Even though Jeremy Corbyn has the Big Mo in this Labour leadership campaign, it is fair to say that Yvette Cooper has had a pretty good few weeks too. The Shadow Home Secretary managed to produce all her passion for her speech today in which she finally rounded on Corbyn, as well as rightly attacking
It’s safe to say that today has not been a great day for the Corbyn campaign. After Yvette Cooper gave a speech claiming her Labour leadership rival’s policies are neither original nor credible, Corbyn’s good friend Paul Flynn has come out against him. Despite being tipped for a plum role in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet should he be
Forget Greece; China’s economic slowdown is the biggest story of the year, says Elliot Wilson in this week’s issue of The Spectator. China’s long boom may finally be ending and the consequences for the world will be profound. Elliot joins Isabel Hardman and Andrew Sentance, Senior Economic Adviser at PwC and a former member of the
While the Labour leadership contest is in a miserable state, other parts of the party are trying to get on with working out how it can recover in 2020. Two big questions are how to deal with Ukip and how to make Labour a winning force again in the South of England and I look at
Will Tony Blair’s intervention into the Labour leadership contest really make a difference? The former Prime Minister argues in today’s Guardian that this is a far worse crisis for his party than the 1980s, and uses what Angela Eagle last night described as ‘apocalyptic language’ to warn members of the danger the party is in.
The SNP may finally be having an effect on Westminster’s rules and traditions. Ever since the 56 SNP MPs descended on Parliament they have been repeatedly told off by the Speaker of the Commons for breaking tradition by clapping in the Chamber: ‘The convention that we do not clap in this Chamber is very, very
Sir Eric Pickles looks every bit the diamond Tory geezer. As we sit down in a room overlooking Big Ben for his first interview since leaving the Cabinet, the 63-year-old MP for Brentwood and Ongar has dressed for the occasion: purple braces, monogramed shirt cuffs, pocket square and a golden Rolex. Yet his demeanour does
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/chinasdownturn-labourslostvotersandthesweetestvictoryagainstaustralia/media.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman and Rowenna Davis discuss Labour’s lost voters” startat=622] Listen [/audioplayer] The Labour leadership contest was supposed to be a debate about the party’s future. Instead it has oscillated between petty personality politics and bickering. Nobody is addressing the question of how to win back lost voters. The four candidates have barely
My fiancé has coined a word for Saturday recuperation which describes what much of the world does to allay its tension. From schoolchildren to the orthodox this is a time to reboot, rest, restore and relax, but none of these words quite suit in the way his term translates, acknowledging the week’s angst which the
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/chinasdownturn-labourslostvotersandthesweetestvictoryagainstaustralia/media.mp3″ title=”Elliot Wilson and Andrew Sentance discuss China’s economic slump”] Listen [/audioplayer]I stood alongside the chairman of the board of a state-owned enterprise in eastern China. The factory floor, partially open to the elements, stretched out far in front of us, littered with towers and blades designed for some of the world’s largest wind
Did you know that tampons were just another brutal expression of the oppressive patriarchy? I must confess that I didn’t either, until the story broke this week about an unfortunate woman who decided to run the London marathon during her time of the month without any panty pads, in ostentatious protest against the alleged male
When I covered Libya’s revolution in 2011, I had a driver named Mashallah. Mashallah was a decent and stoical man with an interesting propensity for malapropisms. He was regarded with fondness by us journalists — so when I decided to return to Libya recently, I sent him an email: did he want to work for
The greatest mistake made by conservatism was its overly close relationship with neo-classical economics. This was a marriage of convenience: finding themselves Johnny-no-mates in the academic world, the conservative establishment hastily bunked up with the only group of social scientists who were prepared to talk to them. This cohabitation was not only unhealthy but boring.
‘What was it like growing up in Liverpool?’ a journalist asked John Lennon. ‘I didn’t grow up in Liverpool,’ he replied. ‘I grew up in Hamburg.’ My father grew up in Hamburg too, at the end of the second world war. The city had been bombed to smithereens. Cigarettes were the only currency, and my
We were eating tapas and talking about Spain. Leaving caviar on one side, when jamón ibérico is at its best, there is nothing better to eat. In the Hispania restaurant, it is always at its best. Nothing could match it, although Hispania’s cured leg of beef, the anchovies, the black pudding and the blood pudding
It’s really hard to imagine now a world before 24-hour news, continually and constantly accessible in a never-ending stream of on-the-spot, up-to-the-minute reports. What, then, would it be like to have no news summaries on the quarter-hour, no ‘live’ bulletins, no way of knowing what’s going on at this very moment in Kathmandu, Kabul or
When the link between tobacco and lung cancer was first established in the early 1950s, one obvious question arose: should doctors tell people not to smoke? These days, of course, the answer seems equally obvious — but at the time, medical opinion was divided. According to the highly distinguished Dr Erich Geiringer in a letter
Propaganda is said to work best when based upon a grain of truth. Ukip! The Musical assumes that most electors are suspicious of the movement and its leaders. And in Edinburgh that may well be the case. The show portrays Nigel Farage as a bewildered twerp with no charisma and little talent for oratory. His
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/chinasdownturn-labourslostvotersandthesweetestvictoryagainstaustralia/media.mp3″ title=”Alex Massie and Michael Henderson discuss England’s victory against Australia” startat=1184] Listen [/audioplayer]Adelaide airport, 2006. One of those serpentine check-in queues that bring you face to face with a long series of different people. I was leaving, everyone I knew in the queue was carrying on to Perth. See you at Lord’s, then.
Trainwreck is a romcom as written and directed by Amy Schumer, the American comedy prodigy whose Comedy Central sketch show is properly hilarious and transgressive, from what I’ve seen. Indeed, if nothing else, I beseech you to watch one particular sketch, as viewable on YouTube, where a group of famous Hollywood actresses gather to celebrate
