Another disclosure from Anthony Seldon’s upcoming biography of David Cameron: he reveals that George Osborne tried to stop the referendum European Union membership. The below is from the Mail on Sunday’s serialisation of Seldon’s book: Both men are profoundly irritated by their Eurosceptic MPs, but Osborne is even more pragmatic than Cameron. The Chancellor’s view is that it is
The silly season is supposed to end tomorrow. September sidles in and normality replaces August’s frivolity. The reality of winter will be with us soon enough, too. That, at any rate, is the theory but it seems, on both sides of the Atlantic, that sillyness is likely to last for some time yet. There’s the twin
I had a piece in the Sunday Times yesterday about Jeremy Corbyn and the dodgy excuse he and his spokespeople use whenever he is caught with another IRA terrorist, Holocaust-denier, Islamist or random anti-Semite. In general the claim is that he was only involved in the meeting as part of a ‘peace process.’ Occasionally he/they
Just a few months ago, almost everyone thought that David Cameron was a goner. That he was about to go down in history as a one-term Prime Minister who failed to win against a bad Labour leader in 2010 then lost to a worse one in 2015. During this period, Anthony Seldon spoke to a
The popular singer Chrissie Hynde has been reprimanded by feminist campaigners for speaking common sense. Hynde, who is somewhat more astute than most landfill rock slebs, has advanced the proposition that women should take a degree of precaution to ensure that they are not sexually attacked by men. Such as not wandering the streets, pissed
In my business, there’s a lot of fretting about the idea of representativeness. Pollsters put questions to, say, a thousand people – and take them as a sample of the country. How to be sure that you have the right sample? You need the right number of men, women, northerners, middle class, Lib Dem voters etc – but
I’m getting tired of the self-righteousness of Owen Jones. His response to the terrible spate of deaths of people fleeing Syria and Africa is to imply that if only everyone were as moral as him, the problem would be solved. He seems to think that the key cause of these people’s deaths is that many
The scene of the recent bombing at the Erawan shrine has swiftly been remodelled to make it seem as though nothing happened. Upbeat slogans – ‘Stronger Together’ – and a forensically dubious ‘clean-up’ have gone hand in hand with a media campaign to reassure millions of tourists that they are safe in the Land of Smiles.
It’s not entirely surprising that Tony Blair fancied one last chance to plead with his party not to elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader. And it’s not particularly surprising that his piece in today’s Observer is attracting exactly the sort of reaction he expected. But what is surprising is not just the former Prime Minister’s rather
Oh dear. Although Lord Ashcroft said he would be pleasantly surprised if Anthony Seldon’s biography of David Cameron offered anything more than ‘a sanitised account’ of his time in Number 10, an excerpt in today’s Mail on Sunday should make interesting reading for Boris Johnson. In Cameron at 10, Seldon writes of tensions between the leadership hopeful and the Cameron
The request for tributes in verse to a once-popular foodstuff that has fallen out of favour generated a large and lively postbag. Bill Greenwell’s entry (Spangles!) brought to mind childhood pleasures, as did Sid Field’s (Creamola) and Jayne Osborn’s (Angel Delight). But I still shudder at the memory of spam fritters, and Alan Millard’s valiant
Tell kids the Tooth Fairy is fake, and their lips are sure to tremble. Reveal the list of their birthday gifts the day before the party, and they may well despair. Those who don’t want to hear such things can try covering their ears with a ‘la-la-la-not-listening,’ but the blabbers, in most cases, aren’t violating
In this week’s Spectator, I profile the 2015 intake of Tory MPs: a bright, pragmatic bunch who don’t like to call themselves Thatcherite. Ministers who have sat in the Commons Chamber and heard maiden speeches from this new bunch have been seriously impressed, with some remarking that they’ve wondered what they’ve done with their own
In a 2012 interview on Newsnight, foul-mouthed LA rapper Tyler, The Creator told a churlish Stephen Smith that the point of his music was to ‘piss old white people off like you’. Now, the old white people at the Home Office seem to have proved him right, by banning the rapper – real name Tyler
It’s fair to say that the appointment of Ed Miliband’s ex-campaign director Spencer Livermore to the House of Lords hasn’t gone down well in Labour circles. Harriet Harman was said to be in a battle to get a similar honour for her own press chief Ayesha Hazarika if Livermore got one, but her name was
A quick disclaimer: I am a socialist and I share much of Jeremy Corbyn’s politics. I believe that austerity is unjustifiable ideological warfare; I believe in renationalising the railways, I believe in Clause IV, I believe in strong trade unions, and I believe in nuclear disarmament. I also believe that Corbyn should be commended for
Most people in the Labour Party may want to stay in the EU, but few think there is no scope to improve the way the EU operates or our terms of membership. Why, then, does Labour appear to have no policy towards the renegotiation that is taking place? What would Labour like to change –
Jeremy Corbyn has taken to the Times to defend his Labour leadership campaign and attack both the press and his critics within his own party. He writes: ‘Despite the barrage of attacks, hysteria and deliberate misrepresentation of the positions my campaign has put forward, it is our message which is resonating.’ He’s right about his
During the election campaign a cloud hung over Grant Shapps, the then chairman of the Conservative party. In April, he was accused of editing his own Wikipedia profile and those of other politicians by Richard Symonds, a Wikipedia member of staff and Lib Dem activist. Symonds claimed that Shapps ‘or someone acting on his behalf’ used an anonymous account ‘Contribsx’ to make
I have never met David Smerdon, the Australian grandmaster and author of Smerdon’s Scandinavian (Everyman Chess). Last week I gave a ringing endorsement of his new book and I must say that in my mind’s eye I visualise him as some swashbuckling buccaneer of the chessboard, complete with eyepatch, wooden leg, tricorn hat and probably
