Politics

What do politicians find it harder to admit to doing in Britain today: smoking weed or praying? Welsh Secretary Stephen Crabb thinks it’s the latter, and that this is part of a ‘creeping intolerance’ in Britain that makes our society less able to resist religious extremists. In a lecture last night to the Conservative Christian Fellowship, Crabb argued that ‘Britain in 2015 is… increasingly characterised I believe by a creeping intolerance towards Christianity, and towards religion more generally, which we should be deeply concerned about’. He believes that the marginalisation of religious faith and discussion ‘risks pushing more young Muslims into the arms of Isil’ because it delegitimises their faith.

All wings of the Labour Party which support the notion of the Labour Party as a Party aspiring to govern, rather than as a fringe protest movement agree on the tragedy of the Labour Party’s current position. But even within that governing tendency, there is disagreement about the last Labour Government, what it stood for and what it should be proud of. The moral dimension of Labour tradition has always been very strong, encapsulated in the phrase that the Labour Party owed more to Methodism than to Marx. When I became the Opposition spokesman on law and order in 1992, following our fourth election defeat, I consciously moved us away from a

The Christmas issue of The Spectator hits the streets soon; we have David Cameron, Justin Welby and Tony Blair. Blair first wrote for The Spectator in August 1979, four years before he became an MP. Thirty six years later, he is back in the magazine. In his first intervention since Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour Party leadership, the former Prime Minister does not mince his words. In his first sentence, he says: All wings of the Labour Party which support the notion of the Labour Party as a Party aspiring to govern, rather than as a fringe protest movement agree on the tragedy of the Labour Party’s current position. What they don’t agree

After stepping down as an MP ahead of the general election, Gordon Brown has taken up a role on the advisory panel of Pimco, a global investment management firm. He joins a panel of ‘world-renowned experts’ who include Jean-Claude Trichet, the former president of the European Central Bank, and Ben Bernanke, the former US Federal Reserve chairman. Pimco have released a statement speaking of their delight at their global advisory board which they say boasts ‘an unrivalled team of macroeconomic thinkers and former policymakers’: ‘The global advisory board is an unrivalled team of macroeconomic thinkers and former policymakers, whose insights into the intersection of policy and financial markets will be a valuable input to our investment process.’

The flooding in Cumbria is continuing to cause misery for thousands of people and as often happens in these situations, attention has turned onto whether the government has done enough to protect people. Liz Truss, the Environment Secretary, popped up on the Today programme to defend the government’s flood defence plans. She described what has happened in Cumbria as a ‘devastating situation’, which was the result of an ‘extreme event’: ‘The scale of this was absolutely extraordinary – to have half a metre more of water than we’ve seen before in any of these towns and cities in Cumbria was extraordinary’. Despite ‘an environment where overall the government budget is reducing’ Truss

Yesterday the Young Britons Foundation called off their annual Activist Training Conference — following the suicide of Elliot Johnson in September, and the subsequent revelations of Tory activist bullying. Although six Cabinet ministers had cancelled their attendance at the event, and Elliot’s father Ray had written to David Cameron calling the YBF ‘a cult, indoctrinating young activists’, the organisation’s chief-executive Don Blaney appeared on LBC — with Iain Dale — to blame the cancellation on intrusive journalists. In the interview which LBC called ‘explosive’, Dale challenged Blaney on a number of points, though the exchange could hardly be called a grilling. Blaney spoke about his role in making Johnson redundant from his job ahead of his suicide, as well