Bribe me by all means, but it won’t make any difference

To a degree that I find downright insulting, I have never been the object of any attempt at bribery or corruption. In the course of a five-year political career, I have been offered not so much as the sniff of a directorship; no one has come close to suggesting that I might like to fly my family to the World Cup or a shopping trip to Dubai.

Mohamed Fayed has never sent me a hamper. As I look around at the items I have been sent in the post, I see a device for squeezing slugs, a pot of mustard and a baseball cap from Liverpool. And that is about it. It is a scandal. In a way that I find positively hurtful, big business seems to think it can rub along without me. I do not appear to figure on the flow-charts of influence.

Continue reading Corruption in the UK, USA, European Parliament … →

Labour legislates, then we try to work out what the law is

So you get back from that delightful Christmas break with the in-laws and the first sight to greet your jaundiced eyeballs as you turn the key in the lock is the smashed pane in the kitchen window; and just as your tired and crapulous brain is trying to work it out, you notice the gap on the shelf where the television used to be, and the straggle of possessions on the stairs.

Yup, you say to your loved one: whaddya know. It’s happened again. You’ve had a visit from the local wealth redistribution agency.

So you ring the police station to report this banal event and, whaddya know, they haven’t got enough manpower to attend the scene. No time to dust for fingerprints; no time to take your statement; no time to collar the local thugs who are almost certainly rejoicing in the possession of your laptop, laughing like hyenas at the embarrassing love scenes in your unfinished novel.

And why, you ask, choking, is no member of the constabulary able to come immediately to the scene of the felony? Well, dearie, says the lovely policewoman on the switchboard, they’re all off at the hunt, aren’t they?

I don’t know how many burglars are thinking of trying their luck over the New Year holiday, and I don’t want to encourage them, but it seems to me that in rural areas they will have an unrivalled opportunity. Not only will the British people be in their habitual state of hangover, but the poor old police force will be asked to cope with another colossal insurrection by what was once a quite innocent sector of society.

Continue reading Labour legislation: police, hunting, government agencies … →

Welcome to Doughty Street

Boris takes his successor on a guided tour of the Spectator offices

It is an eternal and reassuring fact of human nature that when an editor announces that he is stepping down from a great publication, there is not the slightest interest in what he plans to do with his life, or even who he was.
I have received many phone calls from friends and colleagues since announcing last Friday that this would be my last edition, and they only want to know one thing. ‘Who is taking over?’
I wish I knew myself. But since the white smoke has yet to go up, I thought I had better write a general welcome to whoever you are out there. I propose to open the door of 56 Doughty Street and show you — not so much how it’s done — but where it’s done.
You arrive at a big black door in Holborn with a brass plaque, and after you have gained admission, you find a scene of domestic chaos, with dog leads, umbrellas, champagne and other impedimenta. Immediately beneath a sign saying ‘No Bicycles’ you will notice several bicycles.
You will dimly glimpse other offices ahead and to your left, the Books and Arts and Cartoon departments, bulging with the greatest talents in journalism. But if you are like me, you will be overcome with nerves and scoot straight upstairs for your office, on the first floor. As soon as you walk in, your heart will lift.

Continue reading Welcome to The Spectator →

Only Charles Kennedy is capable of bubble-gumming this coalition together

Where would muddle-headed mugwumps be without Charlie?

In this season of goodwill and fellowship I am well aware, O kind and loyal readers, of the many calls there have already been on your charity, and I know how magnificently you respond. But I want today to draw your attention to the plight of a victim scarcely less deserving than the causes for which you recently rang The Daily Telegraph Christmas appeal.

He is far more winsome than the baby seals of the Canadian ice floes, with their voracious appetites for cod. He is more endangered than the Giant Panda, whose laid-back style he so brilliantly emulates. He is the red squirrel of British politics, a cheerful addition to a drab landscape, about to be ruthlessly extinguished by his grey-suited brethren.

Here he is, the fellow who actually increased the Lib Dems’ representation in the Commons at the last election, and he is the victim of brutal briefings by “unnamed” Liberal MPs. “Charlie’s gotta go,” say these nameless ones. “He’s in the last chance saloon,” they say, adding, “ho, ho.”

Why are they so nervous of naming themselves, these unnamed Liberal MPs? It’s not as though their names would be recognised by anyone else. The only distinctively named Lib Dem MP is my friend Lembit Opik, the brilliant asteroid spokesman, and he is one of the few to have had the guts to speak out for Charlie.

Continue reading Charles Kennedy as the red squirrel of British Politics →

The poor are being robbed in Labour’s class war

I suppose as a politician you must get used to humbug, hypocrisy and sickening opportunism, but when Gordon Brown stood up and announced to the Labour Party conference that the chief defect of David Cameron, as Tory leader, was that he was “an old Etonian”, I am afraid I almost blew a gasket.

It’s not just that I, too, had the joy of attending the Fettes of England. It is not the sheer chippiness I resent. It is not his pathetic attempt to curry favour with his rank-and-file followers by making snide remarks about an opponent’s background, when he is himself the son of the manse and the beneficiary of one of the finest educations this country can provide, at one of its very poshest universities.

Continue reading The Chancellor and the Class Divide →

I’ll drink to a longer life, but I’m not sure how I’ll pay for it

If you are anything like me, you can’t help salivating when you walk past the glistening vitrines of the estate agents. Ooh yes, there it is, some hutch or hovel of exactly the kind you bought 10 years ago – and look at it now.

Listen to the breathless adjectives with which the realtors announce this “rare opportunity to purchase” some hopeless, sunless, gardenless dump. Hark at them raving about the outlook of the kitchen, when you know in your heart it has all the charm and amenity of Fred West’s cellar. Then look at the price, my dears. Look at those zeroes spooling across the page like a child blowing bubbles.

I know it is rude to discuss property prices, but this column has never been bashful, and I propose to give you the eye-popping history of the Johnson investments. In 1995 we bought a house worth x. About four years later we sold it for 2x, and bought a bigger house worth y. Unless the prices in the estate agents’ are wrong, it now appears to be worth 2y, or possibly even 2.1y, where y is already a pretty chunky sum.

It is quite mad. It is not as if the people of the neighbourhood have all struck oil in the basement. It’s everywhere, this deep, dark love of inflation, not just in Henley-on-Thames, the hottest house-price hotspot in Britain, but across the country. An astonishing 70 per cent of British adults are owner-occupiers, and the result is that huge numbers of us have become hopelessly addicted to property porn. We drool over the leaflets shoved through our doors. We marvel that anyone can seriously ask that much for that shack down the road with the ulcerated stucco and the buddleia growing out of the architrave. Then we secretly pat ourselves on the back for being so smart as to invest in property; and we forget the wider consequences, not just for Britain, but also for ourselves.

The national obsession with house prices means that if there is the slightest tremor in the market, the press becomes almost unhinged with alarm; and it means the economy as a whole is steadily skewed out of shape. The total wealth of the British people is about £5,000 billion, of which £1,300 billion is in our funded pensions, and a stunning £2,500 billion – half the national wealth – is in the value of our houses net of mortgages; and over the past 20 years, that proportion has been growing, as the proportion of our wealth held in pensions has been shrinking.

Houses cost more and more; and for those who are not owner-occupiers, of course, the position becomes worse and worse. All MPs meet young people who are desperate to get on the property ladder, but who cannot afford it, and this is having a serious demographic impact. Every year from 1997 to 2003, the average age of first-time buyers increased. The longer couples have to wait to find a house, the longer they delay having children. The longer they delay having children, the fewer they have; and it is the general shortage of children that is at the heart of the pensions crisis.

An ever higher percentage of the population is now over 65, and an ever smaller percentage of the population is below 16, and that means, bluntly, that the dependency ratio is getting more and more alarming. As the century goes on, there will be a huge wedge of ageing baby-boomers depending on the graft, effort and taxes of a relatively diminishing number of young people. We baby-boomers fully intend to live longer and longer (I am told it is likely that thousands of us, in the 1964 baby boom, will live to see 2064, and I will certainly give it a shot with the help of my patent red-wine diet), and we will need more and more pension, and the decrepitude of our old age will be attended by ever more expensive NHS interventions.

There is only one way to change that dependency ratio, and that is for the women of Britain to punch out more babies. As is well known, the fertility of the average British woman hovers around 1.7, which is well below the rate of replenishment, and insofar as the British population is set to grow, it is entirely thanks to immigration.

All sorts of explanations are offered for the national baby famine. Traditionalists say it is to do with women’s lib, and girls thinking of their careers, and leaving it too late. At which point in the argument, the girls get very testy, and say it is all the fault of the young men these days, who are useless and reluctant to commit. I do not propose to enter that particular dispute. I merely wish to point out not just that the housing problem is also a deterrent to reproduction, but that the pensions crisis is related to the housing crisis.

What impression, all in all, do we take away from all these stories about pensions? That the pensions industry, public and private, is in a bit of a shambles; that schemes we hoped to rely on are worth a pitcher of warm spit. We know that Gordon Brown has inflicted disaster on private occupational pensions, robbing their funds of upwards of £5 billion a year to pay for his ballooning numbers of state sector pensions. We can see that the Government can’t even afford to fund these public sector pensions, and will shortly be forced to push up the age of retirement, even if it means a war with the unions.

Above all, we know that for a huge number of people, it hardly seems worth saving for their retirement, because if they do, they will find themselves penalised by the withdrawal of the means-tested benefits that are spreading ever upwards in the income groups. Young people realise that if they start saving now for their pension fund, they could end up with less than those who put nothing by; and that is among the reasons why the savings ratio in this country has fallen so fast. People look at all this pensions malarkey, they suck their teeth, and they decide that one way or another it is likely to be a rip-off.

Which is precisely why, as a nation, we pump ever more of our resources into houses. We have a touching belief that bricks and mortar cannot evaporate. That is among the reasons why house prices have tended to rise ever higher, with fewer and fewer people in them. Labour has made such a hash of things that an Englishman’s home is not only his castle, but his pension, too.

The Attorney General’s ban is ridiculous, untenable, and redolent of guilt. I do not like people to break the Official Secrets Act … we now have allegations of such severity, against the US President and his motives, that we need to clear them up.

If someone passes me the document within the next few days I will be very happy to publish it in The Spectator, and risk a jail sentence. .. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If we suppress the truth, we forget what we are fighting for

I’ll go to jail to print the truth about Bush and al-Jazeera

It must be said that subsequent events have not made life easy for those of us who were so optimistic as to support the war in Iraq. There were those who believed the Government’s rubbish about Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. Then the WMD made their historic no-show.

Some of us were so innocent as to suppose that the Pentagon had a well-thought-out plan for the removal of the dictator and the introduction of peace. Then we had the insurgency, in which tens of thousands have died.

Some of us thought it was about ensuring that chemical weapons could never again be used on Iraqi soil. Then we heard about the white phosphorus deployed by the Pentagon. Some people believed that the American liberation would mean the end of torture in Iraqi jails. Then we had Abu Ghraib.

Continue reading Bush and Al-Jazeera →

Encouraging shysters to go bust is no way to foster enterprise

It was gonna be great. It was gonna be the best thing ever. A day to remember. A red letter day. Mr Conafray had been looking forward to his birthday present for months. At last he was going to fulfil a lifetime’s dream and get behind the wheel of something really snortingly fast.

Thanks to the generosity of his loving wife and children, he was going to be conveyed to Brands Hatch, attended by every comfort, and installed in a succession of ever more gruntful machines. Jaguars, Astons, AC Cobras, Nobles. Mr Conafray was going to crunch gears, burn rubber and generally kick automotive ass in such a way as to make Jeremy Clarkson look like a 75-year-old nun in a bath chair.

His wife had paid £750 for this Red Letter Days birthday experience, and he had every reason to think it would be worth it. When he looked up the website, he found dreamy pictures of balloon flights and cut-glass whisky decanters by roaring fires in sexy locations. There was scuba diving and bungee jumping and paraplaning and cars, cars, cars.

According to the blurb, Red Letter Days was “driving the experiences market forward, creating innovative and exciting experiences for everyone”.

Well, the guys and gals at Red Letter Days certainly cooked up a once-in-a-lifetime package for Mr Conafray. He had the exciting and innovative experience of being suddenly informed, as the day of his Red Letter experience drew closer, that the company was having difficulty meeting its financial obligations. In fact, they were effectively bust, and the only value he would get from his £750 voucher was to use it to light the fire.

Continue reading Enterprise Act 2002 →

A night in the cells gave me a different view of the cops

I don’t know whether my old chum Matt D’Ancona has ever been incarcerated without charge. I do not suggest that he should be. I merely wonder whether I could briefly enter the woeful testimony of a man who has. There will be many loyal readers of this paper who will be appalled that any of its writers could have had their collars felt, no matter how fleetingly. I want to stress that it is a matter for shame.

All I will say in my defence is that it was very late at night, I was about 19, in exceedingly high spirits, and apart from anything else, m’lud, I was plastered. Some events took place that might charitably be described as high jinks. I remember something to do with a bicycle, and dark deeds involving plastic cones. And letterboxes – though I wish to stress that nothing approaching criminal damage took place. It was all deeply pathetic.

At any rate the party ended up with a number of us crawling on all fours through the hedges of the botanical gardens, and trying to escape some police dogs. We were eventually rounded up and put in Oxford police station, about six to a cell. I didn’t so much mind the cells, with their slashed bunks and ominous smears. What got my goat was the trick the cops tried to pull. At about 4.30am, as the skies were starting to lighten through the bars, a couple of officers came in.

By this stage I am afraid that the Bullingdon Club was very far from the proud phalanx of tailcoated twits that had set out for dinner the night before. Some of us were beginning to whimper for our mothers. Others, half-asleep, groaned the names of their nannies. Some of us were brave enough to lie on the bemerded floor. Others stood up, streaked and dishevelled, and tried to sleep on their feet.

This was the scene when the coppers came in, grinning from ear to ear. All night long they had harangued us through the bars about some act of destruction they had found on their patrol; and though we were undoubtedly guilty of being drunk, disorderly and otherwise objectionable, we were fairly certain we were innocent of this particular crime.

But I got the impression that the police wanted to charge someone with something, and they needed a witness. Now, they announced triumphantly, they had found one. They had been talking to the six lads in the cell next door, and guess what.

“They said the blond fellow did it!” said the cop. I was stunned, outraged, and then a little fearful. To my dying day I will refuse to believe that any of my chums could have tried to fit me up, even after five hallucinatory hours in the cells. But I was suddenly conscious of the immense practical power of the state, and its ability to make my life hell. The police invited my cellmates to agree that I was the perp in question, and much to my relief they did not. Right, said the fuzz. They were going to keep us there until someone coughed. Then the officers vanished for a couple of hours, and I waited there with growing apprehension. Was I going to be charged? What had I done? Had someone really grassed me up? In the end, of course, they had to let us go.

Chastened and shaking, we all filed out, and I think back to that weird moment of shock – when I realised the cops were capable of making something up – and I rejoice that Tony Blair was defeated last night. I am glad that the Labour Government was thrashed in its attempt to extend detention without charge to 90 days.

I am glad because it was a bad measure, ill-thought-out, and had nothing to do with security, and everything to do with party politics.

We have already discussed the ludicrous provisions against “glorification” of terrorism, by which Cherie Blair should in theory be banged away for her apparent sympathy for Palestinian suicide bombers.

No one in his right mind could believe that Britain will be a safer country as a result of this erosion of free speech, and the same point can be made about the Labour plan to keep people in the clink for three months – the equivalent of a six-month jail sentence – without even charging them with an offence.

The entire objective of the measure was to outflank the Tories on terror, and to secure from distinguished conservative commentators such as Matt D’Ancona the kind of column that appeared here yesterday.

Mr Blair knows full well that there is a host of good people who are very frightened by the possibility of terrorist attack, and whose general view is that the security services should comb the mosques and detain, indefinitely, as many worrying-looking Muslims as they can. That is why the Sun and other papers report overwhelming support for his measure.

As it happens, neither the police nor the Government envisaged anything so draconian. The 90-day detention would have applied to only a handful of people, they say.

Indeed, the figures show that of the 357 people arrested under the latest Prevention of Terrorism Act, only 11 were held for the full 14 days, and of these all were charged. If the numbers are so tiny, why do we need this programme of incarceration?

No one could object to the minutest surveillance of such characters. Let us by all means bug them and watch them for 24 hours a day.

But if we have enough evidence to incarcerate someone for three months, then we should have enough evidence to put them on trial. That we have extended detention to 28 days is bad enough, but it was the best compromise available.

Blair’s only objective was to divide the Tories – now likely to make a resurgence under David Cameron – and make himself look tough. He failed. He may last another 90 days, but the charges against him are opportunism and incompetence, and the trial is coming up.

I even like her new Rod Stewart hairdo, and her lipsticked Liverpudlian sassiness

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…we are eroding free speech, we are dispensing with habeas corpus, and as for the rule of law, I take my cue from the great Lord Steyn, the law lord. In detaining 500 people without trial in Guantanamo Bay, the Americans have taken their democracy into a legal black hole

The Blair law that could send his wife to prison

I know this is regarded by my chums as being bizarre to the point of fetishism, but I have a soft spot for Cherie Blair.

No, when I say a soft spot, I don’t mean a bog in the west of Ireland. I mean I kind of like the look of her. I even like her new Rod Stewart hairdo, and her lipsticked Liverpudlian sassiness. Unlike so many of my Tory pals, I have no desire to see her locked up.

Continue reading New Terrorism Bill – Clause One →