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Comment on Why was the Times so eager to do the government’s dirty work? by Stephen Glover (14/06/2003) Mr Glover is correct when he implies that the settling out of court of the action brought by Michael Ashcroft is evidence of the government wishing to avoid the process of discovery and have their lies exposed.
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It is now a week since Alan Milburn seriously inconvenienced his patron, Tony Blair, and threw the reshuffle into chaos by announcing that he was quitting the Cabinet to spend more time with his children. In the interval, the entire resources of Fleet Street have been deployed to uncover the truth behind this extraordinary move.
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Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told Parliament that only one of the five economic tests that would allow Britain to join the eurozone had been met; this was whether the City of London would remain Europe’s leading financial centre. But Mr Brown said that at the next Budget he would ‘consider the
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Comment on The noble feat of Nike by Johan Norberg (07/06/2003) Though I would not describe myself being anti-globalisation, I do think some qualification of Johan Norberg’s article (the noble feat of Nike) is required. Admittedly, I have no information on the conditions in the Vietnam factory that Norberg refers to, but such conditions are
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Any day now, you can expect Downing Street to announce that there will be a public inquiry into the Third Crusade. Did Richard the Lionheart exaggerate the threat posed by Saladin? Was unreasonable force used at Acre, and what benefit was there to England in any case, when Richard’s time could have been better spent
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Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, faced an investigation by the all-party Commons foreign affairs select committee into claims that he had misled the nation about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He said this week: ‘Those people who are sitting there and saying, “It’s all going to be proved to be a big fib
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Comment on Television creates terrorists by Patrick Sookhdeo (31/05/2003) Dr Patrick Sookhdeo is the second Spectator contributor in the past few weeks to express the view that the world should hear and see a good deal less about the world than he thinks is right. What we can do about the stuff that concerns Dr
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Jeffrey Archer, the disgraced peer, should be let out of prison as soon as he would be if he were Joe Bloggs, the disgraced dustman. In July 2001 Archer was given a four-year sentence for perjury and perverting the course of justice, so in a few weeks’ time he will become eligible for parole. It
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Mr Peter Hain, the Secretary of State for Wales, who is the government’s representative to the convention that has published a draft constitution for the European Union, said, ‘If people don’t like what they get, they can vote against the government in the European elections next year’ (on 10 June). But the government shied away
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Comment on Are whites cleverer than blacks? by Sean Thomas (24/05/2003) Sean Thomas is right to condemn left-wingers for dishonestly shouting down discussion of IQ and race (article, 24 May 2003), but despite their bad faith, ‘The Left’ has a point. I studied at several institutions where we all had high IQs, and the more
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When the European Union drafted its Charter of Fundamental Rights at Nice three years ago, it wasn’t immediately obvious that among the first beneficiaries would be testosterone-charged male drivers bullying their way along the autobahn. But it is they, conclude lawyers working for British insurers, who have the most reason to celebrate the new diktats
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Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, sent Cabinet ministers a 2,500-page dossier on the Treasury’s assessment of the five economic tests applicable in deciding if Britain should join the euro-zone. The ministers were then invited in one by one for ‘trilateral’ talks with the Chancellor and Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister. The
Comment on The reek of injustice by Emma Williams (17/05/2003) Whilst I commend Emma Williams’ for painting a graphic picture of the hardships endured by the Palestinian population, she is wrong to suggest that Israelis are deluded over this fact. Unlike that of its neighbours, Israel’s media is diverse and objective allowing a clear perspective
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Anyone organising a protest against fat-cat pay should bear in mind the experience of a group of gas customers who recently attempted to take a 40-stone sow called Winnie to the AGM of energy company Centrica in Birmingham. She was to sit on the pavement before the press cameras and be fed a bucket of
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Clare Short, the International Development Secretary, resigned on the pretext that the Prime Minister had broken his assurances that the UN would be more involved in the reconstruction of Iraq. Mr Blair, she told the Commons, should start thinking about resigning himself and prepare for ‘an elegant succession’. Within half an hour, the Prime Minister
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Comment on Your Problems Solved by Mary Killen (10/05/2003) I see that a couple of unidentified actors have asked Mary Killen if she can tell them – 1) Is it a Brazilian custom to go to the loo for half an hour at a time? and2) How they can tactfully tell their Brazilian help that
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It is hard to decide which is the most ludicrous of the articles of the forthcoming EU constitution, but article 14 must be a contender. Back in October last year, the Praesidium of the European Convention produced its opening draft. The Praesidium is a group of magnificoes who have been meeting in Brussels, under the
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The Labour party suspended Mr George Galloway, an MP, from ‘holding office or representing the party’ while it investigated complaints that remarks he made during the war against Iraq might have constituted ‘behaviour that is prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the party’. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and Mr Alan Milburn, the Secretary of
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Comment on with friends like these . . . by Simon Heffer (03/05/2003) Could you please inform Simon Heffer, the next time you speak to him, that the French banned British beef as a result of the British Christmas time ban of French turkey a few years previously. If he cares to research the matter
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Tony Blair turned 50 this week. The milestone has been celebrated with a special exhibition by the staff of No. 10. In an impressive display of their talents, the spin doctors of Downing Street have boggled or bullied the media into presenting the Prime Minister as a sort of composite prime minister of 1945: Churchill