Politics

There’s a certain kind of Englishman who falls hard for Los Angeles. Men such as Graham Nash, who swapped the Hollies and rainy Manchester for Joni Mitchell, David Crosby and Laurel Canyon. The LA of beaches, semi-rural hills and freeways can work wonders on an English heart. But the city has another side — a place most Angelenos never venture. Downtown. The old heart of the city is a vision of how LA might have turned out. It has skyscrapers, art deco buildings and even an underground railway. It feels like Chicago, except that even on a Saturday afternoon, many streets are deserted. Some of those gorgeous pre-war buildings are

A letter appeared in the Independent a few weeks ago signed by various environmentalist grandees — heads of green lobby groups, former chairmen of eco-quangos and the like. It warned against Brexit on the grounds that EU laws had ‘a hugely positive effect’ on the environment. It didn’t explain why a post-EU Britain wouldn’t retain, replicate or even improve these ‘hugely positive’ laws. As usual, it implied that voters needed to have such things dictated to them. The really interesting thing, though, was the list of bodies that followed the signatories’ names: Natural England, the Green Alliance, the RSPB, the Natural Environment Research Council, a couple of universities — you

If asked to pick the UK’s inward investor of the century so far I would, without hesitation, name Ratan Tata, the anglophile former patriarch of the eponymous Indian conglomerate that bought Tetley the tea-maker for £271 million in 2000, Corus the Anglo-Dutch steel-maker for £6.2 billion in 2007, and Jaguar Land Rover — from Ford — for £1.3 billion in 2008. We’ve heard a lot lately about Mr Tata’s hubristic folly in buying Corus in the first place; and about his boardroom successors in Mumbai ‘going through the motions’ of finding a buyer for Corus UK —with its Port Talbot blast furnaces symbolising what’s left of our shrunken industrial heritage

It was unfashionable of me to write in praise of George Osborne on Budget day. I did so, you may recall, because ‘at least we have a finance minister who’s always on the front foot’: I wanted to make a contrast between our Chancellor’s relentless activism in pursuit of his political goals, and the supine performance of eurozone leaders — who continue failing to offer any strokes at all while hoping for Mario Draghi to knock up a few runs with monetary trick-shots from the other end. Within 48 hours, however, our Chancellor seemed to be very much on the back foot, one hand clutching his protective box, as bouncers

‘We cannot have a situation where the banks are able to privatise their profits and nationalise their losses,’ declared Vince Cable in 2008 in the midst of the banking collapse. But steel companies?  That is a different matter. Cable has demanded that the government take on the pension liabilities of Tata’s British employers in a last gasp attempt to attract a buyer and save the plants. On the subject of nationalising pension liabilities, Cable has form – as business secretary he forced the taxpayer to take on the responsibility for paying postmen’s pensions so that he could sell off the Royal Mail – which he did, at a giveaway price.

For football fans, June 10th – the day Euro 2016 kicks off – is likely to be a more exciting prospect than June 23rd – when Britain votes on whether to stay in the EU. But could lovers of the beautiful game see English football become unstuck in the event of Brexit? Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of the Premier League has said Britain should stay in the EU; West Ham’s vice chairman Karren Brady has made a similar argument, suggesting that Brexit would have ‘devastating consequences’. But not everyone agrees: former England player Sol Campbell says that with Britain in the EU ‘mediocre overseas footballers, especially from Europe (are)

Birmingham, home of Cadbury, the X-ray and state education, has just scooped another accolade. Today it has emerged as the ‘crash for cash’ capital of Britain – and it’s nothing to do with Spaghetti Junction. A deliberate car crash was staged every three hours in the UK last year in order to net fraudsters compensation from fake injury claims. Aviva, a leading insurer, examined its own claims data and found that 25 per cent of its 3,000 crash for cash claims took place in Brum. Some are ‘staged’, whereby two damaged vehicles are brought together and made to look like they’ve collided, injuring the passengers insured. In others, fraudsters target innocent

Most MPs greet the parliamentary recess with a sense of relief. But Conservatives are welcoming this Easter break like the bell at the end of a boxing match. They are exhausted, tempers must be cooled and they now have a fortnight to think about how best to stop their split over the EU referendum becoming something more permanent and debilitating. Some in the party have long hated their own colleagues more than anyone else ,and they have taken full advantage of the excuse the referendum offers for verbal violence. As one Cabinet minister admits: ‘The extreme 10 per cent on either side of the Tory party absolutely loathe each other.’

In Scotland’s grittier pubs, a simple rule has long applied: no football colours and no talking about politics. With enough drink, talking about either can lead to violence — and pint glasses are expensive to replace. With an ordinary general election, the prohibition is easy to obey. The wrong buggers might well win, but they can easily be removed at the next election. A referendum, however, is different. It’s not just temporary — it’s for life. And like life, it’s unavoidable. Socially, as well as politically, there is no hiding place. The Prime Minister is, it seems, experiencing the referendum effect for himself. He can quite happily chat to his