The Spectator

Seeing as Gordon Brown is stonewalling efforts from both MPs and journalists to find out who he has invited to Chequers for dinner, I thought we could help him out by suggesting some suitable guests. I’m thinking Larry Summers for some economics and US politics, Amartya Sen for a bit of development talk and Linda Colley and Simon Schama if Brown wants to talk to Britishness.

Telling Right from Right Sir: I was very disappointed to see James Forsyth pinning the xenophobe label to Gordon Brown for his comment ‘British jobs for British workers’ (Politics, 3 November). The trouble with Forsyth and his kind of Conservatives is their claim that the logical position of the Right is to welcome a free labour market, hence immigration. But they are best described not as true conservatives but as neoconservatives or market-obsessed Jacobins. Just as New Labour shouldn’t be confused with Old Labour, so the new Right should be differentiated from the traditional, small-c conservative Right. Traditional conservatives believe in markets as a means to an end, not as the end itself. They do not worship Mammon.

On December 11th, the Spectator is hosting with Intelligence Squared a debate on the future of Iraq at Central Hall in Westminster. The speakers include Liz Cheney, Tony Benn, Sir Christopher Meyer, William Shawcross, Rory Stewart, and Ali Allawi. If you want to be in the audience and have your say on the most pressing issue of our time you can buy tickets here or by calling 020 7494 3345. Tickets cost £25.

Gregory and the inquest Sir: We read once again an attack on Mohamed Al Fayed by Martyn Gregory over the inquest into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed (‘No “flash before the crash”’, 27 October). As it happens, Mr Gregory has rarely appeared at the inquest, which goes a little way to explaining his skewed views. But he was present on Monday, and collared me to ask about the evidence relating to a white Fiat Uno. ‘It will be front-page stuff,’ he volunteered. Mr Gregory would barely notice if it was ‘front page’ or not. His article demonstrated that he has ignored the entire output of the British press in the past four weeks.

Stolen seats Sir: On what evidence does Stephen Pollard (Politics, 20 October) base his contention that the ‘only possible reading of the past three decades’ is that the voters ‘turn to the Conservatives only when the Labour party presents itself as unelectable’? Since 1977, the Tories have been in power for 18 years (60 per cent of the time) and Labour for 12 years (40 per cent). Apparently, then, Labour spend most of the time being unelectable. Even in 1997, opinion polls were showing that on all manner of economic and social issues, the voters consistently preferred Tory policies, albeit they had become sick of Tory politicians. Tony Blair, of all people, understood that.