The Spectator

Friday

The Spectator

Don’t mention the war!

From our UK edition

Berlin Mentioning Poland's suffering in World War II is usually a sure way to win sympathy and shut down argument. But this week Polish politicians may have pushed the "Christ of Nations" act a bit too far. Explaining his intransigence over EU vote distribution – which has led to a diplomatic train wreck at this week’s EU summit -- President Lech Kaczynski told Polish radio the past justified the present. "We are merely demanding what was taken from us," he said. "If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would be today looking at the demographics of a country of 66 million," nearly double the current population of 38 million. The reaction in Europe was, well, disappointed, with clucking from foreign ministers and editorial writers alike.

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A pretty straight sort of Catholic?

From our UK edition

I hope that Tony Blair becomes a Catholic, but I don't think that his being received into the Church will make him one. Nothing about Blair says 'Catholic'. He has made much of his Christianity, but he has always seemed more Songs of Praise than Pontifical High Mass. His enthusiasm for the global democratic revolution -- for liberal interventionism -- is certainly not shared by the Pope Benedict XVI or by any orthodox Catholic. His position on abortion is not morally serious. Having voted for it in the past, he now says he is against it 'personally'. But why? Does he believe there is something objectively wrong with it? If he does, how can he at the same time regard it as a matter of conscience, something that should be decided on a free vote?

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What Gordon was up to

From our UK edition

This morning’s must-read is Mary Anne Sieghart’s column in The Times about Brown’s maneuvering over the past few days. Here’s her key point: "That this was not properly thought through inclines me to believe that Mr Brown’s approach was never really serious. He knew that he would look good whether Sir Menzies and Lord Ashdown said yes or no. Like Nicolas Sarkozy, he would be reaching magnanimously across the political divide. He would confound his critics by appearing open-minded and outward-looking. To those middle England voters who are unaware that the Lib Dems have moved to the left, he would look as if he were joining forces with a moderate, centrist party.

Thursday

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Was Brown really serious about this offer?

From our UK edition

I’ve been musing on Fraser’s post about the Ashdown affair and can’t help thinking that Brown must have know that Ashdown would say no: Northern Ireland Secretary is hardly something worth breaking with your party for. Indeed, if you think about it, is hard to see what the attraction of the job is even to someone like Ashdown who has personal links to the province. The ‘heroic’ period of peace-making, which wasn’t heroic at all to my mind but that’s an issue for another day, is over and the prizes for solving the Irish Question have already been awarded. If Brown had really wanted to bring Ashdown inside the tent he could have tempted him with something involving Iraq or Afghanistan.

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What did Gordon mean by that

From our UK edition

What was Gordon Brown up to in offering a job to Paddy Ashdown? He would have known that news would leak (you can always be sure of Ming “colander” Campbell) so what was his game? There are three theories in Westminster today. 1)      He wanted to sew division amongst LibDems, furious at the idea that the leadership would be bribed by job offers from Brown.2)      He wanted to show willing, so when his Cabinet is announced – and is packed full of Brownite stooges – he can say: well, you can’t say I didn’t try.3)      He wanted to infuriate Ming Campbell, by showing that Ashdown is the only LibDem he’d want in his government. Remember, Campbell and Ashdown are old rivals.

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Listening to the Scientologists

From our UK edition

This week’s magazine has a great piece by Tessa Mayes who went undercover with the celebrity Scientologists. If you want to hear more about her experience, download this podcast.

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Dressing down Brown

From our UK edition

Here's another thought about the difference between Blair and Brown in their relations with the business world (see 'The coming Blair nostalgia' in this week's online edition). On Wednesday night, for the eleventh year in a row, Gordon Brown 'snubbed' the City by refusing to conform to the evening dress code for the Mansion House dinner. To wear a black bow tie instead of long, dull, striped one, his spokesmen annually point out, would be to break his socialist principles and pander to elitism. But really his psychoanalyst might add it's an expression of the self-righteous egotism and tortured self-consciousness that make him such an uncomfortable public figure whatever he's wearing. Blair has never made a fuss about that sort of thing, and has even been seen in white tie and tails.

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A nice middle class boy

From our UK edition

I have always had a theory that within the anarchic millennial Byron that is Pete Doherty, there lurks an incredibly well-behaved middle-class boy. Doubtless it was the "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" pop poet that first appealed to Kate Moss. But it is surely the well-concealed Jekyll within that has persuaded judge after judge to let Doherty off with a mild telling off ("you young scallywag"). Now, there comes proof in the Times's serialisation of the former Libertine's journals. Here, for instance, are Pete's "Things to Do" for February 10, 1999:He only forgot to mention buying a new orange folder for his Physics revision notes. This is the authentic voice of a pop prince who may be forced by his image to trash hotel rooms, but would secretly prefer to tidy them up.

Wednesday

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Why I went to the Levy party

From our UK edition

Interesting row brewing over at Guido Fawkes. Should I and other hacks have shown our faces at the Lord Levy party last night (see my earlier post)? Yes, of course. That's the point of access. You go along and then you pass on what you find to your readers. Which is why I went and reported back to Coffee House as I did. Which is also why (I happen to know) the bloggers are petitioning for lobby credentials that will give them the same rights as print journalists at Westminster: quite right, too. Guido suggests that my going to the party might compromise my coverage of any trial involving Levy. Er, I don't think so.

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The billion dollar president?

From our UK edition

Republicans have had very little to cheer recently. The party’s approval rating in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is at a record low of 28% and the implosion of the Bush presidency is threatening to drag it down even further. So the news that the billionaire mayor of New York Mike Bloomberg has decided to quit the party sounds like another tale of Republican woe. But it is actually the best news the party has had in ages. The logical explanation for Bloomberg bolting from the Republican fold is that he plans to run as an independent in the 2008 presidential election.

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Rebellion is in the genes

From our UK edition

Like father, like son: my old friend Malcolm McLaren’s son, Joe Corre, has rejected his MBE, accusing Tony Blair of being “morally bankrupt”. As manager of the Sex Pistols, Situationist art student and all-round subversive, Malcolm revelled in such acts – famously releasing the single God Save the Queen during the Silver Jubilee. I gave him a tip or two over lunch when he was running for Mayor of London, a glorious venture that fizzled out at just the right moment (he didn’t take my advice to run as a Tory). His son knows how to pull a stunt, too: he accepted the honour and then had a change of heart, thus maximising publicity for his lingerie brand, the appropriately named Agent Provocateur. It’s what his old man called Cash from Chaos.

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One for the reading list

From our UK edition

Sometimes a book is so compelling you have to recommend it before you’ve finished it. I might have known that Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John Gray (Penguin) would be good, but this time the master really has excelled himself. Iraq, Gray writes, “has ceased to be a contest in which secular ideologies are at stake and has become instead a many-sided war of religion entwined with an ongoing resource war”. Another magnificent work from the greatest philosopher writing today.

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The case against the Rushdie knighthood

From our UK edition

Yesterday, I was happily thundering away against all the hand-wringing over the Rushdie knighthood when a friend brought me up short my making a rather good case against it. The argument goes that we defended, rightly, the Satanic Verses on free speech grounds and we are always telling these protestors, Voltaire-style, that while we might not agree with what is said—or in the case of the Danish cartoons, drawn—we defend their right to say it. But HMG giving Rushdie an honour blurs this line and suggests that the State has a position not only on Rushdie’s right to speak freely but also on the worth of his statements.

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And now the end is near

From our UK edition

And so the cavalcade of farewell parties proceeds towards the terminus of June 27 and Tony Blair's last bow. Last night, it was the turn of Lord Levy to say goodbye as the PM's Middle East envoy at a reception in the garden of Lancaster House. Mr Blair paid fulsome tribute to his old ally, diplomatically describing him as an adjunct to the traditional Foreign Office (they had other names for Levy there), but declaring, with the boldness of the man about to leave office, that he was an adviser without equal.

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Brown to bring Lib Dems into the cabinet?

From our UK edition

Today’s Guardian reports that Brown is considering bringing a Lib Dem or two into the government. My gut reaction is that the Lib Dems would be fools to accept the offer, it would be far better for them to sit tight and negotiate from a position of strength in the hung parliament we’re likely to have after the next election. If they joined Brown’s cabinet now, it would make it far easier for the Tories to campaign against them as Labour patsies at the next election. Then again, being the first Liberal Cabinet Minister since Sir Archibald Sinclair must be an appealing thought.

Tuesday

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The next Reagan?

From our UK edition

Fred Thompson, the man many are hailing as the saviour of the Republican party and who you probably know best from his roles in Hunt for Red October, In the Line of Fire, Die Hard 2 and the TV show Law & Order, is in London right now and I went to hear him speak this lunchtime at Policy Exchange. It is immediately obvious why so many politicos are attracted to a Thompson candidacy: he has presence, a Reaganesque demeanour and a great voice—John McCain likes to joke that if he had Fred Thompson’s voice he’d be president. These assets have propelled him into second place in the polls for the Republican nomination despite the fact he hasn’t even announced yet. But the question with Thompson is, whether there is anything more to him than these qualities.

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The only reason to knight Rushdie

From our UK edition

I can’t really comment on Salman Rushdie as a literary figure, since I tried and failed three times to get beyond the opening 50 pages of Midnight’s Children.  I can comment on him as a public figure, however, having followed his career attentively since the fatwa of 1989.  I supported Mrs Thatcher’s response of cutting off diplomatic relations with Iran and giving Rushdie unlimited protection:  I even wrote to my MP saying the government was pusillanimous in failing to prosecute those demonstrators who called for his execution. Yet I never could stand the man, and found his gracelessness and ingratitude overwhelming at the time and since.

The Spectator

Ageism Watch

From our UK edition

The departure of Nick Ross from “Crimewatch” is a sad victory for the worst kind of criteria now being applied in television. Nobody disputes the importance of appearance on screen – it would be odd if it were otherwise – but Ross is scarcely senescent and looks a pretty sprightly 59 year old. Having dined with him once, I can attest to his charisma and brains. He talked with great animation about the book which he will now, presumably, have time to write on law and order. But, if the Standard is right, and he was shown the door because of his age, the BBC is asking for trouble. Its licence is paid by an ageing population; and trust in the familiar and the experienced is at the heart of the Corporation’s mandate.

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Blair, Brown and the tussle in Brussels

From our UK edition

Two days to go and already the European Union summit is promising to be a cliffhanger. Will Blair sign? Will the Poles and the Czechs save him, and veto? No10 appears to be furious that Gordon Brown is holding out the prospect of a referendum and says there will be none “because we will not sign up to anything that breaches our red lines.” Yet I hear the Chancellor’s red lines are different: he doesn’t want a permanent EU president (especially one that may be called T Blair) and no EU foreign minister either. He’s right: this is the real test. Already, Mr Brown may be a better champion of British interests in Europe than Blair ever was.