The Spectator

Monday

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The Gordfather

"Barzini's dead. So is Phillip Tattaglia -- Moe Greene -- Strachi -- Cuneo -- Today I settle all Family business." Remember that scene in The Godfather, where Michael Corleone tells his soon-to-be-executed brother-in-law that the Corleones have settled all their vendettas in a bloody spree of vengeance? That's what Westminster feels like this morning. The Gordfather has seen them off: all of them. Milburn, Blunkett, Johnson, Clarke, Miliband, and now, unexpectedly, Reid. He has settled all Brownite Family business. He is the unchallenged Don. But - of course - we know from Godfather Part II that blood quickly begets blood, that feuding abhors a vacuum.  In today's Guardian, Jackie Ashley argues that John Reid's decision to resign as Home Secretary will end the factionalism.

Sunday

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Sarkozy’s message to France

Truly extraordinary scenes at the Salle Gaveau in the eighth arrondissement of Paris tonight. Shortly after the official exit polls announcing Sarko’s victory, thousands of his supporters sang the Marseillaise, with thousands more joining in from outside. After a long ride through Paris, his Renault Limousine surrounded by least 20 media motorcycles, Sarko arrived at the UMP HQ at about 8:20 local time. He started his victory speech about 10 minutes later; his address lasted about 10 minutes and was followed by another session of the French national anthem, sung by an exuberant and deeply emotional crowd. This is an “exceptional moment in the life of a man”, Sarko said. He also reached out to the 47% of the electorate who voted Socialist today.

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France votes

Anything other than a Nicolas Sarkozy win this evening would be a huge upset. The latest polls show him with a 10 point lead over Ségolène Royal (pictured left). The only crumb of hope for Royal is the high turnout with 75% of voters having already cast their ballots by late afternoon; this might be a sign that Royal’s constant fear-mongering about the consequences of a Sarko victory have got through. However, even with a huge turn-out in the first round Sarkozy still topped the poll by a comfortable margin. How much of the French system Sarkozy will actually change is open to question. His talk of a rupture with France’s past has been decidedly toned down as the campaign has gone on.

Saturday

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Letters to the Editor | 5 May 2007

From our US edition

Strange kind of love Sir: Liam Byrne’s breathless panegyric (‘Rise up, Englishmen’, 28 April) on the glories of being British must have left some of us pretty punch drunk. This is a man who eagerly serves a government that has spent a decade transferring the rights of the British to govern themselves out of Britain and assigning them to an EU government in which his own country has 8 per cent voting stock. Most of this has been done covertly, out of sight of a sycophantic House of Commons and without a referendum. This is a man who has been happily destroying what was once Europe’s finest constitution and calling it reform.

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McCain: I’ll pursue OBL “to the gates of hell”

Thursday wasn’t only election night here, but also the first Republican primary debate of 2008. Over at Comment Central Daniel Finkelstein has a typically astute post on whether Republicans shouldn’t have an abortion litmus test for their presidential nominees keying off the trouble Rudy Giuliani got in to when asked about whether he supported the repeal of Roe v. Wade. I agree with Danny that the Republicans shouldn’t have one but Giuliani needs to find a better way of expressing his position. Saying it would be OK for it to be repealed, when the guys next to you on stage are using phrases like a “glorious day of human liberty and freedom” just doesn’t cut it.

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If you like this…

If you’re enjoying Coffee House, I do hope you’ll take a look at Stephen Pollard’s new blog and Clive Davis’s—which come complete with a photograph by PooterGeek.

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Why Friday was a very good day

Good news from Paris. No, not the capital of France which, it seems likely, will tomorrow crown Sarkozy its President. I mean the Hilton heiress, who was sent to jail yesterday for 45 days for driving while disqualified. There are so many cheap jokes one could make about the new Los Angeles Hilton and the standard of the rooms. But since this is an interactive site I shall leave it to others to crack them. Suffice it to say that the news of Paris's imprisonment shows that, after 24 hours of spin and counter-spin, Friday was definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a very good day.

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A legacy for us all

It is bleakly symmetrical that Tony Blair’s tenth anniversary as Prime Minister should have fallen in the same week as the Scottish, Welsh and local elections. But it was no less apt that the PM should have passed this milestone the day after the conviction of five British Islamists who plotted to blow up a crowded nightclub or shopping centre: the fruits of Operation ‘Crevice’ by the police and security services in 2004. The contrast between the sunlit expectations of 2 May 1997 and the angry mood of the electorate this week could scarcely be sharper. The Blair decade has been one of dashed expectations. But it has also been a period of geopolitical and cultural transformation.

Friday

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Why PR is bad

The situation about to unfold in Scotland is why I can’t stand PR. First of all, not one voter will get the government they actually voted for. Instead, politicians will disappear off into the modern equivalent of smoke-filled rooms and thrash out a deal while the public desperately tries to see in the window. Also, the Greens—despite only having two MSPs, down from seven last time, and a miniscule percentage of the vote—will hold the balance of power if the Lib Dems and the SNP can come to an agreement. It is a truly perverse system that makes a party that lost 70 percent of its seats into the kingmakers.

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It’s a Facebook world we’re living in

A couple of months ago I had never heard of Facebook. Now, I place internal bets with myself at every social gathering I go to about how long it will be before someone mentions it. My boyfriend and I had a dinner party on Wednesday which managed to run to almost forty minutes (surely a record) before a fellow guest brought it up; last night my cocktail date had been going for about forty seconds before the dreaded thing reared its ugly head. 'He’s going away this weekend with his new girlfriend!' My friend Chloe wailed as she stormed into Soho House. 'His new GIRLFRIEND! How can he have a new girlfriend? He only broke up with me a month ago!

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Required viewing for all MPs

It’s a pity that the elections yesterday coincided with Molly Dineen’s documentary ‘The Lie of the Land’ because I imagine that the minister of agriculture (or minister of Naff, Maff, Defra or whatever it’s called now) was too busy with politics to be watching Channel 4 last night. Shame. The film looked at a way of life — farming — that is facing extinction. ‘They [the government] want the land as a playground for people in the towns,’ said one Cornish farmer. We have become ‘unreal about animals…treating meat as something that comes in cellophane’, as another put it. We spent a third of our income on food in the Seventies; now it’s 8 to 9 per cent.

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Sarkozy’s lead widens

To shift focus in our election coverage to across the Channel, Nicolas Sarkozy’s lead is widening. Two new polls out today put him at 54% and 54.5% respectively, a comfortable lead over Ségolène Royal. Also, it looks like the debate was more of a win for Sarkozy than most commentators thought. A post-debate survey found that viewers took Sarkozy to be the more credible candidate by the whooping great margin of 51% to 31%. Sarkozy’ll be further encouraged by the fact that 51% of Bayrou backers who tuned in thought he’d make a good president compared to only 22% for Royal. Her aggressive tactics also seem to have backfired, with her likeability rating dropping by 13 points among debate watchers.

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Recreating an Elgar premiere

What is the peculiar magic of string quartets? Ian McEwan posed this question when I interviewed him recently. It came to mind again during an enchanting evening at the Spectator’s Westminster offices last night, as the Bridge Quartet gave a sublime performance of Elgar’s music, including the String Quartet in E minor. The event renewed the historic link between 22 Old Queen Street, once the home of Frank Schuster (1852-1927), and Elgar, the composer whom this great patron of the arts revered more than any other. Listening to the music in the panelled board-room, one was transported back to those evenings that Schuster held in honour of his musical hero, often with a magnificent dinner for the stars of London society.

Thursday

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Election night blogging on Coffee House

Our indefatigable political editor Fraser Nelson will be blogging the election results as they come in. He’s also one of the analysts on tonight’s BBC election special. So check back in through the night for Fraser's thoughts and tips.

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Comment Away

We've had had some problems earlier today with the comments but that's now fixed--apologies if you tried to post earlier. So please do fire away, just click on the comment button to do so.

Saturday

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Letters to the Editor | 28 April 2007

From our US edition

Shot in the dark Sir: Just a thought. Has anyone ever considered the possibility that, if all citizens were armed, the Columbine and Virginia Tech perpetrators would have been shot long before they killed so many (Leading article, 21 April)? Moreover, the 9/11 perpetrators would also have been shot before taking control of the aircraft — 130 armed passengers must trump four armed terrorists. Are proposed gun laws not just a vain attempt at treating an effect rather than stopping the cause? If a murderer knows he will be shot if he steps out of line, he will think twice.

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Politics is rubbish

An Englishman’s home is his castle, but his wheelie bin is not far behind as a symbol of domestic independence. So it is no surprise that the spread of fortnightly, rather than weekly, rubbish collection has stirred such strong emotions. In the midst of soaring April temperatures, the prospect of stinking piles of black bags, pecked at by rats and birds, is vile indeed. A government that lectures the electorate about ‘respect’ and antisocial behaviour cannot be complacent about a trend that risks bringing the hygiene standards of the shanty town to thousands of streets. Jim Callaghan never actually said ‘Crisis? What crisis?’, but the headline captured his jovial detachment from the collapse of basic amenities in Britain.

Saturday

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Letters to the Editor | 21 April 2007

US and them Sir: David Selbourne seems to suffer from tunnel vision in his analysis of failing US imperial ambitions (‘No more Pax Americana’, 14 April). He seems to believe that Islamism is its undoing and makes no mention of nationalism — a far more potent force. American imperialism is being resisted in Latin America as well as in the Middle East, and the common thread is nationalism, not Islamism. Paranoia about Islam is as widespread throughout the West as it once was about communism, but viewing either of these phenomena as monolithic is much too simplistic. The vast majority of Muslims around the world are concerned with local problems and have no interest in coercively spreading Islam.