Politics, a long-deceased British statesman once said, is the art of the possible. For Gordon Brown, who takes over as the U.K.'s prime minister on June 27, politics is going to be the art of the impossible.

Imminently, Mr. Brown will be faced with an intractable dilemma. Call it a treaty, call it a constitution, call it a series of amendments to existing treaties, but something is going to emerge from this week's European Union summit. And how Mr. Brown reacts to that document will decide his political future. But whatever he does will be the wrong decision.

Those behind the revival of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's 2004 EU constitution do not, of course, want to allow pesky voters to reject their renewed instructions. The French and the Dutch electorate behaved intolerably once before in rebuffing the wisdom of their political masters and cannot be allowed to interfere again. French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he will not put the treaty to a referendum. Fellow European leaders will pressure Mr. Brown to nod through whatever Tony Blair agrees to this week in Brussels.

There is no constitutional requirement in Britain for a referendum. Mr. Blair's promise of one on the earlier treaty was unprecedented, and Mr. Brown could argue that this year's version is not as extensive and thus doesn't require a popular vote.

He could do that. If he did, however, he would confirm at the very outset of his premiership all the electorate's worst images of him as a Stalinist control freak, as a man contemptuous of opposing views, and as a politician unworthy of the country's highest office.

Worse, while there was no constitutional requirement for Mr. Blair to put the previous treaty to a referendum, his decision set just that precedent. And going by precedent is the legal nostrum at the heart of Britain's unwritten constitution.

Denying a referendum would also unleash the mother and father of all attacks from the media and the public. Not a single newspaper would be likely to support such a decision, and the most powerful papers -- the Daily Mail and the Sun -- would rip Mr. Brown to shreds. The Sun's support for Labour has been the bedrock of the party's media strategy. Mr. Brown has invested countless hours in courting the editor of the anti-Labour Mail; successfully so, given the paper's recent praise for his sagacity and probity. Ruining that relationship would be monumentally self-defeating.

Not calling for a referendum would also, quite possibly, be like conceding the next election to the Tories. For the first time since he was elected leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, David Cameron is facing real hostility from his members over his renunciation of academically selective "grammar" schools, a favorite cause of traditional Tory activists. There is, however, one topic on which his party remains overwhelmingly united: its opposition to any further weakening of British sovereignty and any moves toward a European state. Were Mr. Brown to deny the British public a vote, all of Mr. Cameron's Christmases would have come at once. Not only would the Conservative leader have an issue with which to enthuse and unite a party still wary of his leadership, he would also have an issue on which he could (rightly) claim to speak for the nation.

That is the nub of Mr. Brown's impossible choice. And if he did do right by the voters and put the treaty to a vote, he would also be signing its death warrant. Voters would certainly reject the treaty -- any treaty. As the EU's own Eurobarometer research shows, only 34% of Brits agree that EU membership is "a good thing" -- the lowest figure of any EU member. The idea that Britain would support a further integration is a nonstarter.

So from the moment Mr. Brown announced a referendum, the treaty would be finished. And what a start that would be for his relationship with fellow EU leaders. Never mind that he would be doing the EU a favor -- rescuing it from taking yet another step away from voters and legitimacy. The U.K. leader would be treated like poison by Mr. Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. They would know that Mr. Brown had not been hijacked by a surprise result, as befell former French President Jacques Chirac. Rather, the new U.K. prime minister would have deliberately chosen a course of action leading only to defeat.

Anyone who has witnessed Mr. Brown's forays into EU meetings will know that he has almost no interest in the EU. His view is that Europe's leaders can do what they want; he has nothing to learn from them and will carry on doing what he knows is right for Britain. Caring little for grandiose visions of a European dream, he presumably will put domestic U.K. politics ahead of any wish not to rock the EU boat and thus call a referendum.

Except for one thing. A referendum defeat -- the certain outcome -- is, after all, a defeat. Even if his support for the treaty is lukewarm, Mr. Brown will not want to begin his time in office with a humiliating loss at the polls. He could not, after all, call a referendum seeking support for a treaty and then distance himself from it. If his support were anything other than wholehearted he would look vacillating and weak. And the opposition would run rings around him, accusing him of foisting on the country a treaty which he did not back.

That is Mr. Brown's impossible dilemma. There are only two choices open to him. Either will be disastrous.

The following piece of mine is in today's Jewish Chronicle:
How ironic that the fortieth anniversary of Israel’s victory in the Six Day War should fall between the publication of the Winograd Commission’s interim and final reports into last year’s war on Hezbollah. Forty years ago, Israel fought an existential war and won. Last year, it took action against Hezbollah as part of a wider and no less existential war. Israel may not have lost that war, but she certainly did not win it. The threat not only remains; it grows.

But that is not the only difference between 1967 and 2007. In 1967, it was not merely Jews who rallied to Israel’s defence; others also saw that the tiny, young country was in mortal danger from its surrounding enemies. In 2007, however, the likes of Independent Jewish Voices betray Israel from within the Jewish Community; and non-Jewish chattering class opinion is suffused with hatred for .

It truly was another world back in June 1967. A Jewish Chronicle report of 16th June described how “showmen” had rallied round at an emergency aid meeting: “Peter Sellers pledged £1000 while Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor cabled from Hollywood to pledge $1000 apiece”. Nothing too surprising there, until the very last sentence of the report: “Other donors included…Harold Pinter.” The same Harold Pinter who last year joined with 300 others in signing a full page ad in The Times to denounce Israel for “terrorizing an entire people” - with no mention of any responsibility borne by Palestinian terror. Not that one should be surprised at such behaviour from a man who eulogized Slobodan Milosevic

In 1967, Gerald Kaufman was Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s press spokesman. A few weeks after the war, the JC reported (August 4th) that he had written to the general secretary of Poale Zion stressing how important the territorial gains made in the war were to Israel’s security and that they could only be given up as part of a guaranteed peace settlement. He would not, he stressed, wish to “put back the clock” over Jerusalem .

O tempora. O mores. Now Sir Gerald, this is the man who has declared he will never visit Israel again and who, last July, ranted in the House of Commons against “Jewish terrorists”.

How different it all was. The Times of 8th June 1967 reported that the Socialist International was arranging for a member of the Israeli Labour Party to come to London to address a meeting of the organization, which was discussing “the possible lines of a political settlement when the fighting ends, which would have sufficient stability to avoid a repetition of the present struggle”. The Socialist International! An organization whose sole contribution to Middle East debates now is to blame Israel, as in its statement of principle from 1996 holding that “Israel has a special responsibility to bring the peace process back on track”.

In 1967, the leaders of liberal-left opinion led Israel’s defence in the arena of public opinion. Forty years later, it is so-called liberals who are the useful idiots of Israel’s enemies, taking every opportunity to attack the country. As state-sponsored terror threatens Israel, today it is Israel they blame. Go figure.

The following Notebook of mine is in today's Times:

Saturday is the 150th anniversary of Sir Edward Elgar’s birth. That’s Elgar as in the greatest British composer of the past 250 years. The composer of the finest cello concerto in the repertory, two magisterial symphonies, the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches. . . the list of Elgar’s immortal pieces goes on.

But ask Arts Council England what it thinks of arguably the greatest British artist per se of modern times, and it’ll blow a great big raspberry in your face. The Elgar Society asked Arts Council England for a paltry £174,000 to organise a series of concerts for young people around the anniversary of Elgar’s birth. You might have thought that the buzz-word “youth” would have been enough to tick the funding box.

No. Because what one should always remember is that arts subsidy is not about making possible performances that the public want hear. It is, in reality, a conspiracy to take money from us through our taxes and to spend it on the tastes of a tiny clique.

And Elgar, with his mass popularity and his unforgivable sin of patriotism, is anathema to the cultural commissars who run the arts subsidy racket.

So while £174,000 for Elgar is a no-no, “commissioning 50 new, specially made ring tones, for all the telephones on the Arts Council system, [which] celebrates the relocation of the south west regional office to Southernhay in Exeter” is a yes-yes.

The Arts Council say that the Elgar Society’s bid failed to meet any of the criteria by which applications are judged – a glorious piece of circular reasoning that enables them to give £12,000 to an “artist” in the East Midlands to kick an empty curry box along a street because it meets its criteria and at the same time to refuse to contribute towards concerts that celebrate the life of one of our greatest artists.

***************

Motoring organisations are in a huff that only 354 of the 90,000 policemen and women caught on camera speeding or jumping red lights have been punished. Only 0.5 per cent of police have been fined or given points, compared with 84 per cent of the rest of us.

Dianne Ferreira of the road safety charity Brake offers this thought: “Police officers should not be speeding in the first place. They should be setting an example and they should have to face the force of the law like everybody else when they break the rules.”

Edmund King, of the RAC Foundation, says: “Speed cameras are there for a reason and they should apply to all motorists.” And Paul Smith of Safespeed argues that: “It’s one rule for them and another for the rest of us.”

Hello? Of course it’s a different rule for them. They are the police. Can you imagine the outcry if they trundled along at 30mph rather than chasing after criminals? Isn’t the real complaint that they don’t get to crime scenes quickly enough?

The following piece of mine is in today's Times:

I have never eaten a Velázquez. Or a Picasso, come to that. But I have eaten an Adrià. And it was pretty tasty.

Never heard of the Spanish artist Ferran Adrià? He’s based in Roses, on the Costa Brava. And the reason you might not have heard of him is that he’s usually described as a chef. Not just a chef, mind, but the chef: last month his restaurant, El Bulli, was voted the best in the world by Restaurant magazine. Other chefs refer to him as the greatest.

Next month Adrià will break new ground even for him: he has been invited to exhibit his food at the five-yearly Documentaart show in Kassel, Germany – one of the biggest events in the world of contemporary art. The invitation has, predictably, caused uproar in the art world. José de la Sota, art critic of El PaÍs, put it this way: “Adrià is not Picasso. Picasso did not know how to cook but he was better than Adrià [at art]. What is art now? Is it something or nothing?”

He might indeed ask: many of us have been wondering for quite a while, when we see elephant dung, protest banners and piles of bricks winning art prizes. Clement Greenberg, the most influential critic of modern art, defined it as “the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticise the discipline itself”. That seems to me as good a definition of Adrià’s style of food as any I have read. El Bulli is the home of what has been called “molecular gastronomy”. It opens for six months a year. In the six winter months when it is shut, Adrià and his fellow chefs work in their laboratory in Barcelona, deconstructing and then reassembling food and combinations in all sorts of experimental ways.

The point of Adrià’s food (the same holds for Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck in Berkshire) is to remain true to the essence of an ingredient but to let us see it and taste it in a new light. Our expectations are confounded and we see what we are eating in a new way. That is a truly artistic experience. Adrià’s technical skills are unsurpassed and he puts most traditional chefs to shame in his mastery of their techniques. With that as his foundation, he then goes back to the essentials and starts again.

Take the margarita I was offered when I arrived at El Bulli. The “glass” was a square block of ice with a hole in the centre: on top was a foam of olives, with shards of margarita ice underneath. The canapés looked like four biscuits. The Oreo chocolate cream was two pieces of olive biscuit with a yogurt cream, the marshmallow was not coconut but parmesan, and the crunchy rice crispy biscuit was made of quinoa with almonds. Then there was a popcorn foam – literally, foam that tasted of popcorn – accompanied by a tiny ball of caramelised liquid pumpkin dusted with gold leaf. The box of caviar turned out to be intense, tiny balls of jellified melon . . . and on it goes, unexpected dish after logic-questioning dish.

Adrià reacts to the criticism from the Spanish art establishment thus: “True, I am no Picasso, but what is art in times like these? Many people act as if I should apologise for participating. I am not going to. I understand there might be people who are annoyed. It’s tough to see a cook get invited to this. But what is art? If they want to call what I do art, fine. If not, that’s fine too.”

Spot on. In an art world where anything seems to go, I can’t for the life of me see why Ferran Adrià’s food, which fulfils every criterion of modern art, should not take its place alongside the likes of Tracey Emin.

Come to think of it, shouldn’t it be the woman whose contribution to art is an unmade bed whose place in the exhibition should be in question? Why is that art, but Adrià’s not? The food at El Bulli is certainly a lot more elevating to look at.

The following piece of mine is in today's Daily Mail:

No one can deny that our state education system today is shamefully bad, with one in five school leavers functionally illiterate and able pupils left to fester in sink schools.

One small area, however, manages to do well. Very well.

98.5 per cent of grammar school pupils get five good GCSEs at A to C grades, compared with the overall rate of 58 per cent.

So what's the marvellous notion that David Cameron's Conservatives have come up with?

Ditch any remaining attachment to the one proven, successful type of state school that's left.

In a speech, David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, announced that although a David Cameron government would not close down the 164 remaining grammar schools, they would ignore them in their plans.

In other words, when it comes to selecting pupils by ability, nothing separates the Conservatives from the most extreme Left-Wingers of the Labour Party.

What a travesty.

Grammar schools are not some pie in the sky idea.

For decades, they provided educational opportunities and a standard of unparalleled excellence to poor children who were not lucky enough to have had parents who could afford to buy the privilege of a private education.

Among the pupils who took advantage of that opportunity was one David Willetts - a grammar school boy himself, but who now wants to deny any other child the same chance.

Mr Willetts has all sorts of nuanced explanations for his dumping of grammar schools.

He says that there are too many middle class pupils in grammar schools and not enough pupils from poor backgrounds - basing this assertion on the fact that fewer pupils qualify for free school meals in grammars than in an average state school.

Yet if you look instead at the best-performing 200 comprehensives, just 5.3 per cent of pupils get free meals, compared with the national average of 14.3 per cent.

So, using Mr Willetts' warped logic, should the Tories therefore associate themselves only with sink comprehensives?

Clearly, his argument is a nonsense.

For the first two-thirds of the 20th century, education was the great engine of social mobility in this country.

As state education improved, so did the chance of escaping from an upbringing of poverty.

The reason for that improvement was grammar schools which changed Britain from a stuffy country based on class to a country where ability was rewarded.

Take entrance to Oxford and Cambridge universities, which for almost their entire existence had been bastions of privilege.

Thanks to the grammars successfully educating children from less-privileged backgrounds, state school pupils made up 62 per cent of Oxbridge entrants in 1969 - dwarfing the number from private schools.

Today, as a result of our mania for comprehensives, the figure has fallen back to 55 per cent.

The truth is that with the demise of the grammar school, the final third of the 20th century saw a catastrophic decline in standards, causing a similar reduction in social mobility.

Today, once more, where you are born on the social scale determines where you will end up.

The tragedy is that none of this was inevitable.

Other countries have systems which do give opportunity to all.

But they were not afflicted by the disease which took hold of the British establishment in the 1960s, which viewed education not as the passing on of knowledge and the skills required to think, but as a social experiment.

As Tony Crosland, Education Secretary in the 1960s wrote, education is a "serious alternative to nationalisation in promoting a more just and efficient society".

As Mr Willetts' lamentable speech shows all too clearly, the Establishment remains overwhelmingly infected by the disease.

And it is a downward spiral into which Mr Cameron is plunging his party.

A poll last year found that 70 per cent of parents would like to see more grammar schools established.

But forget what ordinary people want.

The Conservative leader's every action is based on gaining the acceptance of the chattering classes - the Islington dinner party set who run the BBC and the Left-liberal media who despise grammar schools.

Not that we should be surprised to see a Conservative betray the country on education.

The party's record has been shameful for decades.

It was a Conservative education minister, Sir Edward Boyle, who began the dismantling of grammar schools in the 1950s.

Have a guess under which Education Secretary more grammar schools closed than any other?

Tony Crosland or Shirley Williams?

No. The answer is Margaret Thatcher, who did not lift a finger to stop a single grammar school from closing in Edward Heath's 1970-1974 government.

The formal ditching of grammar schools by the Conservatives was a disgrace.

But it was, unfortunately, all too predictable.

The following piece of mine appears in The Spectator's supplement, 'Blair: A Modern Tragedy':

New Labour had its limits, even in 1997. Those limits were made flesh by the appointment of Frank Dobson as Tony Blair’s first Health Secretary. For all the changes which the NHS has seen since then, there has been an underlying Old Labour consistency to Labour’s approach to the NHS over the past decade: spend as much money as possible, fiddle with the management structures, and all will be well with the wonderful NHS.

But if that was the answer, then one has to wonder what on earth was the question. Tony Blair’s legacy, after a decade in charge of the NHS, is a false dawn on reform and waste on an unprecedented scale.

Much attention has focused recently on the chaotic £12 billion NHS IT project (projected by the Public Accounts Committee to end up costing £20 billion). But that is a pinprick compared with the overall sums thrown at the NHS’s fiscal black hole. By the end of this financial year, NHS spending will be £92 billion - a rise of over £50 billion a year since 1999. But to what end? Even the King’s Fund, one of the NHS’ stalwart defenders, has conceded that three-quarters of the increased spending disappears each year in costs rather than “activity” (the jargon for treating people).

One unglamorous branch of the NHS’s activity is typical of the failure to solve the fundamental problems. The latest survey into waiting times for hearing aids found that the average wait in England for someone needing their first had risen for the third year in a row, to between 45 and 48 weeks. There are wide variations across the country; patients in the South East wait between 73 and 74 weeks.

So much for more money being the answer.

When Labour took office, its belief in the NHS as the only moral method of healthcare delivery was exemplified by one of Mr Dobson’s first acts – ordering local health authorities not to talk to the independent sector, let alone deal with it, unless in the most dire of emergencies. His instruction was based on nothing other than a visceral loathing of the idea of non-state involvement in healthcare.

Mr Dobson’s successor, Alan Milburn, had a more grown up approach and by October 2000 had signed the ‘Concordat’, which contracted NHS work out to the independent sector. This was by far the most significant development of Mr Blair’s period in office. Even Baroness Thatcher had run scared of such an idea, fearing it would confirm fears that she wanted to privatise the NHS. But the plain fact was that the NHS’ capacity could not meet the demands of patients; why on earth would the NHS (ital)not(ital) want to utlilise the independent sector’s spare capacity?

There was, of course, more to it than that. At the launch of Labour’s 2001 manifesto, Tony Blair spoke of there being “no ideological bar” to expansion of the role of independent provision in the NHS. What this should have meant was that the NHS would become simply a purchaser of services - the logical extension of the Tories’ original purchaser-provider split, but with real, open competition for the provision of services, rather than the pretend competition between different branches of the public sector.

But it was the familiar New Labour story – much promise, little reality. Take foundation hospitals. In theory a fine idea with the power to transform the NHS, foundation hospitals would have been tax funded but free-standing, independent hospitals competing with traditional NHS hospitals on the only worthwhile basis: quality and price. After a mauling from the Treasury, they were then subjected to an even more mortal foe – Labour backbenchers wedded to the existing NHS dogma. When the first foundation hospitals arrived in April 2004, they were barely worth bothering with.

Eventually, both Mr Blair and Mr Milburn came to realise that competition was key. Last year, all patients were promised a choice for elective treatment between four providers, one of which had to be independent. The aim was that by 2008 patients should have an entirely free choice between any NHS, charitable or independent provider that met the required standard at a national tariff price. The 2008 target will certainly be missed, and there is no confidence among reformers that 2009 will be any better.

But even this mess comes only after a catastrophic error. The notion has somehow taken hold that a radical Tony Blair was, as in education and welfare, stifled by his Chancellor from making the necessary bold reforms to healthcare provision. But it was not Gordon Brown who, in January 2001, sat on Sir David Frost’s BBC1 sofa and announced that NHS spending would rise to the EU average. It was Mr Blair. In reality, the Prime Minister was the prime mover behind the idea that money was the real problem and bounced a horrified Chancellor into a spending commitment for which the word profligate does not even come close.

Between 1999/2000 and 2007/08, spending on the NHS will have almost doubled in real terms. In 1999/2000 spending was £40.2billion; in 2007/8 it will be £92.6 billion. But the result, far from curing the NHS’s ills, has been paltry. So where did the money go? In its 2005 review of the UK, the OECD found that although the NHS budget increased by half between 1999 and 2004, the number of doctors increased by only a quarter. And Department of Health statistics show that although there has been an increase in the number of operations, it is much slower than the increase in the number of doctors or spending. Productivity, in other words, has fallen. So it should come as no surprise to discover that 56 per cent of the £5.5 billion extra spending that went into the NHS in 2005 last year went on pay.

The think tank Reform has led the way in unearthing statistics which put the past ten years’ performance in perspective. As its latest survey puts it: “The current behaviour pattern of the NHS now resembles that of the British economy in the era of stagflation. An inflationary increase in costs and rise in money expenditure – go - leads to a drastic stop which threatens investment and innovation for several years. The sheer size of the increase – a three fold increase in cash funding and a twofold increase in real terms – has made it impossible to use the funding effectively and swamped the management capacity of a system which had become adapted to working on much smaller increments.”

Labour’s 1997 campaign song, Things Can Only Get Better, has an especially hollow ring with regard to the NHS. After years of madcap spending increases, the brakes will soon be applied. Having squandered the money and done little to reform the fundamentals, the next few years promise a return to the same ferocious headlines of waiting lists and rationing on which Labour capitalised so effectively in 1997. The biter, bit.

The following column of mine is in today's Times:

Tony Blair is not the only one to have a tenth anniversary. In 1997, a book I wrote on class was published. A Class Act argued that for the first two thirds of the 20th century, Britain had seen a steady improvement in social mobility. This had been made possible by grammar schools giving unprecedented educational opportunities to bright working (and middle) class children. For the final third of the century, however, the comprehensive revolution and decline in state-school standards reversed that social mobility.

My co-author was, like me, a journalist. With the new Government committed to education as its priority, we had high hopes that that reverse could itself be reversed. My co-author was soon in a position to do something about it, because he became Tony Blair’s main policy adviser and now, as Lord Adonis, is Schools Minister.

Yesterday, we learnt that more children than ever are being educated at independent schools – 40,000 more today than in May 1997. And this despite a drop in the number of children of school age. If they could afford to, even more parents would do the same. They believe – rightly – that standards are higher. Parents who strive for the best education for their children (often involving immense sacrifice to afford the fees) should be applauded. The problem arises only because of the reason they want to leave the state sector: the relative standards of state and independent schools.

We have an apartheid education system in which the barrier is not race but money. Fee-paying parents buy places in the best meritocratic schools, with the best meritocratic chance of securing a place in the best meritocratic universities, and thus the best meritocratic opportunity to get on in life. They compete on merit with their peers. But it is a stilted contest. Only the few lucky enough to have a decent education are able to enter it. The rest, however able they may be, are left behind.

The thread to the past ten years has been Mr Blair’s aim of giving all pupils the opportunity to enter that contest – to increase standards within the state sector so that all children have an equal chance of succeeding. But ten years on, and the apartheid barrier has grown even deeper. Those who can, pay. Those who can’t, stay.

It was understandable that Mr Blair’s first Education Secretary, David Blunkett, saw his task as cracking the whip. Confronted with the failure that Labour inherited in 1997, it would have been an unusual minister who did not want to impose himself from the centre. Understandable, but wrong. Under Mr Blunkett, there were so many directives – in 1998 alone he sent out 322, more than one for every day of term – that it was entirely self-defeating.

With Mr Blunkett’s departure in 2001, the emphasis shifted towards freeing schools from the monolithic “bog standard comprehensive” model and introducing a variety of school types, such as specialist schools and city academies. but sensible as this was, it still missed the fundamental point: parental power.

Why do parents choose to pay for independent schools? Because standards are higher. But why are they higher? The answer, of course, is precisely because parents pay. Independent schools have no choice but to respond to the needs of parents or suffer the consequences.

Take the experience of Clifton College. In the 1950s and 60s, independent schools were on the wane because state schools were doing a good job. When the comprehensive reorganisation hit in the mid1970s, Bristol’s top grammar school, which had higher academic standards than Clifton, chose to go private: Clifton found itself charging fees twice as high, while achieving far less impressive exam results. Its buildings were grander and its aura more impressive, but these counted for little. So Clifton had no choice but to adapt and turned itself into an attractive package offering exam results, facilities, sports and the aura of a top public school.

The introduction of league tables in the 1990s accelerated this process, showing up the chasm between state and independent schools but also forcing the more sluggish private schools to compete with each other. In 1996, the head of Cheltenham College was sacked because the school was not high enough in the table – a defining moment.

Introducing more variety into state schooling is a good thing. But it is not nearly enough. Schools that respond to the demands of parents succeed, whether in the state or private sector. It was government, not parents, that in 2004 made languages optional for pupils over 14. Languages are now compulsory in only 17 per cent of state schools and a huge decline in language teaching has followed. So parents have taken out their chequebooks and sent their children to schools where languages are properly taught.

Until state schools have a mechanism for giving parents the power of the purse string, it will be déjà vu all over again.

So now I can reveal the big tease over the past weeks. I'm moving sites and becoming the Spectator's blogger.

Clive Davis is doing the same thing, the idea being my site will be the 'front half' of the magazine and Clive the 'back half'. I'm thrilled to be blogging alongside Clive, whose blog has always been one of my daily must-reads.

I've hugely enjoyed running this site for the past four years, but when I was offered the opportunity to switch across to the Spectator and start a new venture for the magazine's online presence I jumped at it.

Nothing will change, other than a new address, a new design and more capabilities (I'll have access to all sorts of gizmos denied to me here). I won't be edited by anyone so the content will be the same - just as annoying to many of you! - as it is here.

I do hope you'll move across with me and enjoy the new site. Please indulge us for a few days while we sort out the glitches (such as the mysterious absence of the blog roll).

This site will continue, but only as a repository for my newspaper and magazine articles. There will be no more blogging here.

Thanks for sll your support over the years, and I look forward to seeing you at the new site.

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I'm afraid I don't have a link for this, but I have just been sent a press release on a debate held last night at the Oxford Union:

66% OF OXFORD UNION AUDIENCE BELIEVE THE PRO-ISRAELI LOBBY STIFLES WESTERN DEBATE ABOUT ISRAEL'S ACTIONS

Oxford, UK: 2nd May – A series of heated exchanges marked the arrival of the Doha Debates at the Oxford Union last night, where two-thirds of the student audience approved a motion claiming that Israel's supporters are stifling western debate.

This was the first time that the Doha Debates, a unique forum for free speech in the Arab world, have held an event outside Qatar.

The debate, hosted by award winning broadcaster Tim Sebastian, took place amid mounting controversy over the role of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States and accusations that it has suppressed criticism of Israel – a charge that the lobby vigorously denies.

Norman Finkelstein, a leading academic critic of Israeli policies, argued in favour of the motion claiming that the Pro-Israel lobby sows confusion to avoid being held to account: "they claim that the conflict is so complicated that it would require rocket science to penetrate its mysteries."

Finkelstein maintained that the American people are ignorant of solutions to the conflict that have been available for 30 years due to the "misinformation, disinformation, and sheer fraud which masquerades as scholarship that is validated by mainstream media."

The journalist and writer Andrew Cockburn supported this view, claiming there are "red lines" in discussing Israel that no politician or journalist in the US would dare cross for fear of being demonised or driven out of public life.

Dr Martin Indyk, former US Ambassador to Israel, and Director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, argued strongly against the motion, saying that last night's event in Oxford was proof of a lively debate on the subject. He said controversy over a recent book by former US president Jimmy Carter – branded anti-Semitic in some quarters – was further evidence that criticism of Israel was not being stifled.

His fellow panellist David Aaronovitch, the journalist and broadcaster, dismissed accusations of conspiracy around the lobby, insisting that Americans naturally identified with Israel, a country surrounded by autocracies, because of their belief in democracy: "It wasn't the Israeli lobby that made Egypt, Jordan, or Syria dictatorships," he said.

He added that what may be true in the US is not the case in Europe where there is no such movement to sow confusion or stifle debate: "But if debate is stifled it isn't coming from the pro-Israeli lobby as some Danish cartoonists found out to their cost."

The debate will be broadcast on BBC World on Saturday 5th May and on Sunday 6th May.

Do you think any of the '66%' (and I'm deeply suspicious of any vote which has such a neat figure as two thirds) who believe that the pro-Israeli lobby stifles debate has spotted the irony in recording their vote in the Doha Debates, described as "a unique forum for free speech in the Arab world". That's free speech - in which people can debate issues such as, oh, Israel, Hezbollah and anything else they choose to discuss - being "unique" to the Doha Debates as in not existing elsewhere. Debate is oh-so-free in the Arab world, in Iran, and in the Palestinian Authority, isn't it?

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Peter Briffa speaks for me:

"Tories are promising tax and spending cuts up and down the country if they win. Rightwing ideologues took over Hammersmith and Fulham a year ago from a well-run Labour group, cutting council tax by 3p, cutting £14.4m from children's services, housing, care for the frail and charity grants and closing a mental health centre. Tory Walsall is cutting vulnerable children's services, so is Swindon, Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. The list of cuts elsewhere is long, but for those with short memories, that's what Conservatives usually do".

Interesting. Maybe they're worth voting for after all.

(5)

It's always instructive to go by what people say, rather than the perception of them that mainstream opinion holds. So here's a question to those who say that Hamas is moderating in office - that the reality of authority is leading to greater promise for peace: have you actually read what they say? Do you listen to their words?

Sheik Ahmad Bahr is the acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council. And here's what he said on Friday:

Ahmad Bahr began: "You will be victorious" on the face of this planet. You are the masters of the world on the face of this planet. Yes, [the Koran says that] "you will be victorious," but only "if you are believers." Allah willing, "you will be victorious," while America and Israel will be annihilated. I guarantee you that the power of belief and faith is greater than the power of America and Israel. They are cowards, who are eager for life, while we are eager for death for the sake of Allah. That is why America's nose was rubbed in the mud in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, and everywhere.

Bahr continued and said that America will be annihilated, while Islam will remain. The Muslims "will be victorious, if you are believers." Oh Muslims, I guarantee you that the power of Allah is greater than America, by whom many are blinded today. Some people are blinded by the power of America. We say to them that with the might of Allah, with the might of His Messenger, and with the power of Allah, we are stronger than America and Israel.

The Hamas spokesperson concluded with a prayer, saying: "Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one. Oh Allah, show them a day of darkness. Oh Allah, who sent down His Book, the mover of the clouds, who defeated the enemies of the Prophet defeat the Jews and the Americans, and bring us victory over them."

The voice of peace: Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one.

(5)

What a wonderful night! What a wonderful week! First Chelsea lose the Premiership, and now they've been bundled out of the Champions League. Fingers crossed there'll be more good news at the end of the season and they'll get stuffed by Man Utd in the Cup Final. And then - oh, what a dream! - maybe next season Roman will walk away, fed up with what his gazillions have bought.

What fun seeing the look of utter desolation on John Terry and Frank Lampard's faces.

Is there anyone out there who isn't a Chelski fan who's not delighted tonight?!

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the original story, the fact is that Lord Browne had admitted that he lied under oath.

I can't think of a single reason why he should not be prosecuted for perjury. It's clearly in the public interest. And he has admitted a major offence. And we are all equal under the law, aren't we? It will be fascinating to see how this pans out.

(2)

The Yazzmonster thinks bloggers are 'malign creeps'. Malign creep. Hmmm. Now which Independent columnist might that phrase be applied to?

And she has been affronted by the behaviour of two people recently:

One came disgracefully late to dinner the other day because she was lost in Second Life ( sorry to bring it up, S) and another took me to lunch and never looked into my eyes, lost in his bloody BlackBerry. All around Le Caprice, many others were indulging in the same pleasure, playing with the cheeky machines sitting indecently on their crotches. It was not nice.

Out of context that does seem rude behaviour. But put yourself in their shoes. You have been invited to dine at the Yazzmonster's home. Who knows, maybe you were under the weather or not thinking, but for some reason you accepted. It might indeed be rude to turn up late, but surely it would take an extraordinarily hard heart not to understand why you'd want to turn up as late as possible to such an encounter. And with one of the most gloriously far-fetched excuses ever: "I'm so sorry, Yasmin. i was transfixed by Second Life".

As for lunch with her... Wouldn't you simply have to spend the entire time staring at your Crackberry, to ward off the horror of having to engage with the Yazzmonster sitting opposite you?

(2)

Never let it be said the French are not perceptive people:

PARIS (Reuters) - The French dislike themselves even more than the Americans dislike them, according to an opinion poll published on Friday.

The survey of six nations, carried out for the International Herald Tribune daily and France 24 TV station, said 44 percent of French people thought badly of themselves against 38 percent of U.S. respondents who had a negative view of the French.

It doesn't seem possible that Rostropovich is dead. How can it be that a man so life affirming, so heart warming and so giving to all should have died? Almost certainly the finest musician of my lifetime, we shall not see his like again, and should count ourselves privileged to have lived when he was alive.

I heard him play so many times, and every concert was special in its own way. I was once - relatively recently - lucky enough to have met him and spoken for a while. I was sitting in the Eurostar departure lounge and spotted him straight away as he arrived. To my amazement, he sat down next to me. I had a dilemma. I hate intruding on the private space of public figures. But I could not let the chance go by to thank him for the years of pleasure he had given me. So that's what I said, and then said I did not want to disturb him further and good bye.

'No, no, come back', he said as I bid to leave him. And we then spoke for what seemed like hours but was probably no more than twenty minutes. And then his train to Paris was called. 'Will you sit next to me? I would love to carry on talking', he said. I was despondent - I was off to Brussels for a meeting I couldn't miss.

With hindsight I can't believe I was such an idiot and didn't accompany him to Paris. To have had the chance to talk to one of the great men of the age - not just a great musician but a great man - for an entire train ride; and I missed it.

If you are going to listen to only one of his recordings, try this: the famous live recording from the Prom of 21st August 1968 when he played the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the USSRSO on the night when the Soviet tanks rolled into Prague. It's far from being his most technically accomplished performance but you can almost hear his cry of pain for the people of Czechoslovakia.

Rest in peace, Slava.

(4)

So frequent, and so rabid, is the antisemitism which the Guardian allows on its Comment Is Free site that it often passes without further ado. But it shouldn't. The Guardian's comments section has become a shockingly blatant bulletin board of antisemitism.

Some of the comments after this piece are entirely unambiguous antisemitic rantings, and the Guardian hasn't lifted a finger to deal with them, despite being alterted to them hours ago. I'm going to print a lengthy sample just to show how relentless it is, and how incredible it is that the Guardian is allowing this sort of thing to be published under its auspices. It can't, as it has before, claim that the odd comment has snuck through. The entire comments section after this piece is suffused with it:

'Mr Cockburn, you are a courageous and an excellent writer who is absolutely spot on. Is it pure coincidence that both Perle and Wolfowitz plus others of their neocon cronies are Jews, some of them with Israeli passports? Could they have been doing Israel's bidding, diverting and corrupting US policy to suit Israel's murderous agenda? Perhaps acting to influence the simpletons Bush and Rumsfield and then turning against them as Perle did, when his mission was accomplished. Talk about rats abandoning ship! How has the same Jewish/Zionist manipulation through Lord Levy and his money raising efforts in the Jewish community influenced British policy? Is that why Blair and Brown always attend the Friends of Israel annual rally where they drink the Toast to the President of Israel? Can we now have another article Mr. Cockburn, on the Israeli/Jewish malign influence on British politics through the Jewish fifth columnists in the UK?'

'Wolfowitz is Jewish isn't he? Are you saying just because he is Jewish Andrew Cockburn shouldn't be allowed to write an article about him? I take it you belong to that camp who think anybody who is remotely critical of Israel or indeed any jewish person has to be a Jew hater.If you are really so distressed about the Guardian blogs perhaps you should start reading the Jewish chronicle, I'm sure the journalist on that newspaper will be able to confirm all your paranoid prejudices.'

'SarahLeah asks:
- "Is anyone else tired of all this Guardian obsession with Israel/Palestine and alleged Jewish power?"
No. It's THE key issue to be resolved in the world today and is a factor in what's happening in Iraq, Iran and internally in the US.
There are people who would like the rest of us to turn our attention away but we won't fall for the old ploy that it's boring and that we should all move on to something else.'

'Why can't we take it as a settled matter that Zionists had a huge hand in planning the Iraq War? Maybe the US would've attacked even if there were no Israel Lobby, no Wolfowitz at the number 2 spot at the Pentagon. Maybe it's pure coincidence that the US is so obsessed with the Middle East and the Arabs, JUST like Israel is. Maybe if Wolfowitz weren't there some non-Jew with no ties to Israel would've been up to the same mischief. But all these "maybes" are pure speculations (and, in my opinion, poor ones). The simple, unavoidable fact of the matter is that whether the US could've done without them or not, the Zionists were there with their hands on the levers of power.'

'The most interesting point in this first-rate piece is the link made between the military-industrial-congressional complex and the Israeli Lobby/Likuddists, especially the neocons. The pattern of imitation/cooperation is striking:
1. preemptive war
2. torture
3. walls
4. refusal to negotiate
5. demonizing enemy
6. exaggerated threats and responses
7. manipulation of public opinion
8. etc,etc,etc'

'Wolfowitz only answers to Israel. The point of the attack on Iraq was to eliminate one of Israels enemies and the Americans were useful idiots to do that. I am glad that they are beginning to see that and protest against it.'

'As heinous as Wolfowitz obviously is, he wasn't alone in plotting his pre-meditated crimes of state. He was part of a tightknit, sinister cabal of Likudniks who wormed their way into positions of power in Washington in order to further Israeli interests. The nefarious Richard Perle was a ruthless ringleader but their exacrable numbers include others past and present such as Doug Feith, Eliot Abrams, Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, Mark Grossman, et. al. that overlaps administrations but is united by their common fealty to Israel first. Not at all surprising that these cunning schemers should now try and "bite the hand that fed them" by using the hapless Rumsfeld to take the heat for the disastrous consequences of their insidious policies, while they scurry for cover. These sniveling little cowards have wreaked havoc with American foreign policy for years - and aren't done yet.'

'SarahLeah asks:
- "Is anyone else tired of all this Guardian obsession with Israel/Palestine and alleged Jewish power?"This 77 year old man as been waiting a long time for some one to stand up for the shmuckes of this world, As that is what we are to the rich Zionist doners who drive their foreign policy. Zionists have hijacked conservative christian opinion in both US and UK. being called an anti-semite, racist, is a big part of their head game, Keep repeating a lie over and over, And we all get a gilt trip ,we have the Jewish genocide constantly shoved down our throats and other genocides ignored, eg holocaust also should not be used as a cover for every human rights violation by the Israeli government. When the media and the US Congress begin to recognize that Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians aren't acceptable, we may have a chance for stability in the Mideast, Having said that, You can call me an anti-semite, That puts me in good company,
So to all you anti-semite out they ,keep the good work up, Remember The power and extent of the Israeli Money Lobby is all pervasive. This giant must be slain, And thank's Guardian ,Please don't let Murdoch by you out.'

(9)

Lionel Messi's wondergoal from last week is on a video here, side by side with Maradona. The commentary's not bad, either...

(2)

Oliver Kamm has an interesting post about Wikipedia. Regular readers will know that I disagree with him on the merits of blogging, but when it comes to Wikipedia I am with him 100 per cent.

I cannot understand how anyone with the least interest in factual accuracy gives Wikipedia the time of day. I have yet to read an entry on a subject about which I know something that has not been marred by glaring errors. The entry on me, for instance - probably the only subject about which I can claim to the the world's leading expert - has so many basic errors of fact that it is laughable.

I have made a point of never correcting it because once I start, there will be no end to it, as it is forever altered with new errors.

But here is just one sentence:

He is the official biographer for David Blunkett and is an occasional guest on the BBC's flagship Question Time discussion show.

Both statements are wrong. My biography was not official. Nor was it ever stated, anywhere or at any time, by me, my publishers or David Blunkett that it was. I started it off my own back, wrote it to my own schedule and editing criteria and published it as I saw fit. Mr Blunkett gave me interviews for it, but that in no way made it official, since I chose what to report and how. But because someone wholly ignorant of the facts about which they have chosen to write makes that claim on Wikipedia, it will now be repeated elswhere as fact.

As for my being "an occasional guest on the BBC's flagship Question Time discussion show"; I have never appeared on it. Not once. And I think I should know.

I could go through the rest of my entry and point to the similar inaccuracies which litter it, but what would be the point?. Wikipedia is a pernicious tool, and no one should rely on it. Ever.

(No doubt someone will read this and change the entry to reflect my corrections, but that will merely prove my point. If I hadn't happened to be vain enough to look at my entry, and then to write about it here, the errors would stay.)

(6)

Plus ça change.

(From Iain Dale.)