Politics

It was a badly timed death, a departure which, ironically, scorned the important press deadlines. The best time to die, if you are a celebrity, is at three o’clock in the afternoon of a weekday — in time for the early evening news bulletins and the next morning’s papers. This, however, was a Saturday into a Sunday, a time when even Christ might have died and there’d be nobody sentient around to pick up the story. I was a bit drunk, having spent the evening out drinking with my then girlfriend and a bunch of friends whose names I cannot subsequently recall. Temporary drink friends, I suppose. There had been

Tom Harris didn’t much care for Dan Hannan’s speech setting about Gordon Brown. Fair enough, as a Labour MP you wouldn’t expect him to find it a hoot. But then he says this: What was truly repugnant about his speech was the total absence of any sense of patriotism. Some Tories on the extreme right of the party share the problem of some Republicans in the States: they don’t regard the head of government to be the nation’s leader unless he or she is also a member of their little party. Gordon Brown isn’t just Labour’s prime minister; he’s Britain’s prime minister, and for any UK politician to launch such

I don’t think it’s quite right for me to keep promoting New Deal of the Mind here on my Spectator blog. That should happen elsewhere and will. But just in case readers are interested, the launch meeting at Number 11 Downing Street was a fascinating affair. Cabinet Ministers Andy Burnham and James Purnell pledged their support as did opposition culture spokesman Ed Vaizey. It’s probably best to let others who were there speak about this so check out Lynne Featherstone’s report of the event. Lynne has been a great supporter of the initiative, designed to harness the innovative potential of the creative industries during the downturn. She made the following key point: “Admiration for

It wasn’t a great championship this year, though few in Ireland can be expected to give a damn about that. And while there are plenty of folk who might think that Ireland’s Grand Slam (sixty one years in the waiting) was hardly vintage stuff, that’s often been the case with Grand Slam winning sides. The great England team of the early 1990s didn’t play much champagne rugby while outside observers might say the same thing, and with some reason too, of Scotland’s twin triumphs in 1984 and 1990. Nonetheless, there’s little denying that there was no truly outstanding team in the championship this year. Apart from their performance against France

I think James and Danny Finkelstein are correct. Political considerations trump the need to satisfy the Conservative party’s right-wing. And that means that, regrettably, George Osbourne is probably right not to promise to abolish the new 45% income tax band for the rich. At the very least this should be an aspiration not an immediate priority. But the problem is not so much the 45p band, but the number of people trapped by the existing 40p band. This has been one of gordon Brown’s most successful stealth taxes, drawing more and more middle class voters into his clutches every year. Even this years’ widening of the bands does little to