The Spectator

Saturday

The Spectator

Debt bomb

Sir Ian McKellen’s visits to Downing Street were supposedly to discuss gay rights. To study the Prime Minister’s conference speech at Bournemouth, though, suggests another possibility: that our foremost Shakespearian actor has been giving Tony Blair some voice training. The trembling, impassioned delivery, the pregnant pauses: while most retired prime ministers these days are assured of a lucrative second career addressing annual corporate beanfeasts in glitzy convention halls across America, Tony Blair’s talents will earn him a place, too, on the provincial theatre circuit. Puffy, red-blooded socialists who only a few moments earlier were plotting over pints of Tetleys were caught sobbing, on camera.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 27 September 2003

The Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon told the Hutton inquiry that there was 'not a shred of evidence' that he had sought to identify the Ministry of Defence weapons expert Dr David Kelly as the source of Andrew Gilligan's BBC report on disquiet over the government's dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Lord Hutton then released the diaries of the Prime Minister's former director of communications, Alastair Campbell, who wrote of a meeting with Mr Hoon to discuss using Dr Kelly as a means of discrediting Mr Gilligan; 'I agreed it would fuck Gilligan,' wrote Mr Campbell. Richard Hatfield, head of personnel at the Ministry of Defence, described as 'outstanding' the support given to Dr David Kelly before he committed suicide.

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Happy birthday to us

Readers may feel they have had almost enough of The Spectator's 175th anniversary. Enormous and flattering articles have appeared in newspapers, including the Guardian. Spectator staff have been deployed on the airwaves, plugging merrily away. If the thought were not so appalling, one might even wonder whether there were some public-relations campaign, to 'plant' favourable items at strategic points in the media landscape. As the festivities come to their peak, routs and revels have been organised, sponsored by diamond companies and attended by Spectator-related celebrities such as Charles Moore and Nigella Lawson. Now, however, by way of a climax, a beautifully produced one-off anniversary edition is on the stands, an anthology of the best journalism of the last 175 years.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 20 September 2003

Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, gave evidence by a voice-link to the second round of hearings of the Hutton inquiry into the events surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the expert on Iraqi weapons. He said that the intelligence that weapons of mass destruction might be used within 45 minutes 'came from an established and reliable source, quoting a senior Iraqi military officer who was certainly in a position to know'. On being asked if it had been given undue emphasis in the government's dossier, he said: 'Given the misinterpretation that was placed on the 45-minute intelligence, with the benefit of hindsight you can say that is a valid criticism.

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Feedback | 20 September 2003

Comment on Diary by Nicholas Farrell (13/09/2003) Last week many people in Italy were both shocked and disgusted by Berlusconi's statement about the fascist regime, according to which "That was a much more benign dictatorship - Mussolini did not murder anyone. Mussolini sent people on holiday to confine them". Giovanni Amendola (liberal deputy and former minister, d.1926); Pietro Gobetti (intellectual and founder of a liberal review, d.1926); Antonio Gramsci (founder of the Italian Communist Party, d.1937); Giacomo Matteotti (socialist deputy, d.1924); Carlo and Nello Rosselli (intellectuals and founders of an anti-fascist review, d.1937); Father Giovanni Minzoni (active supporter of the peasant's rights, against the landowners backed by the fascists, d.1923).

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Unfair to the Third World

To appreciate the unique affection enjoyed by the British farmer, it is necessary to look no further than the bumf put out for British Food Fortnight, a series of harvest festivals, farmers' markets and barbecues to be held across the country from 20 September to 4 October. 'Farmers would gain if we could all eat more locally, regionally and UK-produced food,' it reads, before suggesting some prayers for the brave men who plough the furrow in their Massey Fergussons.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 13 September 2003

From our US edition

Britain sent about 1,400 more troops to Iraq, the 2nd Battalion Light Infantry and the 1st Battalion Royal Green Jackets, to supplement its force of 10,000. Another 1,200 may be sent too. A man died during a clash between two factions of Iraqi asylum-seekers and two dozen men using baseball bats, sticks, bricks and knives in the St Ann's district of Nottingham. Mr Paul Evans, the commissioner of Boston city police department, was appointed by Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, as head of the Police Standards Unit, which monitors local forces. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, told the press he was going to say, at a TUC dinner, 'The idea of a left-wing Labour government as the alternative to a moderate and progressive one is the abiding delusion of 100 years of our party.

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Feedback | 13 September 2003

Comment on Forza Berlusconi! by Boris Johnson and Nicholas Farrell (06/09/2003) As a Swiss citizen interested in political history, and as an observer of recent political developments in Europe, I must question the approach of the media to the phenomenon Berlusconi and the effects it may produce in the long term. After 1989, a new class of politicians has appeared the members of which are not in the least interested in maintaining the conventional texture of the nation-state and it's traditional principles, e.g. separation of powers, constitutional law, independence of the judiciary, but mainly in the pursuit of personal power play.

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Rape and justice

Justice should not only be done, but be seen to be done, and therefore secrecy in trial proceedings is to be countenanced only when circumstances genuinely demand it. However, justice also requires that people should not be punished for what they have not done, or for what it cannot be proved that they have done. Innocent people, or people not proved guilty, should be able to live their lives after their trial as if they had never been accused. The amendment to the Sexual Offences Bill passed by the House of Lords, granting anonymity to men accused of rape until they are found guilty, is therefore just and proper. This is because it is impossible, in the present climate at least, to live down a widely publicised accusation of rape.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 6 September 2003

Mr Alastair Campbell confirmed that he was to resign as the Prime Minister's director of com-munications and strategy. He is to be succeeded, at least in the first half of the title, by Mr David Hill, but there is to be a general musical-chairs in the department, about which Mr Peter Mandelson is said to have been consulted. The Hutton inquiry into the events surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the expert on Iraqi weapons, heard evidence from Mrs Janice Kelly his widow, who said, 'He said several times over coffee, over lunch, over afternoon tea that he felt totally let down and betrayed' – by the Ministry of Defence.

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Feedback | 6 September 2003

From our US edition

Comment on Render unto the Pope... by Adrian Hilton (30/08/2003) Hiltons fear is not an irrational one. It is true that Europeans are threatening England's sovereignty. However the EU is not a front for Rome. The existence of predominately protestant nations in the EU proves that. Many sovereign nations both inside and outside of Europe are predominantly Catholic. These nations maintain their sovereignty and individuality. There are catholic MP's in England. To prevent the possibility that these MP's may in fact be papist spies plotting against Queens Bess and the realm, Hilton should be appointed a modern day Francis Walsingham to weed them out. The English have proven themselves capable of separating faith and politics.

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Kelly’s case for war

The most revealing evidence to the Hutton inquiry so far has been provided not by Alastair Campbell, Andrew Gilligan or Geoff Hoon but by David Kelly's sister, Sarah Pape. In the run-up to war, she told the inquiry on Monday, she had discussed the issue of Iraq with her brother, believing that he would agree with her view that war was unjustified: 'I was very surprised when he was absolutely convinced that there was almost certainly no solution other than a regime change, which was unlikely to happen peacefully and regrettably would require military action to enforce it.' In fact, she added, Dr Kelly was so forthright in his support for war that he won round the entire, previously sceptical, family.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 30 August 2003

The Hutton inquiry into the events surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the expert on Iraqi weapons, heard evidence from Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, Mr Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, and Mr John Scarlett, the chairman of the joint intelligence committee, who said that on 4 September the committee heard that an intelligence source indicated that in Iraq 'from forward deployed storage sites, chemical and biological munitions could be with military units and ready for firing within 45 minutes'. On one day alone the inquiry released 9,000 pages of evidence on the Internet. A virus called Sobig.F alarmed email users but failed to cause the destruction feared. The West Coast line from Euston to Scotland was closed all week near Milton Keynes for engineering works.

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Feedback | 30 August 2003

Comment on The Gospel according to Braveheart by Deal W. Hudson (23/08/2003) My thanks to Mr. Hudson for a sober and fair review of this forthcoming film. It seems as if certain people at the Anti-Defamation League and in "progressive" Christian circles are so keen to avoid suggestions of "collective guilt" for Christ's suffering and death that they posit in its stead an equally untenable perpetual and universal innocence for every Jewish person who has ever lived. The Gospels record that certain Jewish leaders incited a mob, and that the procurator acceded to the mob's wishes.

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A true conservative

Sir Wilfred Thesiger, who died on Sunday, needs no memorial beyond his own books and photographs. These will live for as long as mankind is interested in the traditional societies of which he left such a brilliant record. Nobody can ever again write that kind of book or take in such abundance that kind of photograph, for those societies no longer exist in the form in which Thesiger knew them. But it is worth asking why it should have been Thesiger, rather than anyone else, who acquired the knowledge needed to write about the members of the Rashid tribe with whom he spent five years travelling on camels in the great sand desert of southern Arabia, or about the marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, among whom he lived for seven years.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 23 August 2003

Documents presented to Lord Hutton's inquiry into the events surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the expert on Iraqi weapons, showed that Mr Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, overruled a recommendation from Sir Kevin Tebbit, the permanent undersecretary at the ministry, that Dr Kelly should not be required to appear before the Commons foreign affairs committee as well as its security and intelligence committee; 'Presentationally, it would be difficult,' wrote Mr Hoon's private secretary, 'to defend a position in which the government had objected to Dr Kelly appearing before a committee of the House which takes evidence in public.

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The common enemy

The murderous attack on the United Nations in Baghdad has brought some clarity to the situation. It has exposed the essential community of interest between the UN and the United States. Those two entities often disagree so radically about methods that the fundamental similarity of their aims is easily overlooked. In Iraq, they are engaged in a liberal imperialist exercise which has the aim of bringing the blessings of democracy to people who until earlier this year suffered under a most vicious tyranny. The UN and US suffer, therefore, from the paradox which has always afflicted the liberal imperialist, namely that in order to bring freedom to people less fortunate than himself, he must first impose his will upon them, in the first instance by force of arms.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 16 August 2003

Lord Hutton began his inquiry into the events leading to the death of Dr David Kelly, the expert on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Mr Andrew Gilligan, who had used Dr Kelly as his source for a report on the BBC about the 'sexing up' of the government's September dossier on Iraq, made available notes made after meeting him; part said, 'most people in intel werent happy with it because it didn't reflect the considere view they were putting forward Campbell real info but unr. incl against ur wishes'. Miss Susan Watts, the science editor of BBC's Newsnight, said her shorthand notes of Dr Kelly's remarks about the claim that weapons could be deployed in 45 minutes read: 'a mistake to put in, Alastair Campbell seeing something in there, single source, but not corroborated, sounded good'.