Feedback | 22 March 2003
Comment on The case for colonialism by Daniel Kruger (15/03/2003) Daniel Kruger invokes the authority of Isaiah Berlin as he opens his case for an American imperium:
The Spectator
Saturday
Freedom from fear
Fear and hope are the two great motivators of human action, and neither untempered by the other leads to wise decision-making. Paralysis by unreasonable fear is as much to be avoided as the foolhardiness induced by groundless hope; but, of the two, fear is the more easily generated. It is certainly more common nowadays than
Saturday
Portrait of the Week – 15 March 2003
Britain joined the United States and Spain in tabling an amendment to the draft resolution before the Security Council of the United Nations, reading: ‘Iraq will have failed to take the final opportunity afforded by resolution 1441 unless on or before 17 March 2003 the Council concludes that Iraq has demonstrated full, unconditional, immediate and
Blair’s Calvary
There has always been something of a Jesus complex about Tony Blair. It suits him, temperamentally, to evangelise, to parade the passion of his belief, and to accept the devotion of his followers. It would now appear that he is approaching his political Calvary. As the hymn says, ‘Sometimes they strew his way, and his
Saturday
Portrait of the Week – 8 March 2003
Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said in a speech in Swansea: ‘In 1938 Chamberlain was a hero when he brought back the Munich agreement. And he did it for the best of motives. He had seen members of his precious family, people he loved, die in the carnage of World War I. He was
STOKING PANIC
Having had a peek through the gates of Downing Street, the next item on a tourist’s itinerary is a short stroll across Horse Guards Parade to the Cabinet War Rooms, from where Winston Churchill directed operations in the second world war. We don’t yet know where tourists of the future will be going to view
Saturday
Portrait of the Week – 1 March 2003
Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said, in an emergency statement to the House of Commons on Iraq, that 100 per cent co-operation by Saddam Hussein was necessary, and ‘anything less will not do’. A day’s debate followed in the Lords and Commons, where many Labour members were prepared to vote against the government. Mr
THE POINT OF THE TORIES
The Tory party is like some particularly gloomy man going through a mid-life crisis. His wife has left him, to universal applause. As so often in these cases, he seems unable to talk about anything except himself, thereby making his position worse. He takes a girl out to dinner, and she is prepared to give
Saturday
Portrait of the Week – 22 February 2003
Perhaps a million people rallied in Hyde Park after a march through London in opposition to war against Iraq. Meanwhile Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said in a speech to a Labour spring conference in Glasgow, ‘I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership,
NO PROFIT, NO CURE
Modern-day wizards in the laboratories of the world’s pharmaceutical companies should take a day off from tending their test tubes and concoct a new word for ‘profit’. It is needed because the existing word has been demonised to the point at which Western businessmen hardly dare utter it in public. At the World Trade Organisation
Saturday
Portrait of the Week – 15 February 2003
Thousands prepared to march to Hyde Park in London to demonstrate opposition to war against Iraq; they included Mr Charles Kennedy, the leader of the Liberal Democrat party. About 400 soldiers from the Grenadier Guards and Household Cavalry with armoured cars began to patrol Heathrow airport, authorised by Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister. The
POLL TAX ON WHEELS
The government has a thing about the mediaeval period. Charles Clarke complains that universities ‘have governance systems that stretch back to mediaeval times’. David Blunkett complains that the law takes ‘a mediaeval view of marriage’. The Ministry of Agriculture apologises for using ‘mediaeval’ pyres during the foot-and-mouth outbreak. The implication, one presumes, is that mediaeval
Saturday
Portrait of the Week – 8 February 2003
Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, returning from a meeting at the White House with President George Bush of the United States, said, ‘I believe there will be a second resolution,’ referring to a further United Nations Security Council vote for action against Iraq, the advisability of which he had tried to convince Mr Bush.
THE CURSE OF MANAGEMENT
Everyone knows that the National Health Service employs too many managers and too few nurses. Enter any saloon bar in the land and you will be told as much. But this popular wisdom finds shockingly emphatic confirmation in a new pamphlet, Resuscitating the NHS, written by Dr Maurice Slevin, a cancer consultant, and published by
Saturday
Portrait of the Week – 1 February 2003
From our US edition
Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, decided to fly to Camp David for talks with President George Bush of the United States about the war against Iraq. Mr Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said: ‘The Iraqi regime is responding to resolution 1441 not with active co-operation but with a consistent pattern of concealment and deceit.’
THE CASE FOR ACTION
There are some for whom George W. Bush – or any other Republican president, for that matter – will always be a gun-slinging cowboy bursting through the swing doors of some saloon and firing off for the hell of it. For them, the American President is an irredeemable warmonger intent on attacking Saddam with the
Saturday
Portrait of the Week – 25 January 2003
From our US edition
Police raided the North London Central Mosque in Finsbury Park, long suspected to have terrorist links. Seven people were arrested and a stun gun and a CS gas canister were seized. The government dispatched 30,000 troops and 120 Challenger tanks to the Gulf in preparation for an invasion of Iraq, but insisted that war was
LIBERATE THE LORDS
It is probably some time since even the keenest student of politics focused on the future of the House of Lords. Most people will remember that day the hereditary peers were expelled from the red benches, amid the horrible glee of Baroness Jay and others. Some may dimly recall a row between William Hague and
Saturday
Portrait of the Week – 18 January 2003
From our US edition
Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said at a press conference: ‘If there is a breach of the existing UN resolution I have no doubt at all that the right thing to do in those circumstances is disarm Saddam by force.’ He also said: ‘If there is a breach we would expect the United Nations
WHO, WHOM?
Looking at the wan, pathetic face of Pete Townshend, the rock musician arrested for possessing child pornography from the Internet, it is hard not to feel a smidgen of sympathy for him. He has not yet been convicted of any offence, and it may turn out that he has not committed one – but his