Politics

Talk to anyone in Downing Street and they can give you the four main reasons that voters cite for switching from the Tories to Labour: the Tory leadership is out of touch, the cost of living, immigration and welfare. The first two of these reasons are why the government has been prepared to risk further ridicule by changing the Budget again to postpone the 3p fuel increase planned for August until the end of the year. The timing of today’s move, just hours after Ed Balls said Labour would call a Commons vote on the matter, will attract much Westminster comment. But the Tories are confident that this will pass

I have not often been called a ‘renowned political commentator’ (for readers of this blog it tends to be ‘hopeless naive leftie’ and elsewhere it’s ‘notorious Zionist neo-con’) so I was delighted to come across this description of myself in the Harlow Star. The article was prompted by my appointment as Visiting Professor at Harlow College, one of the best journalism training schools in the country. Over the years, this magnificent Essex institution has produced such stellar alumni as Alan Rusbridger, Roger Alton, Jeremy Clarkson, Piers Morgan and Richard Madeley. I intend to invite them all back over the course of the next academic year to discuss the future of

Her Majesty the Queen must wish it was Diamond Jubilee year absolutely every year, such fun is she having. Watching Cheryl Cole duet with Gary Barlow must have been three minutes of almost incalculable joyfulness. How, she must have wondered, can they surpass this? Well, yet another treat is in store, for now she is being offered a trip to Northern Ireland — to shake the hand of Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuiness.  This will be the veritable icing on the cake. And made even more pleasurable by the graciousness of Sinn Fein. As Gerry Adams said: ‘This is a very significant initiative by us. We don’t have to do it,

If you wanted a preview of the future of British politics, you should have headed through the back alleys of Westminster to Lord North Street on the last Monday in February. There, in the slightly cramped premises of the Institute of Economic Affairs, you could have seen the early stirrings of a Tory revolution. A group of MPs, most of whom had been in parliament for less than two years, were explaining why nothing less than ‘fundamental structural reform’ of the economy would solve the country’s woes. Holding a public meeting a few weeks before your own government’s budget to announce what you would do if you were in charge

The situation in Egypt remains perilous, as protests mount against the military government which has delayed announcing the result of last weekend’s vote. Preliminary estimates, overseen by a panel of judges, put the Muslim Brotherhood ahead by 900,000 votes. But this is being contested by former Mubarak henchman, Ahmed Shafiq. Election monitors are examining more than a hundred alleged cases of multiple election fraud. This is the latest popular grievance against the military government, which has prorogued parliament, deferred parliamentary elections and suspended rights of demonstration in recent weeks. The BBC reports that human rights campaigners and democracy activists are warning that a ‘meaningful transfer of powers’ will not take