The Spectator

Friday

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Dinner with Supermac

From our UK edition

To the Cafe Royal to an excellent dinner hosted by the National Sporting Club with John McEnroe as the star turn. Before he took to the stage, Supermac chatted to me and my father (a nifty tennis player in his day and many times Malta champion) about how the game has changed. I asked him whether he would - as he hinted at the end of autobiography - enter politics, and McEnroe gave what gave what can only be described as a non-denial denial. Fascinating, too, that he admits that it still gives him goose-bumps when he talks to Bjorn Borg on the phone. All great endeavours are based on the weird brew of competition, rivalry and friendship. Speaking of which, McEnroe declared himself mystified by the fall of Blair - and did a pretty good impersonation of Gordon Brown.

Thursday

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The Coffee House Debate

From our UK edition

Welcome to a debate between Tim Montgomerie, editor of Conservative Home, and Matthew d’Ancona on how the Tories should respond to the Brown challenge. Tim Montgomerie starts things off: Dear Matt,I’m glad to be doing this exchange of thoughts with you again and many congratulations on the Coffee House blog.  It's quickly become essential reading.Brown has had a good few days and it's beyond doubt that he should not be underestimated.  I think David Cameron should expect some tricky opinion poll ratings in the next couple of weeks.  If the party can hold its nerve over the coming period, however, I am hopeful that Project Cameron can still succeed. To read the rest click here Matt responds: Dear Tim Thanks for doing this.

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Coming soon, the Tory reshuffle

From our UK edition

Shadow Cabinet members are being told that David Cameron’s reshuffle will happen next week, and that it will likely match Brown’s new team man for man (or woman). So David Davis may end up losing prisons after all – I guess the old Home Office has been split into three, if you count Tessa Jowell’s new responsibility for “youth justice”. Perhaps it was just too juicy a target in its old form. As our leader this week says, Cameron needs to raise his game – but I don’t expect much to happen until Andy Coulson starts work on the 9th of July. Brown has a few more stunts to pull off, perhaps a Tory peer or two tomorrow. Meanwhile Cameron can work on what I hear is his biggest reshuffle problem: finding enough women to promote.

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Spice up your life

From our UK edition

  To mark the Spice Girls getting back together we have dug out of the archive Simon Sebag Montefiore’s celebrated interview with them from the Christmas 1996 issue of The Spectator. Click here for the Spice Girls views on Europe, Tony Blair and moral philosophy.

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What Miliband means

From our UK edition

The Miliband appointment shows that he’s one of the winners from the deputy leadership contest. If Benn had run an impressive campaign the job would have been his. Miliband will be viewed as the cabinet’s senior Blairite but on the Middle East he has very different views than his patron. As The Guardian reports this morning, “he privately regards the intervention in Iraq as a great error.” Crucially, during the Lebanon crisis he was a critic in cabinet of Blair’s refusal to call for a ceasefire. Indeed, as Jack Straw, has argued it was Blair’s almost total isolation on the Lebanon that accelerated his departure.

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Sons of the manse

From our UK edition

International aid is the new imperialism. Seriously. The same Christian zeal which inspired the first colonialists-cum- evangelists is back now with two politicians whose fathers were Church of Scotland ministers – Gordon Brown and Douglas Alexander. Wee Dougie is his long-serving disciple, so his being sent to DFID is very important. Here’s why. The bible our DFID evangelists will be clutching as they head off for Africa is the New Labour orthodoxy, as seen in Brown’s Commission for Africa which last year laid out his manifesto for Africa. It suggested for example that schools should be run by the state (despite proof that private education works best for the poor).

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3 to go

From our UK edition

Benn to environment, Hoon as expected will be Chief Whip and by my count all we’re waiting for is Northern Ireland, Defence and Chief Secretary to the Treasury. But likely some surprises to come with the minister of state appointments. As Darling boasted on the Today Programme this morning, “I think you will see when the announcements are made later today that we will be reaching out beyond the narrow confines of our own party. "To appoint people who are not necessarily members of the Labour Party and may not have had an association with us in the past, I think that’s a good thing.

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The last few posts

From our UK edition

The Guardian is tipping Blears for transport, James Purnell--interviewed in this week's magazine--gets Culture. Still no word on Ruth Kelly's fate.

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Anybody Home?

From our UK edition

Update: Jacqui Smith, the BBC is reporting, will succeed John Reid The big question is who is going to Home. John Denham some are saying, but I can’t imagine he’d be on board with Brown’s more hard core proposals on terror. Both Blears and Hutton are staying in the Cabinet and haven’t been given jobs so far, yet it would be a major shock for either of these ultra-Blair-loyalists to get such a big job. In this febrile atmosphere, if no one is announced soon a rumour is bound to start that Charles Clarke is coming back.

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Brown as Nidgett

From our UK edition

Strength, energy, service, change, trust, steadfastness, change, resolution, purpose, change ... Has anyone noticed how like Peter Simple’s Lieutenant General Sir Frederick ‘Tiger’ Nidgett Gordon Brown sounded yesterday? In November 2005 Nidgett brought his great strategic mind to bear on the seemingly intractable problems of the Middle East, problems that Mr Brown will have to address, or pretend to address, before long. The new Prime Minister might learn something from Nidgett’s insights: ‘In my view your average common or garden Arab man in the street, or rather in the dried-up wadi, is a bit of a scrounger, a bit of a lounge lizard and a bit of a barrack room lawyer....

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The world of Miliband

From our UK edition

David Miliband to the foreign office, the youngest holder of that office since David Owen. It is a huge job. In the words of Sir John Coles, former Permanent Secretary to the FCO: “The job comes as a terrible shock to them, just the sheer amount of travelling, for example, and the enormous range of subject matter. A Foreign Secretary can be concerned at one moment about drugs in Thailand, the next moment about civil war in Sierra Leone, and on it goes. I mean, it is an extraordinarily disparate and wide agenda” But Miliband has the brain for the task. He might recall the example of Ernest Bevin who on his first weekend was left with five red boxes and a note saying “Foreign Secretary, we thought you would like to do these five red boxes over the weekend.

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Unspun Brown

From our UK edition

At least for the first couple of days Gordon Brown got both the style and substance absolutely right – no repudiation of the past but an absolute commitment to moving on.  And it is clear what the new direction of travel will be.  A more personally responsive health service, free from the straightjacket if targets.  Affordable houses to buy and rent.  A more sustained attack on child poverty. More important – at least in terms of winning the next election – there will be no more celebrity politics.  Glitz and glamour are out.  The hard truth and hard decisions are in.  No favours for friends.  No free luxury holidays.  No spin.  Fresh air blows through Downing Street.

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A motto to live by

From our UK edition

'I will try my utmost' promised Gordon Brown on the steps of 10 Downing Street yesterday, quoting his old school motto. They’re funny things, school mottoes. Single sex schools tend to fall into different camps – boys’ tending towards the bellicose (Sons of Heroes / Wellington School) or self-aggrandising (Floreat Etona / David Cameron’s Eton College), while girls’ are more humbly aspirational (Our daughters shall be as the polished corners of the temple / Frances Holland). Do any other public figures live their lives today under the influence of their old school mottoes? Tony Blair’s from Fettes was simply ‘Industria’ and Menzies Campbell at Hillhead High, Glasgow had ‘We will maintain’.

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Cui bono

From our UK edition

Why do we have to pay between £3.50 and £5.40 to book tickets for the theatre on the internet? Most people are unable to turn up in person to book seats — the only way to avoid the extra cost.  If a theatre has, say, 600 seats, and over half are filled by people booking over the internet, then more than £1,000 per show is generated. Where and to whom does this money go?

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A not so talented precedent

From our UK edition

Our new Prime Minister does like a bit of history so, in the course of unveiling his new administration today, he may wish to reconsider his soundbite "government of all the talents". This refers to the "ministry of all the talents" appointed by Lord Grenville (1759-1834) after the death of Pitt the Younger. George III instructed Grenville in January 1806 to form a Government "without exclusion" - a Hanoverian version of "inclusiveness" and "listening and learning" - and the new PM obliged, appointing Charles James Fox (hitherto hated by the King) as Foreign Minister and Lord Sidmouth as Lord Privy Seal. Grenville set about Treasury reform, an overhaul of Scottish civil justice and pulled off the abolition of the slave trade in Britain.

Wednesday

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How we saw the day

From our UK edition

Scroll down for our analysis of events on the blog. But we’ve also got some great articles on what happened today including a review of Blair’s last act and Brown’s matinee by the Spectator's theatre critic Llloyd Evans, an essay on what it was like growing up under Tony Blair by Clemency Burton-Hill, a look at whether business will prefer Cameron or Brown by Martin Vander Weyer and James O'Shaughnessy explains why Brown is putting housing at the top of the political agenda.  Check back tomorrow for more on the Brown reshuffle and Blair’s new international role.

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What on earth was the BBC thinking?

From our UK edition

So the Prime Minister of 10 years standing is answering his final question at PMQs and what does the BBC do? Cut away to a trailer and then the tennis. This is a complete abdication of its public service responsibilities. It has denied viewers the chance to witness a historic moment. Indeed, it is hard to see what event could have justified cutting away in these circumstances. What is certain is that a second round tennis match doesn’t come anywhere close.  There is, rightly, collective outrage about this. The BBC needs to admit that its judgement was completely off on this one. Update: The BBC has apologised.