Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Thursday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The ‘Thatcher should quit’ splash that never was

When Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher did not have a great deal to do with The Spectator. She was not hostile, but slightly suspicious and perplexed. ‘This is Charles Moore,’ I remember her saying edgily as she introduced me to the Turkish prime minister at a reception. ‘He supports us some of the time.’ After the sinking of theBelgrano in May 1982, Ferdinand Mount, then the political editor, wrote a column deploring the incident and calling for a ceasefire. The then editor Alexander Chancellor, who had incited the piece when Ferdy had really wanted to fall silent altogether, put it all over the cover. Ferdy’s was an act of near-suicidal courage, as he was just

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron confident of common ground with Merkel

David Cameron is setting off with his children to visit Angela Merkel on Friday. It’s part of his EU reform mission that started and was thrown off course on Monday following the death of Margaret Thatcher. As I blogged back then, the circumstances aren’t perfect, and one of the reasons for that is that France and Germany recently snubbed an invitation to be involved in the UK’s ‘balance of competences’ review. But today Cameron tried to play down the significance of this. He told Adam Boulton: ‘Our review of competences was always and will be a British exercise. We didn’t particularly, that story was… anyone’s free to feed into our

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

After the bute revelation, what’s the government doing to prevent another horsemeat scandal?

When shadow Defra minister, Mary Creagh, first raised the possibility four months ago that the veterinary drug phenylbutazone – aka bute – might be found in horsemeat in supermarket products labelled as ‘beef’, both the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and the agriculture minister David Heath were quick to rubbish her statement. Heath placed his trust in the FSA and their testing procedures, safe in the knowledge that the FSA ensured that all meat was fit for human consumption, with tests for bute carried out regularly, and any positive results thoroughly invested. But then, in February, it was discovered that British horsemeat containing the drug had been exported to Europe and

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Blair’s warning to Miliband about the policy abattoir

Nothing like a former PM poking their nose into your business, eh? John Major experienced what Daniel Finkelstein this week delicately described as ‘sub-optimal’ behaviour from Margaret Thatcher when he was in office, and today Ed Miliband has his own helpful little missive from his own former leader, telling him that if only he were just like Tony Blair, then everything would be OK. Blair’s piece in the New Statesman isn’t surprising in many ways as it articulates the former Prime Minister’s firm belief that his party must engage with the centre of politics as it is at the moment, rather than trying to move that centre in the direction

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Tony Blair can’t escape blame for trashing the economy

The New Statesman today publishes a splendid centenary edition, to celebrate its 100 years — a collectors’ item. It also carries some vintage blame-dodging by Tony Blair who pretends 13 years of Labour rule was not responsible for the mess we’re still in. Overspending is not to blame for the debt crisis, he says. It’s nonsense on first reading, of course: what else creates a debt crisis, rather than overspending? Bad weather? A bad debt fairy? Blair claims that Labour need to be ‘very robust in knocking down the notion that it “created” the crisis’. Here are his words, some of them flatly untrue: ‘Labour should be very robust in

The Spectator

Audio: Lords’ tributes to Margaret Thatcher

As Isabel said yesterday, the standout speech in the Upper Chamber yesterday came from Norman Tebbit, who served for six years in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, first as Secretary of State for Employment, then as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, and finally as Chairman of the Conservative Party. Here’s the full audio of his emotional tribute: listen to ‘Norman Tebbit’s tribute to Margaret Thatcher, 10 Apr 13’ on Audioboo

Jamie Reed

‘We insisted on making it easier for her’: How the Left helped Thatcher succeed

The eulogies and condemnation following Baroness Thatcher’s death are coalescing into two clear truths. The first is that her legacy will always be contested: the nationwide reaction to Margaret Thatcher’s death – if viewed honestly – is one of embittered polarisation. The second is that the British Left must always recognise the pivotal role it played in enabling Thatcher to succeed and prosecute a political programme that damaged so many of the people that progressive politics exists to serve. The lessons of Labour’s failures during the dominant Thatcher period are as relevant today as they were during her time in office. The British Left fostered, enabled and created Thatcher’s premiership.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tory modernisers are Margaret Thatcher’s true heirs

Margaret Thatcher’s death has inevitably prompted intense reflection among Tories about what lessons the party should learn from her time in office. ‘We must finish the job’ is the refrain on the lips of Thatcherite ministers, and there are more of those today than there were a year ago. The experience of office has had a radicalising effect on the Cameroons. To be sure, today’s circumstances are not the same as those of 1979 or ’89. Her exact policy prescription is not what is required. This is something that Thatcher, a politician who relished fresh thinking, would have appreciated. But what the party does need is the spirit of Thatcherism,

The Spectator

Cecil Parkinson, Charles Powell, John Simpson and Steve Hilton remember Margaret Thatcher

Cecil Parkinson: Underestimated – but unbowed Even among Mrs Thatcher’s original shadow Cabinet, there were those who simply did not believe that she would be capable of dealing with the problems of a declining country. To a man they were wrong. Each underestimated the determination of Margaret Thatcher. She did not regard the manifesto on which she had been elected as a set of pledges designed merely to win an election and to be abandoned when the going got tough. She intended to honour hers: to reduce the role of the state; to transfer power to the people. Trade union members were given the right to elect their leaders at regular

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Thatcher changed the City for the better – but human nature led it astray

‘Margaret had no love for the banks,’ Nigel Lawson wrote in The View from No. 11. The idea that the amoral greed of the City and the banking crisis it fuelled should be blamed on Margaret Thatcher has been much bandied about this week. Let me try to put it in -perspective. In her early years in power, Thatcher thought of the City as another enclave of the ‘wet’ public-school types who so annoyed her in the Conservative party. The high-street banks were, in her view, a complacent cartel that reported over-large profits during the 1981 recession (hence the windfall tax), refused to contribute to Tory coffers, and did nothing

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why are lefties so sycophantic to Margaret Thatcher?

I’ve been scratching my head for the past half hour trying to work out how I would react if I were a Conservative MP and a BBC reporter stuffed a microphone in front of me and told me that Arthur Scargill had just died. I know I wouldn’t punch the air, but a syrupy tribute? I think not. It would go something like this: ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Scargill was a charismatic leader to his followers but one whose legacy was to destroy the industry he loved, and all for his own ego.’ Would I expect to be hauled over the coals for saying that? Surely it is not

Ludovic Kennedy

Three faces of Thatcher

Politicians can be divided into two categories; those whose public face is different from their private face and those for whom they are the same; put another way, those who feel it necessary in public appearances to put on an act, and those who manage to remain themselves. Among the latter are (or were) such disparate characters as Jack Kennedy, Willy Brandt, Jo Grimond, Edward Heath, Neil Kinnock; and among the former Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Richard Nixon, Harold Wilson and Arthur Scargill (if you don’t like that list, you are welcome to make your own). Prominent among the last-named is our Prime Minister, but she is almost unique in

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Mrs Thatcher goes to Brussels

‘Délégation Royaume Uni. Salle 4’ announces a scruffy piece of paper projected onto the black and white television screens of the Centre Charlemagne. The journalists hurry upstairs for the latest from Mr Bernard Ingham, Mrs Thatcher’s press secretary. Mr Ingham is not conspicuously communautaire. He tells us who spoke in the session — Mr Lubbers, Herr Kohl, Mrs Thatcher and ‘Mr Papandreou — I always call him Mr Papadopoulos’. A nodding acquaintance with recent Greek history would have made Mr Ingham realise that such a slip, though easier on the tongue, is as politically uncomfortable as calling M. Mitterrand ‘Marshal Pétain’. But then Mr Ingham is not paid to spread

Ferdinand Mount

Mrs Thatcher’s triumph

There was never a more disenchanted victory. The moment the size of the Tory swing was known, the doubts began, not least among those hundreds of thousands who had voted Conservative for the first time in their lives. Would the unions allow Mrs Thatcher to govern? Would the promised tax cuts be blown in betting shops and strip clubs, instead of fructifying in the pockets of the people? Would investors once again be fatally attracted to the hustlers and twisters? Was there any way of bridging the growing gulf between North and South? Did the British people as a whole have any stuffing left in them? Could any government muster

Patrick Cosgrave

Clear choice for the Tories

If I start with a reference to the sorry condition of the Tory party, I hope readers will not immediately turn to another page. If only the Tories can take a fairly cool look at themselves, it will quickly be apparent that the condition is not as serious as all that; and that it is certainly capable of repair. Housman’s ancient ‘three minutes of thought’ will suffice to show that there is only one direction in which the Tories can go. Once their collective mind is concentrated on that fact the rest will be, if not easy, at least far advanced in ease from the complicated and tragic business of

Wednesday

M.E. Synon

Olli Rehn bosses George Osborne around

Olli Rehn, the European Commissioner who is in charge of economic affairs, called in the Brussels press corps this afternoon to announce the conclusion of his ‘in-depth review of the macroeconomic imbalances in 13 member states.’ I sat through the launch, and the questions and answers, noting that at no time did Rehn or any of the reporters approach the fundamental question: what exactly is a macroeconomic imbalance and why do we think that Rehn – whose full title includes European Commissioner for the Euro – is the man anyone would trust with analysis of anything macroeconomic? And before you ask, the reason I didn’t ask is that I ration

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘If only people could see the real Margaret Thatcher’: Lords pay tribute

Today’s debates in Parliament about Baroness Thatcher were supposed to be a tribute to the first female Prime Minister. If you were looking for the most faithful rendition of this, you should have been sitting in the House of Lords, not the Commons this afternoon. In the Other Place, the debate is always rather more civilised and measured, though it has grown rather rowdier in recent years. But today the speeches painted a fascinating picture of Margaret Thatcher, not least because many of them came from those who worked with or in opposition to her when she was in power. Some were notable by their silence: Lord Howe arrived with

The Spectator

Audio: MPs’ tributes to Margaret Thatcher

One of the highlights of today’s Commons tributes to Margaret Thatcher was the contribution of Malcolm Rifkind, who served in Thatcher’s government throughout her time as Prime Minister. Here’s the full audio of his speech: listen to ‘Sir Malcolm Rifkind’s tribute to Margaret Thatcher, 10 Apr 13’ on Audioboo

Steve Hilton

‘She was Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Lady Gaga; all rolled into one’ – Steve Hilton on Margaret Thatcher

Tomorrow’s Spectator includes a three-page symposium on Margaret Thatcher from a selection of her friends colleagues, admirers and sparring partners. Here’s the full version of what Steve Hilton – No.10’s strategy officer from 2010-2012 – has to say about our first female Prime Minister. I was lucky enough to meet Mrs Thatcher (as I will always think of her) on a few occasions, and one in particular stood out. We talked about Communism, and my family’s experience in Hungary. I was feeling incensed at the time because of the way in which the ruling elite dabbled in capitalism for their own personal enrichment, but denied the opportunities of enterprise to