The Spectator

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 2 November 2002

Miss Estelle Morris resigned as Secretary of State for Education, saying she was not up to running a big department. She was replaced by Mr Charles Clarke, who was replaced as Labour party chairman by Mr John Reid, who was replaced as Northern Ireland Secretary by Mr Paul Murphy, who was replaced as Welsh Secretary by Mr Peter Hain, who was replaced as Minister for Europe by Mr Denis MacShane. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, had an argument at the end of the European Union summit in Brussels, which led President Jacques Chirac of France to say: 'You have been very rude and I have never been spoken to like this before.

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Feedback

Comment on Village idiots by Amrit Dhillon (26/10/2002) Amrit Dhillon's article on the village panchayat paints a very horrifying picture of grass roots democracy in India. Indeed, by his account, it looks no better than a macabre and cruel parody of what those who framed the constitution had in mind when they thought about introducing this traditional Indian form of village-level government. I think Dillon is quite right to suggest that where there is ignorance and illiteracy, there can be no real democracy. Nevertheless, in the way Dillon piles up the horrors, he seems to let his investigative zeal get the better of his journalistic balance.

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Russia is wrong

Of the many New Labour slogans which the government has tried quietly to drop over the past five years, none can have landed with quite such a thump as 'ethical foreign policy'. The party elected in 1997, it may hazily be remembered, promised to put an end to the practice of making shady deals with dictators to further British strategic interests and of turning a blind eye to the misdeeds of faraway countries in order to promote British trade. The government's moral compass, it was asserted, would read as true in an armchair in some distant presidential palace as it does in Whitehall.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 26 October 2002

The Fire Brigades Union announced a 48-hour national strike from 29 October, the first of a series of stoppages in pursuit of a 40 per cent pay rise. About 19,000 servicemen were put on alert to fill in for the firemen, with the help of 827 Green Goddess fire engines. Mr Bob Crow, the leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, said that if absence of firemen meant that Underground stations would be more dangerous, his men would consider not working on strike days. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, made a speech in Belfast in the wake of the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly, asking the Irish Republican Army for 'acts of completion'. 'We cannot carry on with the IRA half in, half out of this process,' he said.

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GO TO BLAZES

Any public-sector union contemplating a strike is best advised to start by targeting children's bookshops. It is remarkable how groups of workers who first impinge on the consciousness through the pages of nursery books manage to command greater public affection and higher wage settlements than those who do not. Nurses and train-drivers have done particularly well out of recent pay disputes. Municipal grave-diggers, by contrast, not only remain lowly paid operatives; they also continue to be held as chief bogeymen for the Winter of Discontent, when the 'dead went unburied'. Fireman Sam, as represented by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), is well aware of the power of public opinion.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 19 October 2002

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, told the House of Commons: 'Some say that we should fight terrorism alone and that issues to do with WMD [weapons of mass destruction] are a distraction. I reject that entirely.' The Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended and government of the province was resumed by Westminster a week after three men connected with Sinn Fein were charged with offences to do with the Irish Republican Army spying on the Northern Ireland Office. An inquiry by Mr Mike Tomlinson, the former chief inspector of schools, found that 1,945 A-level candidates had been unjustly deprived of the grades they deserved and more than 150 had lost places at their preferred universities because the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA board had arbitrarily lowered grades.

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LIE, LIE AND LIE AGAIN

There has been much sniggering in the Western media over Tuesday's referendum in Iraq on re-electing Saddam Hussein, since it is obvious that the only permissible answer was Yes. But how different are referendums in the European Union? On Saturday the Irish will be voting for the second time on the Nice Treaty, because when they voted on it in June 2001 they got the answer 'wrong' and voted No. If the vote is now Yes, the televised jubilation across the Continent will be as synthetic as it was in Baghdad. Doctors in the Netherlands say that committing euthanasia becomes easier after you have done it once. The same is evidently true of overruling democracy.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 12 October 2002

Police raided the offices of Sinn Fein in the Northern Ireland Assembly building at Stormont and several private addresses before charging Sinn Fein's head of administration at Stormont with passing on documents that could be 'useful to terrorists in planning or carrying out acts of violence'; two others were also charged. The action came after a year's investigation of spying by the Irish Republican Army at the Northern Ireland Office; transcripts of conversations between Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and President George Bush of the United States were said to have been copied. Mr David Trimble, First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly, flew to London for talks with Mr Blair.

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END THE CHARADE

A coalition with Sinn Fein was never likely to be straightforward for more normal, democratic parties. Only someone culpably naive could have expected it to play by a set of rules that is not of its own making. Sinn Fein is a minority group dedicated to dissimulation, conspiracy and infiltration according to the true and trusted principles first laid down by Lenin, with a definite and non-negotiable goal: the unification of Ireland, whether Ireland wants it or not. Power-sharing for Sinn Fein was always but a stepping-stone towards an irreversible change in sovereignty and towards total power. Its possession of a list of serving prison officers in Northern Ireland is a chilling indication of its probable intentions. This is how ethnic cleansing starts.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 5 October 2002

Mrs Edwina Currie, the former Conservative minister, revealed that she had had a four-year affair from 1984 with Mr John Major, the former Conservative prime minister. The Chestnut Grove School in Balham, south-west London, began to offer the morning-after pill to 11-year-olds. After thousands of A-level students' results were found to have been manipulated, Sir William Stubbs was forced by Miss Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, to resign as chairman of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority; he suggested she should consider her own position.

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BLAIR’S PFI RIP-OFF

We are at our best, asserts the Prime Minister, when we are at our boldest. His dictum, however, does not extend to Labour conference delegates, whom he prefers when at their most supine. On Monday, a motion calling for a review of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) was carried by 67 per cent to 32 per cent. Far from being impressed by this rare act of boldness from his party, Mr Blair treated it with contempt, announcing on Tuesday that PFI would not be reviewed but accelerated. One does not have to share the concerns or the ideology of Unison, the union which tabled the successful motion, to recognise that delegates have a point. Many of the PFI projects already completed have turned out to be embarrassing failures.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 28 September 2002

The government published its long-awaited dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It claimed that he has the capability to launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes and could have a nuclear weapon within two years. Parliament was recalled to discuss the Iraq question. The Prime Minister said, 'Disarmament of all weapons of mass destruction is the demand. One way or other, it must be acceded to.' Sixty-four MPs, including 56 Labour members, voted against the government on a technical motion, but Cabinet opposition to war, namely from Robin Cook and Clare Short, appeared to wither.

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STICK WITH THE UN

'I am in no doubt,' said the Prime Minister in last Tuesday's debate in the House of Commons, 'that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein is serious and it is imminent.' After reading the dossier on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction released in advance of that debate, most people will share his sentiment. The dossier provides evidence that Saddam could build chemical or biological weapons in less than one hour, and that he has been trying to acquire from Africa the plutonium he needs to make a nuclear bomb. Sooner or later, if not prevented from doing so, Saddam will acquire nuclear bombs. That prospect is truly terrifying.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 21 September 2002

The House of Commons was recalled for a day's debate on 24 September on the approaching war against Iraq, but no substantive vote will be allowed. Dr George Carey, in his last address as Archbishop of Canterbury to the Anglican Consultative Council, warned that unilateral action 'by dioceses and individual bishops' over homosexuality was driving the Anglican Church 'towards serious fragmentation and the real possibility of two (or, more likely, many more) distinct Anglican bodies emerging'. Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said that children of immigrant parents should talk to their mothers at home 'in English as well as in their historic mother tongue'.

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AXE SECTION 28

Millions of people are yearning for the Tory party to get its act together and provide a more audible opposition. It almost brings tears to the eyes of some supporters, therefore, to read that the party is determined to have a row about the square root of nothing. It is reported, perhaps unreliably, that there is yet another feud at the top about Section 28 of the 1986 Local Government Act. This is the measure, readers may remember, which forbids the promotion of homosexuality in schools. It is said that advisers of Mr Duncan Smith have urged him to acquiesce in the scrapping of Section 28, while supporters of David Davis are warning that their man may walk out of the shadow Cabinet in protest.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 14 September 2002

From our US edition

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, lent his support to President George Bush of the United States in preparing for war against Iraq. Mr Blair flew to Camp David in Maryland for a three-hour meeting with Mr Bush to agree their strategy. On his return he took up an engagement to visit the Queen at Balmoral. In a message for 11 September to the British in New York the Queen said: 'We honour the courage and determination of those in our armed forces and others who are striving to bring those responsible for this outrage to justice and to prevent similar atrocities in the future. Right must and will prevail.' A list of 67 Britons killed that day was released by the Foreign Office. A service at St Paul's Cathedral attended by the Prince of Wales remembered all who had died.

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BOTTOM INSPECTORS

Children, to judge by school exam results, just keep on getting cleverer. But in the inexorable rise of official literary and numeracy levels, there is sure to be a little blip: among those who began school in the autumn of 2002. When, in a dozen or so years' time, prospective employers are shaking their heads at the spelling errors in their CVs, they will have to explain that their early months of education were severely disrupted by government red tape. British classrooms are enduring their Hatfield moment. Just as one broken rail in Hertfordshire in 2000 had led, within days, to the paralysis of the entire rail network, so the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman has led in some cases to the complete suspension of education.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 7 September 2002

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said at a press conference in Sedgefield that a dossier on Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons development would be published. 'I hate war. Anyone with any sense hates war,' he said. 'We are in absolute agreement that Iraq poses a real and an unique threat to the security of the region and the rest of the world.' In new procedures imposed by the government, the Criminal Records Bureau still had 7,000 school staff to vet when the autumn term began, and many children had to be sent home.

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AMERICA’S DUTY

Saddam Hussein is a dangerous and evil man, and the world would be a better and safer place if he were removed from power. A killer from early adolescence, he is brutal and psychopathic even by the high standards of inhumanity prevailing in his region. His constant and unremitting search for weapons of mass destruction or mass terror augurs little good for the Middle East and the world. It has been argued, however, that even if he were successfully to develop such weapons, he would be unlikely ever to use them. After all, the military potential of Iraq is very limited, and Saddam, while utterly ruthless, is not known to be personally suicidal. His enemies have, and will always have, far more destructive weapons than he can ever hope to obtain.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 31 August 2002

Mr Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, called for a written constitution for the European Union; but in a speech to Scottish businessmen he played down the significance of the demand: 'The Conservative party has a constitution,' he said, 'and so do golf clubs in Scotland.' Dr Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, said that the situation in the Middle East was 'forcing Israel into postures that are incompatible in the long run with our deepest ideals'.