What exactly is London’s problem with Liverpool?
LONDON has a Conservative mayor who famously accused Liverpool of displaying a ‘deeply unattractive psyche’, and even of ‘wallowing in its victim status’. But as a cockney myself, I reckon scousers can be forgiven for feeling that little bit chippy. Nor is Boris Johnson’s attitude any novelty within his party, as is demonstrated by today’s revelation that [...]
A tax on the drinking classes
I AM not a champagne socialist. But that is solely because I do not actually like the stuff. Otherwise, I fully endorse the maxim of the late Christopher Hitchens that cheap booze is a false economy. Give me Glenmorangie, or give me death. It is a pretty fair bet that David Cameron thinks along the [...]
Life on Labour?
DESPITE the failure of Russia’s latest space probe, scientists are rightly determined to continue their search for life on Mars. The way things are going right now, it looks like that quest will reach fruition long before anyone ever discovers signs of life in the Labour Party. It’s not that I saw the defeat of [...]
Thatcher’s funeral: you mourn if you want to
PERHAPS the most inane remark ever uttered by any leading New Labour figure - invidious though it is to select just one, of course – is Peter Mandelson’s vapid contention that ‘we are all Thatcherites now’. Some of us never were, and never will be. Such abject ideological capitulation to the ideas Labour was created to stand against demonstates [...]
Tabloids don’t have to be dumb
IT’S week six of the Leveson inquiry, and I for one have stopped following the details. The precise circumstances in which Piers Morgan got to hear recordings of conversations between Heather Mills and Paul McCartney is a topic that will fascinate few of us. Yet my guess would be that the proceedings will so far [...]
Christopher Hitchens and his critics
OBITUARIES that openly exult in the death of their subject remain something of a rarity. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, and all that. That hasn’t stopped all the wrong guys from cheering the passing of Christopher Hitchens. The Hitch was, according to a prominent contributor to Britain’s widely-read socialist blog, a ‘grubby apologist [...]
North Korea: once and future Kim
THE Democratic People’s Republic of Korea certainly isn’t democratic. It doesn’t give a hang about the wellbeing of the bulk of its people, and it is a hereditary monarchy in all but name. Still, it is on the Korean peninsula, and by the standards of accuracy that prevail in the state media, one out of [...]
Iraq and the Arab Spring: a thought experiment
VERY few things about the political state of Iraq can accurately be described as clear. But now that the flag has been cased and the last 4,000 US troops are on the way home, some sort of preliminary balance sheet is finally possible. As president Obama told the troops at the military base in Fort [...]
Labour-Lib Dem coalition: not the way ahead
ED BALLS could not have made himself clearer when asked whether he would countenance a joint Labour-Liberal Democrat administration in 2015. As it happens, the shadow chancellor would like to see one in right this minute. ‘You could do it tomorrow,’ he told the Telegraph’s Mary Riddell in an interview for Fabian Review. ‘If you [...]
European Union: gamechanger for the left
I’M sure Milton Friedman would have appreciated the irony. The neoclassical economic prescriptions developed by him and others in the name of competition and freedom of choice is about to be awarded a continent-wide ideological monopoly, by force of state decree. If Merkel and Sarkozy get the new treaty they need to save the euro, [...]
