown who presides over a party mired in allegations of evasion, lies and outright criminality. In his memoirs, John Major correctly identifies the lethal quality of the word ‘sleaze’: ‘it fed the public belief that the Conservative party as an institution had been in power too long, and had got into bad habits.

Friday

The Spectator

The struggle takes many forms | 7 December 2007

From our UK edition

Nick Robinson has a great little story about when Gordon Brown’s photo shoot with  the fashion photographer David Bailey. My favourite story of the week comes from the studios of David Bailey where the daddy of all photographers was taking pictures of the PM for the magazine GQ. "Do you use ever use digital instead of film?" asked Brown's right hand woman Sue Nye. "Nah" drawled Bailey "digital's like socialism - it flattens everything out and makes everything the same". Bailey's laughter at his own joke was met, I'm told, by an explanation that that's not really what socialism was… Well at least the Labour left will be glad to see Team Brown defending socialism.

Tuesday

The Spectator

The neo-con case for talking to Iran

From our UK edition

Bob Kagan, one of the smartest and most influential American foreign policy thinkers, has a compelling piece on how to deal with Iran in the Washington Post.  Here’s how he starts: “Regardless of what one thinks about the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusion that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003 -- and there is much to question in the report -- its practical effects are indisputable. The Bush administration cannot take military action against Iran during its remaining time in office, or credibly threaten to do so, unless it is in response to an extremely provocative Iranian action. A military strike against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities was always fraught with risk. For the Bush administration, that option is now gone.

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 1 December 2007

From our UK edition

New world order Sir: Poor old Irwin Stelzer is stuck in an Atlantico-centric world in which the main debate is still about choosing between Europe and America and deciding which side of the Atlantic Ocean is top dog (‘The Special Relationship is between Washington and Brussels’, 24 November). When will Washington, or Brussels, grasp that this world has now disappeared? Power and influence have now moved away from the Atlantic powers and in three new directions — to a billion or more participants in the world wide web, to two billion-plus new capitalists in Asia and to the lands of the petrodollars — the latter two now generating most of the world’s savings and exporting the capital which drives the planet’s economy (and buys up our assets).

The Spectator

Brown’s fatal flaws

From our UK edition

As prophecies go, it had none of the ritual majesty of the Sybil of Cumae’s pronouncements, none of the blood-chilling qualities of Cassandra. But it has, in its own way, come to pass nonetheless. Jonathan Powell, the chief of staff to Tony Blair, once told our former editor that Gordon Brown’s political career would be a ‘Shakespearean tragedy’. And with every day that passes the tragic quality of Mr Brown’s premiership is underlined. A politician of formidable gifts, powerful intellect and great passions is, nevertheless, finding that he simply doesn’t have what it takes to make a success of the most demanding job in politics — as the events of the last two months have cruelly exposed.

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 24 November 2007

From our UK edition

Build on the past Sir: Simon Thurley (‘Britain is being demolished’, 17 November) calls us to think again before politicians, short-term financiers and architects repeat all the mistakes we made after the war. I well remember as a student in the 1950s being exhorted by duffle-coated and starry-eyed tutors to ‘change the face of Britain’. Sadly, we have. And still we have not learnt the lesson. Simon Thurley asks ‘will we get anything better than we did in the 1960s and ’70s?’ and, ‘Will old and new be blended successfully to make beautiful places?’ It isn’t really a question of style or of consciously making a beautiful place. A Modernist building from its conception to its demise and beyond is an environmental disaster.

The Spectator

He’s incompetent. So sack him

From our UK edition

It must come as something of a relief to Peter Mandelson that when Labour sources now refer to ‘the Peter Problem’ they mean Peter Hain, the beleaguered Work and Pensions Secretary. Mr Mandelson’s conduct came to be seen by many as an emblem of all that was wrong with the Blair era. The Hain saga, in contrast, symbolises what is wrong with the Brown era (assuming it lasts long enough to be called an ‘era’). Mr Hain’s failure to register £103,000 of donations to his disastrous deputy leadership campaign last year chimes with the impression of shambolic mismanagement that now clings to this government, from its handling of the Northern Rock debacle to the loss of 25 million benefit claimant records.

The Spectator

Black Tuesday

From our UK edition

Just as some remote tribesmen fear that cameras and mirrors have the power to steal their souls, so the people of the modern world have come to fear that computers have the power to misuse and misdirect their most private data. Identity theft is a potent nightmare of the digital age, and it is with deep foreboding that we part with personal information even to departments of government that should, in a well-ordered democratic society, be the most secure of all repositories of it. For HM Revenue & Customs to allow the National Insurance number and bank account details of a single citizen to fall into unknown hands would be a serious failure.

The Spectator

The Threadneedle/Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards

From our UK edition

The Threadneedle/Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards Last Thursday the 24th annual Threadneedle/Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year lunch was held in front of a roomful of the great and good at Claridges, and — this being the first ever live ‘vodcast’ award ceremony — in front of thousands of web-watchers worldwide as well. Matthew d’Ancona, editor of The Spectator, welcomed the Rt Hon John Reid MP to present the awards, saying: ‘As Home Secretary, he showed that the spirit of The Sweeney is not dead, metaphorically hurling substandard officials on to the bonnet of his Cortina, investing the words “not fit for purpose” with new and chilling meaning.

Friday

The Spectator

Weekend viewing

From our UK edition

You can listen to this week’s Spectator / Intelligence Squared debate on whether Britain needs Trident via this link—speakers include Baroness Helena Kennedy and Sir Malcolm Rifkind. We also have video of the Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards, click here if you would like to the watch the ceremony.

Tuesday

The Spectator

Does Britain need Trident? Listen live tonight

From our UK edition

From 6:45 PM Spectator.co.uk will be broadcasting the latest Spectator / Intelligence Squared debate on whether or not Britain needs its Trident nuclear weapons system. Speakers include Baroness Helena Kennedy, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the SNP spokesman Angus Robertson and Times columnist Oliver Kamm. The event will be chaired by Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian. Listen live from 6:45pm.

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 17 November 2007

Lord of works Sir: Your profile of Lord Malloch-Brown was grossly unfair (‘Labour’s lord of the perks’, 10 November). I have known him since 1979 when, at the age of 26, he built and ran the Khao I Dang refugee camp in Thailand. Over 100,000 Cambodian refugees had reason to be very grateful for his superb work. Since then he has had a large number of significant international assignments, at the World Bank, the United Nations and elsewhere. He has enormous experience, particularly of the problems of poverty and international development. In recent years he has been very critical of US policies, including towards Iraq. I disagree with these views but they do not make him viscerally anti-American, as is now being claimed.

The Spectator

The whole truth, please

From our UK edition

The Prime Minister’s speech on foreign policy at the Mansion House this week was a classic instance of reassurance rhetoric: his intention to soothe Atlanticists on both sides of the ocean, worried by the studied distance Mr Brown adopted at Camp David in July and the mixed signals sent by his ministerial team. Tribute was paid to ‘the personal leadership of President Bush’ in the search for peace in the Middle East and the American alliance was reaffirmed as ‘our most important bilateral relationship’. Even Tony Blair was rehabilitated for the occasion, with a tribute to his ‘painstaking work’ in the Middle East. There were more than just warm words for Mr Blair, though.

The Spectator

Books of the Year | 17 November 2007

From our UK edition

Deborah Devonshire The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (Profile Books, £9.99) is small, short, cheap and perfect. It is a gem among the dross, without a wasted word. It conjures a picture so skilfully that whenever I see the Derbyshire County Library van in the village I see Norman and his employer inside discussing their lists of books to borrow. Several bedside copies have already been taken away by my guests. I don’t blame them. Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey (Penguin Viking, £20) proves truth to be stranger than fiction. It tells the history of the Fitzwilliam family, with its convoluted relationships, living in royal style at Wentworth House, the biggest-by-far private house in England.

Thursday

The Spectator

The Winners

From our UK edition

Newcomer of the year: Nick Clegg Inquisitor of the year: Michael Conarty Peer of the year: Baroness Thatcher Speech of the year: William Hague Resignation of the year: Tony Blair Minister to Watch: Liam Byrne Marathon Man of the year: Ian Paisley Campaigner of the year:  Iain Duncan Smith Parliamentarian of the year: Alex Salmond Politician of the year: George Osborne To read Matthew d'Ancona's remarks on the winners, click here.

The Spectator

Watch the Parliamentarian of the Year Awards live

From our UK edition

If you want to watch today’s event live click here. The awards ceremony from Claridge's Hotel in London will be broadcast live with welcome speech from 1-1:10pm and 1:50-2:30 pm. The awards will be presented by last year's winner John Reid and hosted by Matthew d'Ancona, editor of the Spectator. To watch click here.