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 [...]
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 [...]
Europe: the last touchstone issue in British politics
OPPOSITION to the European Union resonates with the Conservative right to a degree that no issue seems to excite any section of the Labour Party anymore, in ways that are essentially unfathomable to those that stand outside the tribe. For that reason alone, David Cameron’s decision to veto treaty changes designed to prop up the [...]
Jeremy Clarkson: the politics of deathwish jokes
THREE quarters of Telegraph readers back Jeremy Clarkson in the row over his ‘execute strikers’ outburst. The Top Gear presenter’s remarks should not have been taken seriously, because he was only joking, they insist. As Freud explained over a hundred years ago, tendentious jokes are a mask for socially unacceptable feelings, not least violent hostility. There [...]
Lord Hanningfield’s Guantanamo experience
TORY peer Lord Hanningfield is just out after a couple of months in HMP Standford Hill, a minimum security open prison of the type that the newspapers which support his party routinely characterise as ‘holiday camps’. True, he still has to wear one of those electronic tags, and is subject to a 7.15pm curfew, which [...]
UK Border Agency: let’s sign up to Schengen
ONE of the few political positions that sections of the far left and the free market right alike hold dear is opposition to immigration controls. So I am still not quite sure whether it was the Socialist Workers’ Party or the Adam Smith Institute that sneakily managed to take over the UK Border Agency while [...]
James Wharton MP: the Tory who wants to cut dole
THREE quid is less than the price of a pint in most central London pubs. It’s just about enough to get a small salad in the subsidised canteen in the offices where I work. And coincidentally, it is roughly 5% of the top whack rate of Jobseekers’ Allowance, which currently stands at £64.30 for the [...]
Liam Fox: Torn
DID Australian angst rock princess Natalie Imbruglia personally broker BAE Systems’ $15.8m contract to upgrade the Chilean army’s howitzer capacity? I only ask because the lucky girl lists Liam Fox among her former squeezes, and as we know, the defence secretary can be extremely accommodating to the commercial interests of old friends. As a special adviser to Dr [...]
The poor don’t have a party
THE Tories are now the party of the poor, Iain Duncan Smith told a fringe meeting at Conservative Party conference this week. That he can even get away with such a surreal claim without attracting widespread derision underlines just how far the issue of poverty reduction no longer looms large on the political agenda. I [...]
