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news

Boris and The Spectator

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Press Release from The Spectator:

Statement by Boris Johnson, editor of The Spectator, on joining David Cameron’s shadow team:

This is a fantastic job [Shadow Minister for Higher Education] and I am thrilled to be given the chance to do it. It is also a very hard job to do properly. It will mean a lot of time and thought.

That is why I will be leaving the Spectator shortly after the Christmas edition has gone to press. Until a new editor is appointed, the magazine will be in the highly-capable hands of my colleague and deputy Stuart Reid.

I want to pay tribute to everyone at the magazine who has helped with its current success, in editorial, production and advertising. For the last six and a half years we have had more fun than seems altogether proper.

When Conrad Black gave me the editorship in the summer of 1999, he said he wanted the magazine to be more talked about. I believe we have discharged that obligation beyond his wildest dreams.

We have won all sorts of prizes. We have broken all sorts of stories.

This Christmas the circulation of the magazine stands at about 70,000, an all-time high.

I am also grateful to our proprietors, the Barclay family, and Andrew Neil, our chief executive, for their kindliness and support. But my particular thanks go to everyone at the Spectator, especially to Stuart Reid.

For most of my time here I have been propelled by their talents, as a fat German tourist may be transported by superior alpinists to the summit of Everest. I am completely confident that they will continue to expand and improve the oldest, best and best-written magazine in the English language.

Statement by Andrew Neil, Chief Executive of The Spectator:

Boris has been a wonderful and magnificent editor of The Spectator and we are sorry to lose him; in many ways he will be irreplaceable. But we wish him every success in his political career.

Boris leaves the magazine in better shape than it has ever been in its long and glorious history, both editorially and financially. Sales will hit a record 70,000 this December and the magazine has recorded another healthy profit in 2005. The editorial breadth and quality under his editorship has been unrivalled.

Though he is stepping down as editor I am delighted that Boris will continue to have a close association with The Spectator, including a new column for us in the New Year. As we begin the search for his replacement, I am also delighted that the magazine will be in the reliable and competent hands of Stuart Reid.

general, news, personal notes

Desert Island Discs

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*BORIS ON DESERT ISLAND DISCS – SUNDAY 30TH OCTOBER, 11.15AM, RADIO 4*(repeated on Friday 4th November, 9.00am)

Transcript of the Show

Eight discs chosen:

1. Beatles – Here Comes the Sun (Boris thought it was fantastically optimistic)

2. Theme Tune for Test Match Special – Soul Limbo, Booker T and the MGs (had memories of playing cricket in the yard with his brothers, although he wasn’t very good)

3. Bach – Ich will hier bei dir stehen – Here would I stand beside thee (of great sentimental value – “it fueled and fortified me” – listened when going through Mods exams – also was falling in love)

4. Rolling Stones – Start Me Up (His friend James Delingpole has long despised the Rolling Stones, but he should eat his words – “it may be corny, but it’s brilliant”)

5. Brahms – Finale of Brahms Variations on a theme by Haydn (father played it endlessly when he was ill as a child and recovering)

6. Van Morrison – Brown Eyed Girl (cheery and you could overdose on him – you can’t get enough)

7. The Clash – Pressure Drop (Joe Strummer, the leader of The Clash, was a good poet and a fantastic rock musician – it was a proud moment when, as an avid Telegraph reader, he wrote to Boris saying how much he liked an article he had written about hunting)

8. Opening of the last movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony (good when driving fast along an Autobahn)

He would choose Brahms and all the Variations if he had to choose only one record.

His book would have to be Homer to translate.

The luxury item would be a huge, supersized pot of seedy mustard as any meat tastes good with mustard.

Introduction

“One of the most memorable and unpredictable MPs …. Boris Johnson in a moment …”

Sue Lawley – “you are prone to getting into scrapes – affair with one of your colleagues…” Questions about ambitions followed.

Boris was full of bonhomie and explained that he was always interested in being an MP. It is the single most interesting job you could do – it is such a broad canvas. He would also like to keep up journalism. If he had to choose he would choose being an MP. As far as politics goes he is interested in agriculture, trade – where he has had personal experience.

Apparently Boris’s ex mother-in-law claims that he always wanted to be PM. Boris replied that MPs are like crazed wasps in a jam jar. Of course everyone would like to lead the party he explained.

All politicians in the end are like crazed wasps in a jamjar, each individually convinced that they are going to make it.

My ambition silicon chip has been programmed to try to scramble up this ladder, so I do feel a kind of sense that I have got to.

Sue listed his academic achievements and Boris admitted he was a colossal swot – he strongly recommended boning up. “I’ve got a lot of energy and need to use it all up”. Time is ticking away and he feels programmed with a sense of duty and to climb up and achieve more – “we need all these grasping hacks to compete”.

Career

After The Times Max Hastings rescued him and he owes a huge amount to him. He was Brussels correspondent (Daily Telegraph) for five years including the time when the Berlin Wall fell. He finds being Editor of The Spectator (since 1999) a wonderful job.

From this point on Sue presses very hard about “misdemeanours“. Boris said: “this isn’t talking about Haydn – this is being a hidin’ to nothing”. The image conjured up through this tenacious probing about his shortcomings was of a Boris pushed into a tight corner held up at knifepoint. After a few uncomfortable spluttering moments there was a response of: ” … okay, there have been misdemeanours – you keep referring to misdemeanours … but there are far fewer demeanours than there have been misdemeanours”.

Latest book (Seventy Two Virgins)

His book is about four suicide bombers from the North and the heroine is called Cameron, so it is quite uncanny. It is a comic thriller.
Roger Barlow rides a bike and is exercised by whether the papers will discover his extramarital affair – playing with fire – does that have any resonance with real life, asked Sue. Did he like playing with fire. Boris replied that if this was her theory about him then there might be an element of truth in this – but he wouldn’t take unnecessary risks.

He was asked whether he used comedy to override his ‘misdemeanours’ – or did he use charm to get by, taking into account his reported misdemeanours or mishaps. Boris explained that when he was young he should have used grommets because he couldn’t hear and he therefore developed an evasiveness.

So, finally alone, how would he feel on this deserted island? Boris would have a disciplined plan to rebuild civilisation. He likes making things with wood and recently made a treehouse for his children. He would sing a few hymns, march up and down and he would write. His aim would be to get to the heart of things – “It may sound pretentious” he said. He is writing a thesis on the meaning of nationhood at the moment and getting up very early every morning and it was knocking his brains about a bit. He was also working on a book about how the Romans ran Europe. Of course on an island there would be no data so he would download all he had and then start plagiarising it (Sue erupts into giggles).

MCW

lovely chirpy bird.jpg

A little bird told me a story, it happened just today

Sue Lawley and our Boris will soon have lots to say

We haven’t heard from Boris: no broadcasts for a while

But now he’s playing castaway; upon a desert isle

His favourite bits of music he’ll play, explaining why

I hope he’s into Mozart: because ; well, so am I

But it’s not so much the music: Sue really digs the dirt

Will she spare our Boris? I wouldn’t bet my shirt!

ARNOLD McGREGOR

news, personal notes

Comment on the recent tragedy in London

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Yesterday’s disgusting attack on London will naturally be seized upon by politicians of all hues to advance their various agendas. Opponents of the war in Iraq have lost no time in blaming Tony Blair and British engagement for the bombs that hit London and killed dozens and injured many hundreds. They have a point. As the Butler report revealed, the Government was explicitly warned before the Iraq war that our involvement would exacerbate the risk of terrorism in this country. But that does not for one moment mean that if Britain had not been involved in Iraq, then London would have been safe. It bears repeating that more British people died in the attacks on the World Trade Centre than in yesterday’s brutal outrages, and it must never be forgotten that 9/11 preceded the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, as did the series of vicious Islamicist bombings in Paris in the 1990s.

Which is to say that we in London, Paris, New York and the rest of the civilised West face a terrorist threat which cannot be said wholly to have been provoked by Iraq. These are people whose hatred of what they see as Western values is seemingly ineradicable. It is impossible to negotiate with them. Their grievance is not just with the war in Iraq or with the treatment of Palestinians by Israel but with the whole system of Western values that they find troubling and disturbing, not least the emancipation of women.

We must tackle the terrorist threat with calm resolution and without recourse to wild or hysterical measures. Yet the Government will now seize on this event with no less vigour than their opponents to campaign for a series of repressive and illiberal measures of doubtful utility in the so-called war on terror. Prime among these is the compulsory ID card. It must be stressed that whatever the merits or demerits of an ID card system, it would have done absolutely nothing to prevent the horrors of yesterday. As with the 19 suicide killers of 9/11 the problem was of intention and not identity.

In the coming days and weeks the public will urged to accept such restrictions on their liberty as ID cards as a price we must all pay for liberty itself. We believe that argument to be absurd and fallacious, and hope that defenders of liberty will recognise that it is exactly this kind of panic-stricken measure that will most gratify the killers.

conservatives, in parliament, news

New Conservative Leadership

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Insightful editorial in this week’s Spectator


How to breed poodles

Conservative MPs and candidates have spent the last four years campaigning against two connected evils of the Labour style of government. In innumerable speeches and press releases, they have stood up for local and national democracy, and against the tendency of the government to centralise power and to hand it over to quangocrats, bureaucrats and officials in Brussels. They have also launched countless philippics against Labour’s love of the target and the quota, and all manner of diktat from Whitehall.

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