William Shawcross

Thursday

William Shawcross

The world is now inexorably divided – and the West must fight to survive

From our UK edition

In The Builder’s Stone, Melanie Phillips reminds us forcefully that we must never forget how 7 October 2023 changed the world. On that day Hamas terrorists from Gaza invaded southern Israel and brutally raped women and butchered or burned alive 1,100 Jewish men, women and children. They also dragged 250 Israelis, including three-year-old twins, grandparents and young women whom they had already attacked, into Gaza as hostages. They filmed it all on their body cameras, and perhaps the most terrifying thing they recorded was the glee with which they carried out these atrocities. Phillips, a British writer who lives in Jerusalem and London, has spent many decades fighting Goliaths.

Thursday

William Shawcross

The Queen’s dedication to service was learnt at her father’s knee

From our UK edition

If you have ever thought that there cannot be anything new to say or to learn about the Queen, you have not yet read Robert Hardman’s revelatory new biography of her in this, her astonishing Platinum Jubilee year. Hardman has spent the past 30 years researching and understanding the British monarchy, and he writes with an extraordinary fount of knowledge but, even more important, with a heartfelt appreciation of what has been called ‘the genius of constitutional monarchy’ and for the members of the family who implement it. He has interviewed everyone possible, including Prince Philip’s German great-niece and almost everyone else on the German side of the family, of whom the Prince took great care – as he did with every aspect of his life.

Tuesday

William Shawcross

Thank God for the Queen

From our UK edition

One happy result of the horrible virus is that it has prompted the Queen to give us not one but two statements of her faith in this country and in God. Together they demonstrate vividly the exquisite, strong but light touch of our almost timeless monarch. In her four-minute broadcast on the virus on Sunday 5th April, she did more than anyone else could have done to comfort and unite the country in this awful time of Covid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2klmuggOElE And then, in her unprecedented Easter statement , she showed (as she does every Christmas) her absolute faith in the teachings of Christ. We have to celebrate Easter apart this year. 'But Easter isn’t cancelled. Indeed, we need Easter as much as ever'.

Friday

William Shawcross

Why Britain’s Jews love Boris

From our UK edition

Boris as PM can be a joy! He is bold, he has such enthusiasm, he has marvellous and often funny turns of phrase and he often has great instincts.   Take for example his greetings to the Jewish people given just before Christmas on the feast of Hanukkah. It is exuberant, knowledgeable and very moving.   https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1208789388278276096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw This speech is only two minutes but all my Jewish friends are stunned by it – by his humour, his deep knowledge of their history and his total, positive embrace of their cause.

Thursday

William Shawcross

The Queen, and indeed the British public, deserve better than The Crown’s lies

From our UK edition

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge recently met with survivors of national disasters. They were attending the launch of a new charity. The Duke made a short, supportive speech. But much more important was the private time he and the Duchess spent with the survivors. As Lord Dannatt, who was hosting the public meeting said: ‘Their empathy with those affected demonstrated the vital link between the royal family and people of this country.’ That vital link is indeed one of the key strengths of the monarchy. Countless (and almost always unsung) hours are spent every year by royal family members with people needing recognition or comfort, as they visit schools, factories, charities, people’s homes.

Thursday

William Shawcross

Brexit has its risks. But staying in the EU is now unthinkable

From our UK edition

This is one of the most crucial weeks in modern British history. We have a prime minister and cabinet who understand the stakes in terms of our future independence. But the forces fighting them — some of them sincere, many of them cynical — are fearsome. There are risks in proceeding with Brexit. But there are far greater risks in abandoning it. This endless crisis has led to widespread criticism of British politicians of all hues, some of it justified. I find it deeply distasteful to see very senior Conservatives plotting with the opposition to bring down the Prime Minister. But far less criticism has been levelled at the EU itself — which is odd, because Brussels is the cause of our agonies, past and present.

Thursday

William Shawcross

We need the monarchy more than ever

From our UK edition

One part of our unwritten constitution has been functioning perfectly during the Brexit upheaval: the monarchy. Unhappy behaviour by some younger royals reminds us how jealously the institution must be protected. It will also be essential to guard the monarchy’s impartial ‘light above politics’ (Roger Scruton’s happy phrase) with more care than ever in the inevitable Brexit arguments of the next few months. Since Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952, aged only 25, she has provided a comforting, non-political presence throughout immense and often unsettling change in this country. There is no way in which a succession of republican presidents (probably politicians kicked upstairs) could have done the same.

Thursday

William Shawcross

Our greatest ambassador

From our UK edition

In her 66 years on the throne the Queen has represented Britain on official visits to at least 126 countries or territories, some of them many times. Robert Hardman has had the idea to write about her reign, and about Britain, through these myriad voyages. He is right to call his book Queen of the World. There is no other. He quotes Neil MacGregor, now the director of Berlin’s Humboldt Forum, pointing out that the Queen has officially entered the German language. The correct word for ‘queen’ used to be ‘die Konigin’; but now German grammar lists a new entry ‘die Queen’ and states: ‘There is no plural.

Monday

William Shawcross

Benjamin Netanyahu: Arab countries know that Iran wants to conquer them all

From our UK edition

Bibi Netanyahu was in London this month after meeting Angela Merkel, Emanuel Macron and Theresa May, the leaders of the three European countries which had committed most to President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Before he flew back to Israel he came to a crowded public meeting at Policy Exchange, whose director, Dean Godson, had asked me to talk with him. I asked him first what he had told the Europeans, who had reacted badly to President Trump’s unilateral action on Iran. 'Well I’ll tell you what I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell them to pull out of the Iran agreement - because I think it’s effectively defunct. The minute the United States decided to pull out of this very bad agreement … the weight of the American economy forced the issue.

Tuesday

William Shawcross

The genius of constitutional monarchy

From our UK edition

George Orwell famously wrote that an English intellectual would rather be caught stealing from the poorbox than be seen standing to attention for God Save the King. Such intellectuals must have had a terrible time last weekend when much of the nation's gaze was fixed on the wedding of two young people who are part of an institution we think of as quintessentially British. The newlyweds have shown early commitment to those qualities we celebrate as particularly British: duty, charity and the service of others. Whether it is the two tours in Afghanistan served by Prince Harry, or the charity work that the couple has embraced, the hallmarks of the monarchy reflect the nation at its best.

Tuesday

William Shawcross

Parliament is the voice of today. The monarch is the voice of history

From our UK edition

On this very day 60 years ago Queen Elizabeth II was crowned and she is still Queen. She is unique and so we are uniquely fortunate. It has become almost a truism to say that the Queen has presided over astonishing change in this kingdom and has been the still small voice of calm at the centre of the storm. But even clichés can contain truth. The white cliffs are still there, but this country is almost unrecognizable as that in which she was crowned. But she has remained the same as the beautiful young woman who was presented in Westminster Abbey as 'Your Undoubted Queen'. The Coronation is a Christian service but with elements of older, almost primeval sacrifice and dedication.  The words resound with glory.

Thursday

William Shawcross

Diary – 24 January 2013

From our UK edition

Kofi Annan has just been in town for an evening organised by The Spectator. The 800 seats at the Cadogan Hall could have been sold twice over; the former UN Secretary General has a huge following. Having known and admired him since Bosnia in 1993, I was very pleased to be his interlocutor. He has just published a fine memoir, Interventions. This deals with involvements such as the UN’s fight against HIV/AIDS — in which he gives President George W. Bush high marks — as well as the UN’s sometimes controversial military interventions as peacekeepers. He is candid about his own and the UN’s failures, particularly in Bosnia and Rwanda. But he still retains faith in the organisation.

Saturday

William Shawcross

Murdoch’s coup

From our UK edition

The launch of the Sun on Sunday is a perfectly timed riposte to Leveson Beleaguered staff at News International say they have rarely seen Rupert Murdoch so full of energy. Sleeves up, literally and figuratively, the almost 81-year-old newspaperman is back in his element, tearing around the offices at Wapping, doing what he always loves doing best — creating a new newspaper, and confounding his critics. The Sun on Sunday will be launched this weekend. While other newspaper proprietors are in retreat all over the world, and while Murdoch himself faces the greatest ever threat to his empire as a result of the phone hacking scandal, he charges the barricades, confounding his enemies, launching Britain’s first new Sunday paper in a decade.

Saturday

William Shawcross

You’ll miss him when he’s gone

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband was beaming when I saw him talking to Rupert Murdoch at the media magnate’s summer party at the Orangery, Kensington Palace, just three weeks ago. Ed Miliband was beaming when I saw him talking to Rupert Murdoch at the media magnate’s summer party at the Orangery, Kensington Palace, just three weeks ago. The Labour leader has since admitted that he did not raise the matter of phone hacking that evening. Of course not! He was trying to charm. But that is so last month. Now, Miliband is happily playing Pied Piper to the lynch mob against the lord of the evil empire whom the Labour party courted so long and so successfully. Mobs should never be trusted, let alone joined.

Saturday

William Shawcross

We are at war with hatred, fanaticism and despair

From our UK edition

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French philosopher, points out that with Benazir Bhutto, they killed ‘a spectacularly visible woman’ who, whatever her flaws as a political leader, was astonishingly brave in fighting — uncovered, unveiled — for politics ‘and refusing the curse that, according to the new fascists [the jihadists], floats over the human face of women’.Lévy suggests that Benazir’s name should now become another password ‘for those who still believe that the good genius of Enlightenment will win out over the evil genius of fanaticism and crime’. But the Enlightenment will be lost unless we all realise that we have to fight for it.

Saturday

William Shawcross

Now, more than ever, Britain must stay in Iraq

From our UK edition

William Shawcross denounces those who say we must stand firm in Afghanistan but flee the country we liberated from Saddam Hussein. The US ‘surge’ is beginning to work, and Gordon Brown must grasp that the war against Islamism is indivisible The new comfort zone for many politicians and leader-writers appears to be the notion that if Britain withdraws its troops from Iraq and sends all the freed-up forces to Afghanistan, then all will be well. Siren voices are insisting that honour would be satisfied by such a move and we would still be pulling our weight in what Gordon Brown refuses to call ‘the war on terror’ or ‘the war against Islamist extremism’. Afghanistan, say those voices, is the crucial place to be engaging al-Qa’eda. Iraq is a sideshow.

Saturday

William Shawcross

Pax Americana

From our UK edition

Tony Blair has played a blinder on Iraq, standing for the Iraqi people, with the United States, and up to the French and Germans. He has quite rightly said that after the war is over, 'there is going to have to be a discussion; indeed, a reckoning about the relations between Europe and America.' It will not be easy. There is cold fury in America about the perfidious manner in which the axis of France and Germany behaved in recent months, siding in effect with Saddam Hussein. The House of Representatives has just approved an amendment to a £51 billion Bill for financing the war and the start of reconstruction to make sure that no French, German, Russian or Syrian companies profit from it. Although the White House lobbied against it, the Bill was passed by 414-12.