Charles Moore, Baron Moore of Etchingham

The burden should not be on people to prove why they should be allowed to do something, but on the authorities to prove why they shouldn't.

Charles Hilary Moore, Baron Moore of Etchingham (born 31 October 1956) is an English journalist and a former editor of The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator and The Sunday Telegraph; he still contributes to all three publications. He wrote the authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher, published in three volumes (2013, 2016 and 2019). In July 2020, Moore became a member of the House of Lords.

Quotes

2001–2013

• How much survives of the other peacetime prime ministers since the war? What were John Major and Harold Wilson and Anthony Eden for? Won't Tony Blair's manic grin end up as ruined as Ozymandias's "wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command"? Among the great might-have-been-prime ministers, most fall into one of two traps. On the one hand are the too greedily ambitious, the Denis Healeys who don't stand up to the enemy at the moment they should, and the Michael Heseltines, who are too impatient of the system that they seek to dominate. On the other are the prophets – the Bevans, Benns and Powells – who may be more original than their more conventional rivals, but cannot be called successful.
  • 'It's not Mandy, it's not even Tony – it's Woy wot won it', The Daily Telegraph (26 January 2001)

• The burden should not be on people to prove why they should be allowed to do something, but on the authorities to prove why they shouldn't. Thus, why shouldn't people be free to hunt, or smoke cannabis, or build an extension to their house, or travel without an identity card, or read pornography on the internet, or adopt children? There may be reasons to prevent any or all of these things, but the restrictors should be the ones who have to make their case.
• There should also be a presumption that the authorities should stop taking more power over people and should start handing power back. Why should trial by jury be curtailed, or the assets of people suspected of profiting from crime be seized, or the Customs and Excise have the power to enter your house? Why should the police be able to subject drivers to random breath tests, or to spy on the public through CCTV, or the Government keep information on you that it shares across departments, or tell you whom to employ, or intercept your electronic communications?
  • 'A free country', The Daily Telegraph (16 July 2001)

• It is possible, though hard, to forge a United Kingdom made up of many ethnicities. Leaders like Mr Cameron are right to try to insist on common standards and better rules, rather than to despair. But whatever it is, and however well it turns out, it cannot be England. Perhaps when I am very old, my grandchildren will ask me what England was. It will be a hard question to answer, but I think I shall tell them that it seemed like a good idea while it lasted, and that it lasted for about 1,000 years.
  • 'Will there always be an England, whatever the origin of its people?', The Daily Telegraph (15 April 2011)

• Looking forward, as one always must, I wonder if the law will eventually be changed to allow one to marry one's dog. Until now, this would have been considered disgusting, since marriage has been a law revolving around sexual behaviour, and sexual acts with animals are still, I believe, illegal.
• They make excellent life-partners. No doubt some old bigots will claim that marriage is a uniquely human institution, but it won't take long to find enlightened vicars who believe that human and canine dignity is in a very real sense enhanced by recognising inter-species unions.
  • "Why not marry a dog?", The Spectator (6 July 2013)
  • The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 received Royal Assent later in the month.

2014–present

• People are often silly in their attacks on these things. Elites are inevitable and have some good qualities. Any old society will and should have an establishment. Yet a mark of greatness in politics is a capacity to transcend these elites – witness Churchill, who was born into one, and Thatcher, who was not. Jenkins did not do this. Unlike his wife, says Campbell, he was "handicapped by the wish to please'". He most wished to please the grandees who fitted his rather definition of the word "civilised".
  • 'Roy Jenkins: the claret-lover whose ideas haven’t aged well', The Daily Telegraph (23 March 2014)

• When Sir Keir rightly attacked anti-Semitism in his party, he did not analyse its nature clearly enough. It is not like the old Right-wing anti-Semitism which regarded Jews as creepy foreigners. Rather it a lethally political cocktail of two things – whites on the hard Left who hate anything white, Western or British, and Islamists who, for pseudo-religious reasons, see Jews as the eternal enemy and imagine Allah is telling them to take Palestine by slaughter.
  • 'Parliament has taken the knee to the Islamists who rule by fear ', The Daily Telegraph (23 February 2024)

• Labour insiders are more aware than most voters of the danger of the weird alliance between punitive Muslim extremists who believe women are inferior, homosexuals should be killed etc and the usually white hard-left Corbynites whose social agenda is completely different but share Islamist hatred of Israel and the West.
  • 'Labour would be unwise to appease Muslim activists', The Daily Telegraph (7 May 2024)

Quotes about Charles Moore

• Mr Charles Moore announced he will be stepping down in April after six years as editor [of The Spectator], during which time the magazine's circulation doubled to 37,000 and advertising revenue increased tenfold.
  • Richard Evans, 'Nigel Lawson's son gets father's old job as Spectator editor', The Times (14 February 1990), p. 6