The Spectator

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 29 January 2005

The government proposed that foreigners suspected of terrorism and held illegally at Belmarsh prison should be let out but somehow put under restriction. Four British citizens held in America’s prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were flown home and arrested. Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative party, said he sought a substantial reduction in immigration, which has averaged 157,000 a year under Labour; if the Tories won the election they would withdraw Britain from the 1951 UN convention on refugees. But European Union officials said that EU law prohibited Britain from setting a quota for refugees.

The Spectator

Immigration myths

Last week the Conservative party unveiled an extremely good policy: to cut government waste to the tune of £35 billion and to pass £4 billion worth of it to the public in tax cuts. This week it unveiled two much less good ones: to set an arbitrary limit on the number of immigrants allowed to come to Britain and to withdraw from the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. ‘Britain has reached a turning point,’ wrote the Conservative leader Michael Howard in a full-page advertisement in the Sunday Telegraph. ‘Our communities cannot absorb newcomers at today’s pace.’ Taken literally, Mr Howard’s statement is true. According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2003 there was a net inflow of 151,000 migrants into Britain.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 22 January 2005

From our US edition

The Conservatives published plans for spending if they were to win the next election. Presuming savings proposed by Sir Peter Gershon’s report for the Treasury, and incorporating new savings devised for them by Mr David James, they said they could reduce government spending by £35 billion, partly by cutting 235,000 Civil Service posts. Of this, £23 billion would be spent on extra services, principally health and education, £8 billion would fill the ‘black hole’ (borrowing) incurred by Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and £4 billion would pay for tax cuts; tax revenues for the current year are expected by the government to be about £450 billion.

The Spectator

Feedback | 22 January 2005

Slobs and snobs Simon Heffer’s article (‘The slob culture’, 15 January) identifies a long-standing decline. I live in Bangkok, Thailand, and on Christmas Eve I was in the lobby of a five-star hotel where milling around were representatives from the Caucasian world dressed in subfuscous clothing, ancient jeans and T-shirts — the uniform of the Western world. Presumably most of these people were preparing to dine in five-star restaurants in the city or in the hotel, but they had not bothered or had not wished to change out of their poolside garb for the evening.

The Spectator

Desperate Tory wives

Robert Jackson, the MP for Wantage, has come in for a good deal of abuse, though if anything not enough. Put yourself in the position of those who have worked for a quarter of a century to install Mr Jackson in parliament, so that he can speak in the Conservative interest, and then imagine your feelings of revulsion and disgust when the aesthetic booby announces that he is flouncing across the floor. Why now? they must be asking themselves in Wantage. What have we done to deserve it?

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 15 January 2005

Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was jolly annoyed when Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, decided not to step down in his favour last year after all, according to a new book by Mr Robert Peston; ‘There is nothing that you could say to me now that I could ever believe,’ Mr Brown reportedly said to Mr Blair. During a heated meeting between Labour backbenchers — displeased with the wrangling — and Mr Blair and Mr Brown, Lord Campbell-Savours asked Mr Brown either to deny the attributed quotation or rescind it, lest the Tories use it in the election campaign. The confirmed number of British people killed by the great wave in the Indian Ocean was 51, with 416 presumed dead and 701 unaccounted for.

The Spectator

Feedback | 15 January 2005

Don’t blame Davis My old friend Bruce Anderson doubtless wishes to do his friends in the Notting Hill set some good by blaming the continued poor Conservative showing upon David Davis (Politics, 8 January). But he is unjust. Mr Davis has claimed two ministerial scalps, and not just through good luck but rather through hard work and good judgment. Since he took over his brief, the Conservative party has achieved a substantial lead on both crime and immigration. If Bruce wishes to point the finger of blame, it should surely be at the absence of an attractive and persuasive Tory economic policy. But it must also be at those closest to Michael Howard.

The Spectator

Britain’s own Guantanamo

One of the less worthy reasons cited for going to war in Iraq is that it would increase Britain’s influence in the White House. If this was on the Prime Minister’s mind when he ordered British troops into combat, he has proved pathetic at exercising his advantage. Earlier this week the Foreign Secretary announced that the remaining four Britons held at Guantanamo Bay, the US military base in Cuba in which prisoners from the Afghan war of 2001 have been detained, are finally to be returned to Britain. Five other Britons were released last March. The legal basis on which these men, along with 680 other Muslims, have been held is dubious to say the least.

Saturday

The Spectator

Feedback | 8 January 2005

Sex, war and the Word It is interesting how people reveal their prejudices by the words they use. So, to A.N. Wilson (‘Holy Sage’, 18/25 December) those who oppose homosexuals taking high office in the Church of England are ‘bigots’, while those in favour are ‘enthusiasts’. He argues that because the Church has changed its position in the past towards such things as pacifism and sexual abstinence except for the purposes of reproduction (both demanded by the early Church), it is therefore possible to ‘move on’ in other areas as well, e.g., in the case of homosexual clergy. We need to make a distinction, however, between the Bible (the word of God) and extra-biblical writings (the words of men).

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 8 January 2005

From our US edition

To relieve the survivors of the destructive wave in the Indian Ocean, British people donated £60 million in a week to the disaster emergency committee co-ordinated by the main aid charities. The Queen, who herself gave a substantial donation, said: ‘I have been impressed by the willingness of people in Britain to give generously.’ Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, remained on a seaside holiday in Egypt, which some people criticised on various grounds. ‘At first it seemed a terrible disaster,’ he said, ‘but I think as the days have gone on people have recognised it as a global disaster.’ He returned to a domestic manifesto wrangle with Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The Spectator

Labour’s attack on the Crown

Since 1997, in a cynical effort to prove that it values power for more than its own sake, the Blair government has sought to tear up the constitutional map and impose its own, ‘modernised’, ways of doing things. This has not been uniformly successful. Devolution, for example, has led to financial profligacy in Scotland and apathy in Wales, without providing better government in either. Reform of the House of Lords has been so botched that even some on the centre of politics are harking back to the benign days of the hereditary peerage. Although Labour has more than its share of republicans in high places, it has not sought to hold such a public debate on the role of the monarchy as took place on either of those first two questions.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of 2004

JANUARY Lord Hutton’s report declared that the government was not ‘dishonourable, underhand or duplicitous’. Mr Mikhail Saakashvili, who had led popular demonstrations in Georgia against Mr Eduard Shevardnadze, won the presidential elections. Hundreds of reformist candidates were banned from standing in the Iranian elections. Hope was given up of hearing any signal from Beagle 2, the British craft sent to Mars. Dr Harold Shipman, who had murdered at least 215 patients, was found hanged in his prison cell. Parmalat, the Italian food group, was exposed in a vast fraud. The dollar weakened against the euro. Police in Madhya Pradesh were paid a bonus of 35p a month to grow moustaches to increase their authority.

The Spectator

Feedback | 1 January 2005

From our US edition

We are not evil I am sorry that Steve (‘We are all Pagans now’, 18/25 December) believes that we Dominicans are evil. I expect he thinks that we are so awful because we are supposed to have run the Inquisition. Actually, there were many different ‘inquisitions’, some run by the Church and others by the State. Sometimes they did terrible things, and we Dominicans should repent of our part in their cruelty. But we did not generally run the inquisitions and were not even the order most involved. Witches should look back to the inquisitions almost with affection, since wherever they operated there was vastly less persecution of witches.

The Spectator

Don’t mimic Blair

It may seem trivial, when so many thousands lie dead on the shores of the Indian Ocean, but we are now perhaps 14 weeks from a general election, and it is time to consider the apparent — the appalling — success of the Labour government. In circumstances that would be almost fatal to a Tory administration, Mr Blair has just lost a close Cabinet colleague. He has recently returned from Baghdad, where he saw the catastrophic consequences of the coalition operation in Iraq. Many of us who supported the war did so in the hope that it would be in the interests of the Iraqi people. Those hopes now look forlorn.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 18 December 2004

From our US edition

Lord Butler of Brockwell, who had headed the inquiry into intelligence about Iraq, accused Mr Tony Blair’s administration of ‘bad government’, being unchecked by Parliament and free to bring in a ‘huge number of extremely bad Bills, a huge amount of regulation and to do whatever it likes’ with an eye to the next day’s headlines. The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, denied a fresh allegation that he had helped fast-track a tourist visa to Austria for his ex-lover’s nanny, Leoncia Casalme.

The Spectator

Feedback | 18 December 2004

From our US edition

Ulster is not all right Leo McKinstry’s knowledge of his native province as it is today seems somewhat superficial (‘Ulster is all right’, 4 December). It is not clear how the rebranding of the Royal Ulster Constabulary as the Police Service of Northern Ireland — a move resented with good reason by many in Ulster — can be regarded as bringing policing here ‘into line with the approach taken in the rest of the United Kingdom’. And it is more than a little shameful that in paying tribute to the army’s role in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, McKinstry neglects to mention the RUC; he may have forgotten the more than 300 police officers murdered since 1969, but few here have done so.

The Spectator

Let them marry

It is 12 years since the Queen stood up at dinner and coined the expression annus horribilis to describe the miseries of 1992. She probably didn’t even have in mind the fact that her Chancellor of the Exchequer had just frittered away £5 billion of taxpayers’ money and caused thousands of homeowners to lose their homes in the futile cause of pegging the pound to the Deutschmark; it was more a way of describing her sadness at losing part of Windsor Castle to fire, having to endure pictures of the Duchess of York cavorting on a Mediterranean beach, and above all having to suffer the announcement that her eldest son and heir was to separate from his wife. In some ways, the year of Our Lord 2005 promises little better than 1992.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 11 December 2004

From our US edition

The Army Board approved a scheme to amalgamate all 19 single-battalion regiments into ‘super regiments’. The BBC is to get rid of 3,000 staff in three years to save £320 million. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution called for a ban on fishing in a third of British waters. The Department of Health told Britain’s 1,184 hospitals how to clean floors and lavatories in an attempt to reduce infection by Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which kills thousands a year. Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, demanded in a five-year plan that the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts should convict, fine or caution 1.

The Spectator

Feedback | 11 December 2004

From our US edition

Clarke v. Clark Ross Clark is wrong to assert that the government exerts any influence over the value ascribed to exams in school performance tables (‘Lies, damned lies and education’, 20 November). He does a gross disservice to the pupils and teachers whose attainment he seeks to belittle. The regulatory authority for public examinations — the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) — is responsible for the maintenance of examination standards. Its extensive programme to monitor standards over time does not support the contention that there has been a lowering of GCSE standards. It is the QCA, not the government, which established and consistently maintained its judgment that six-unit GNVQs are deemed to be the equivalent of four GCSEs.

The Spectator

Free the BBC

If anyone needed convincing of the BBC’s pathological self-importance, proof has been provided by the corporation’s news coverage of its own reorganisation. On Tuesday, a day on which back-bench Labour MPs threatened a revolt against David Blunkett’s proposed law against incitement to religious hatred, and Hamid Karzai was inaugurated as Afghanistan’s first democratically elected president, the BBC’s reporters struggled to cover any story beyond their own building.